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EIGHTY YEARS AND MORE
REMINISCENCES 1815-1897
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
"Social science affirms that woman's place in society marks the level of
civilization."
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME TO
SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
MY STEADFAST FRIEND FOR HALF A CENTURY.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. CHILDHOOD
II. SCHOOL DAYS
III. GIRLHOOD
IV. LIFE AT PETERBORO
V. OUR WEDDING JOURNEY
VI. HOMEWARD BOUND
VII. MOTHERHOOD
VIII. BOSTON AND CHELSEA
IX. THE FIRST WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION
X. SUSAN B. ANTHONY
XI. SUSAN B. ANTHONY (_Continued_)
XII. MY FIRST SPEECH BEFORE A LEGISLATURE
XIII. REFORMS AND MOBS
XIV. VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
XV. WOMEN AS PATRIOTS
XVI. PIONEER LIFE IN KANSAS--OUR NEWSPAPER "THE
REVOLUTION"
XVII. LYCEUMS AND LECTURERS
XVIII. WESTWARD HO!
XIX. THE SPIRIT OF '76
XX. WRITING "THE HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE"
XXI. IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE
XXII. REFORMS AND REFORMERS IN GREAT BRITAIN
XXIII. WOMAN AND THEOLOGY
XXIV. ENGLAND AND FRANCE REVISITED
XXV. THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN
XXVI. MY LAST VISIT TO ENGLAND
XXVII. SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASS OF 1832--THE
WOMAN'S BIBLE
XXVIII. MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
INDEX OF NAMES
LIST OF PORTRAITS.
The Author, _Frontispiece_
Margaret Livingston Cady
Judge Daniel Cady
Henry Brewster Stanton
The Author and Daughter
The Author and Son
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Smith Miller
Children and Grandchildren
The Author, Mrs. Blatch, and Nora
The Author, Mrs. Lawrence, and Robert Livingston Stanton
EIGHTY YEARS AND MORE.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD.
The psychical growth of a child is not influenced by days and years, but
by the impressions passing events make on its mind. What may prove a
sudden awakening to one, giving an impulse in a certain direction that
may last for years, may make no impression on another. People wonder why
the children of the same family differ so widely, though they have had
the same domestic discipline, the same school and church teaching, and
have grown up under the same influences and with the same environments.
As well wonder why lilies and lilacs in the same latitude are not all
alike in color and equally fragrant. Children differ as widely as these
in the primal elements of their physical and psychical life.
Who can estimate the power of antenatal influences, or the child's
surroundings in its earliest years, the effect of some passing word or
sight on one, that makes no impression on another? The unhappiness of
one child under a certain home discipline is not inconsistent with the
content of another under this same discipline. One, yearning for broader
freedom, is in a chronic condition of rebellion; the other, more easily
satisfied, quietly accepts the situation. Everything is seen from a
different standpoint; everything takes its color from the mind of the
beholder.
I am moved to recall what I can of my early days, what I thought and
felt, that grown people may have a better understanding of children and
do more for their happiness and development. I see so much tyranny
exercised over children, even by well-disposed parents, and in so many
varied forms,--a tyranny to which these parents are themselves
insensible,--that I desire to paint my joys and sorrows in as vivid
colors as possible, in the hope that I may do something to defend the
weak from the strong. People never dream of all that is going on in the
little heads of the young, for few adults are given to introspection,
and those who are incapable of recalling their own feelings under
restraint and disappointment can have no appreciation of the sufferings
of children who can neither describe nor analyze what they feel. In
defending themselves against injustice they are as helpless as dumb
animals. What is insignificant to their elders is often to them a source
of great joy or sorrow.
With several generations of vigorous, enterprising ancestors behind me,
I commenced the struggle of life under favorable circumstances on the
12th day of November, 1815, the same year that my father, Daniel Cady, a
distinguished lawyer and judge in the State of New York, was elected to
Congress. Perhaps the excitement of a political campaign, in which my
mother took the deepest interest, may have had an influence on my
prenatal life and given me the strong desire that I have always felt to
participate in the rights and duties of government.
My father was a man of firm character and unimpeachable integrity, and
yet sensitive and modest to a painful degree. There were but two places
in which he felt at ease--in the courthouse and at his own fireside.
Though gentle and tender, he had such a dignified repose and reserve of
manner that, as children, we regarded him with fear rather than
affection.
My mother, Margaret Livingston, a tall, queenly looking woman, was
courageous, self-reliant, and at her ease under all circumstances and in
all places. She was the daughter of Colonel James Livingston, who took
an active part in the War of the Revolution.
Colonel Livingston was stationed at West Point when Arnold made the
attempt to betray that stronghold into the hands of the enemy. In the
absence of General Washington and his superior officer, he took the
responsibility of firing into the _Vulture_, a suspicious looking
British vessel that lay at anchor near the opposite bank of the Hudson
River. It was a fatal shot for Andre, the British spy, with whom Arnold
was then consummating his treason. Hit between wind and water, the
vessel spread her sails and hastened down the river, leaving Andre, with
his papers, to be captured while Arnold made his escape through the
lines, before his treason was suspected.
On General Washington's return to West Point, he sent for my grandfather
and reprimanded him for acting in so important a matter without orders,
thereby making himself liable to court-martial; but, after fully
impressing the young officer with the danger of such self-sufficiency on
ordinary occasions, he admitted that a most fortunate shot had been sent
into the _Vulture_, "for," he said, "we are in no condition just now to
defend ourselves against the British forces in New York, and the
capture of this spy has saved us."
My mother had the military idea of government, but her children, like
their grandfather, were disposed to assume the responsibility of their
own actions; thus the ancestral traits in mother and children modified,
in a measure, the dangerous tendencies in each.
Our parents were as kind, indulgent, and considerate as the Puritan
ideas of those days permitted, but fear, rather than love, of God and
parents alike, predominated. Add to this our timidity in our intercourse
with servants and teachers, our dread of the ever present devil, and the
reader will see that, under such conditions, nothing but strong
self-will and a good share of hope and mirthfulness could have saved an
ordinary child from becoming a mere nullity.
The first event engraved on my memory was the birth of a sister when I
was four years old. It was a cold morning in January when the brawny
Scotch nurse carried me to see the little stranger, whose advent was a
matter of intense interest to me for many weeks after. The large,
pleasant room with the white curtains and bright wood fire on the
hearth, where panada, catnip, and all kinds of little messes which we
were allowed to taste were kept warm, was the center of attraction for
the older children. I heard so many friends remark, "What a pity it is
she's a girl!" that I felt a kind of compassion for the little baby.
True, our family consisted of five girls and only one boy, but I did not
understand at that time that girls were considered an inferior order of
beings.
To form some idea of my surroundings at this time, imagine a two-story
white frame house with a hall through the middle, rooms on either side,
and a large back building with grounds on the side and rear, which
joined the garden of our good Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Simon
Hosack, of whom I shall have more to say in another chapter. Our
favorite resorts in the house were the garret and cellar. In the former
were barrels of hickory nuts, and, on a long shelf, large cakes of maple
sugar and all kinds of dried herbs and sweet flag; spinning wheels, a
number of small white cotton bags filled with bundles, marked in ink,
"silk," "cotton," "flannel," "calico," etc., as well as ancient
masculine and feminine costumes. Here we would crack the nuts, nibble
the sharp edges of the maple sugar, chew some favorite herb, play ball
with the bags, whirl the old spinning wheels, dress up in our ancestors'
clothes, and take a bird's-eye view of the surrounding country from an
enticing scuttle hole. This was forbidden ground; but, nevertheless, we
often went there on the sly, which only made the little escapades more
enjoyable.
The cellar of our house was filled, in winter, with barrels of apples,
vegetables, salt meats, cider, butter, pounding barrels, washtubs, etc.,
offering admirable nooks for playing hide and seek. Two tallow candles
threw a faint light over the scene on certain occasions. This cellar was
on a level with a large kitchen where we played blind man's buff and
other games when the day's work was done. These two rooms are the center
of many of the merriest memories of my childhood days.
I can recall three colored men, Abraham, Peter, and Jacob, who acted as
menservants in our youth. In turn they would sometimes play on the banjo
for us to dance, taking real enjoyment in our games. They are all at
rest now with "Old Uncle Ned in the place where the good niggers go."
Our nurses, Lockey Danford, Polly Bell, Mary Dunn, and Cornelia
Nickeloy--peace to their ashes--were the only shadows on the gayety of
these winter evenings; for their chief delight was to hurry us off to
bed, that they might receive their beaux or make short calls in the
neighborhood. My memory of them is mingled with no sentiment of
gratitude or affection. In expressing their opinion of us in after
years, they said we were a very troublesome, obstinate, disobedient set
of children. I have no doubt we were in constant rebellion against their
petty tyranny. Abraham, Peter, and Jacob viewed us in a different light,
and I have the most pleasant recollections of their kind services.
In the winter, outside the house, we had the snow with which to build
statues and make forts, and huge piles of wood covered with ice, which
we called the Alps, so difficult were they of ascent and descent. There
we would climb up and down by the hour, if not interrupted, which,
however, was generally the case. It always seemed to me that, in the
height of our enthusiasm, we were invariably summoned to some
disagreeable duty, which would appear to show that thus early I keenly
enjoyed outdoor life. Theodore Tilton has thus described the place where
I was born: "Birthplace is secondary parentage, and transmits character.
Johnstown was more famous half a century ago than since; for then,
though small, it was a marked intellectual center; and now, though
large, it is an unmarked manufacturing town. Before the birth of
Elizabeth Cady it was the vice-ducal seat of Sir William Johnson, the
famous English negotiator with the Indians. During her girlhood it was
an arena for the intellectual wrestlings of Kent, Tompkins, Spencer,
Elisha Williams, and Abraham Van Vechten, who, as lawyers, were among
the chiefest of their time. It is now devoted mainly to the fabrication
of steel springs and buckskin gloves. So, like Wordsworth's early star,
it has faded into the light of common day. But Johnstown retains one of
its ancient splendors--a glory still fresh as at the foundation of the
world. Standing on its hills, one looks off upon a country of enameled
meadow lands, that melt away southward toward the Mohawk, and northward
to the base of those grand mountains which are 'God's monument over the
grave of John Brown.'"
Harold Frederic's novel, "In the Valley," contains many descriptions of
this region that are true to nature, as I remember the Mohawk Valley,
for I first knew it not so many years after the scenes which he lays
there. Before I was old enough to take in the glory of this scenery and
its classic associations, Johnstown was to me a gloomy-looking town. The
middle of the streets was paved with large cobblestones, over which the
farmer's wagons rattled from morning till night, while the sidewalks
were paved with very small cobblestones, over which we carefully picked
our way, so that free and graceful walking was out of the question. The
streets were lined with solemn poplar trees, from which small yellow
worms were continually dangling down. Next to the Prince of Darkness, I
feared these worms. They were harmless, but the sight of one made me
tremble. So many people shared in this feeling that the poplars were all
cut down and elms planted in their stead. The Johnstown academy and
churches were large square buildings, painted white, surrounded by these
same sombre poplars, each edifice having a doleful bell which seemed to
be ever tolling for school, funerals, church, or prayer meetings. Next
to the worms, those clanging bells filled me with the utmost dread; they
seemed like so many warnings of an eternal future. Visions of the
Inferno were strongly impressed on my childish imagination. It was
thought, in those days, that firm faith in hell and the devil was the
greatest help to virtue. It certainly made me very unhappy whenever my
mind dwelt on such teachings, and I have always had my doubts of the
virtue that is based on the fear of punishment.
Perhaps I may be pardoned a word devoted to my appearance in those days.
I have been told that I was a plump little girl, with very fair skin,
rosy cheeks, good features, dark-brown hair, and laughing blue eyes. A
student in my father's office, the late Henry Bayard of Delaware (an
uncle of our recent Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Thomas F.
Bayard), told me one day, after conning my features carefully, that I
had one defect which he could remedy. "Your eyebrows should be darker
and heavier," said he, "and if you will let me shave them once or twice,
you will be much improved." I consented, and, slight as my eyebrows
were, they seemed to have had some expression, for the loss of them had
a most singular effect on my appearance. Everybody, including even the
operator, laughed at my odd-looking face, and I was in the depths of
humiliation during the period while my eyebrows were growing out again.
It is scarcely necessary for me to add that I never allowed the young
man to repeat the experiment, although strongly urged to do so.
I cannot recall how or when I conquered the alphabet, words in three
letters, the multiplication table, the points of the compass, the
chicken pox, whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever. All these
unhappy incidents of childhood left but little impression on my mind. I
have, however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost,
who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the
English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's
Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer
stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many
serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and
had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy
stages through the old-fashioned school-books. The interesting Readers
children now have were unknown sixty years ago. We did not reach the
temple of knowledge by the flowery paths of ease in which our
descendants now walk.
I still have a perfect vision of myself and sisters, as we stood up in
the classes, with our toes at the cracks in the floor, all dressed alike
in bright red flannel, black alpaca aprons, and, around the neck, a
starched ruffle that, through a lack of skill on the part of either the
laundress or the nurse who sewed them in, proved a constant source of
discomfort to us. I have since seen full-grown men, under slighter
provocation than we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and
throw it to the winds, chased by the most soul-harrowing expletives. But
we were sternly rebuked for complaining, and if we ventured to introduce
our little fingers between the delicate skin and the irritating linen,
our hands were slapped and the ruffle readjusted a degree closer. Our
Sunday dresses were relieved with a black sprig and white aprons. We had
red cloaks, red hoods, red mittens, and red stockings. For one's self to
be all in red six months of the year was bad enough, but to have this
costume multiplied by three was indeed monotonous. I had such an
aversion to that color that I used to rebel regularly at the beginning
of each season when new dresses were purchased, until we finally passed
into an exquisite shade of blue. No words could do justice to my dislike
of those red dresses. My grandfather's detestation of the British
redcoats must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing
red enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who
hated everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat
but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So
when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the
floor and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is
the color of the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it
changed for the hue she liked. Although we cannot always understand the
ground for children's preferences, it is often well to heed them.
I am told that I was pensively looking out of the nursery window one
day, when Mary Dunn, the Scotch nurse, who was something of a
philosopher, and a stern Presbyterian, said: "Child, what are you
thinking about; are you planning some new form of mischief?" "No, Mary,"
I replied, "I was wondering why it was that everything we like to do is
a sin, and that everything we dislike is commanded by God or someone on
earth. I am so tired of that everlasting no! no! no! At school, at home,
everywhere it is _no_! Even at church all the commandments begin 'Thou
shalt not.' I suppose God will say 'no' to all we like in the next
world, just as you do here." Mary was dreadfully shocked at my
dissatisfaction with the things of time and prospective eternity, and
exhorted me to cultivate the virtues of obedience and humility.
I well remember the despair I felt in those years, as I took in the
whole situation, over the constant cribbing and crippling of a child's
life. I suppose I found fit language in which to express my thoughts,
for Mary Dunn told me, years after, how our discussion roused my sister
Margaret, who was an attentive listener. I must have set forth our
wrongs in clear, unmistakable terms; for Margaret exclaimed one day, "I
tell you what to do. Hereafter let us act as we choose, without asking."
"Then," said I, "we shall be punished." "Suppose we are," said she, "we
shall have had our fun at any rate, and that is better than to mind the
everlasting 'no' and not have any fun at all." Her logic seemed
unanswerable, so together we gradually acted on her suggestions. Having
less imagination than I, she took a common-sense view of life and
suffered nothing from anticipation of troubles, while my sorrows were
intensified fourfold by innumerable apprehensions of possible
exigencies.
Our nursery, a large room over a back building, had three barred windows
reaching nearly to the floor. Two of these opened on a gently slanting
roof over a veranda. In our night robes, on warm summer evenings we
could, by dint of skillful twisting and compressing, get out between the
bars, and there, snugly braced against the house, we would sit and enjoy
the moon and stars and what sounds might reach us from the streets,
while the nurse, gossiping at the back door, imagined we were safely
asleep.
I have a confused memory of being often under punishment for what, in
those days, were called "tantrums." I suppose they were really
justifiable acts of rebellion against the tyranny of those in authority.
I have often listened since, with real satisfaction, to what some of our
friends had to say of the high-handed manner in which sister Margaret
and I defied all the transient orders and strict rules laid down for our
guidance. If we had observed them we might as well have been embalmed as
mummies, for all the pleasure and freedom we should have had in our
childhood. As very little was then done for the amusement of children,
happy were those who _conscientiously_ took the liberty of amusing
themselves.
One charming feature of our village was a stream of water, called the
Cayadutta, which ran through the north end, in which it was our delight
to walk on the broad slate stones when the water was low, in order to
pick up pretty pebbles. These joys were also forbidden, though indulged
in as opportunity afforded, especially as sister Margaret's philosophy
was found to work successfully and we had finally risen above our
infantile fear of punishment.
Much of my freedom at this time was due to this sister, who afterward
became the wife of Colonel Duncan McMartin of Iowa. I can see her now,
hat in hand, her long curls flying in the wind, her nose slightly
retrousse, her large dark eyes flashing with glee, and her small
straight mouth so expressive of determination. Though two years my
junior, she was larger and stronger than I and more fearless and
self-reliant. She was always ready to start when any pleasure offered,
and, if I hesitated, she would give me a jerk and say, emphatically:
"Oh, come along!" and away we went.
About this time we entered the Johnstown Academy, where we made the
acquaintance of the daughters of the hotel keeper and the county
sheriff. They were a few years my senior, but, as I was ahead of them in
all my studies, the difference of age was somewhat equalized and we
became fast friends. This acquaintance opened to us two new sources of
enjoyment--the freedom of the hotel during "court week" (a great event
in village life) and the exploration of the county jail. Our Scotch
nurse had told us so many thrilling tales of castles, prisons, and
dungeons in the Old World that, to see the great keys and iron doors,
the handcuffs and chains, and the prisoners in their cells seemed like a
veritable visit to Mary's native land. We made frequent visits to the
jail and became deeply concerned about the fate of the prisoners, who
were greatly pleased with our expressions of sympathy and our gifts of
cake and candy. In time we became interested in the trials and sentences
of prisoners, and would go to the courthouse and listen to the
proceedings. Sometimes we would slip into the hotel where the judges and
lawyers dined, and help our little friend wait on table. The rushing of
servants to and fro, the calling of guests, the scolding of servants in
the kitchen, the banging of doors, the general hubbub, the noise and
clatter, were all idealized by me into one of those royal festivals Mary
so often described. To be allowed to carry plates of bread and butter,
pie and cheese I counted a high privilege. But more especially I enjoyed
listening to the conversations in regard to the probable fate of our
friends the prisoners in the jail. On one occasion I projected a few
remarks into a conversation between two lawyers, when one of them turned
abruptly to me and said, "Child, you'd better attend to your business;
bring me a glass of water." I replied indignantly, "I am not a servant;
I am here for fun."
In all these escapades we were followed by Peter, black as coal and six
feet in height. It seems to me now that his chief business was to
discover our whereabouts, get us home to dinner, and take us back to
school. Fortunately he was overflowing with curiosity and not averse to
lingering a while where anything of interest was to be seen or heard,
and, as we were deemed perfectly safe under his care, no questions were
asked when we got to the house, if we had been with him. He had a long
head and, through his diplomacy, we escaped much disagreeable
surveillance. Peter was very fond of attending court. All the lawyers
knew him, and wherever Peter went, the three little girls in his charge
went, too. Thus, with constant visits to the jail, courthouse, and my
father's office, I gleaned some idea of the danger of violating the law.
The great events of the year were the Christmas holidays, the Fourth of
July, and "general training," as the review of the county militia was
then called. The winter gala days are associated, in my memory, with
hanging up stockings and with turkeys, mince pies, sweet cider, and
sleighrides by moonlight. My earliest recollections of those happy days,
when schools were closed, books laid aside, and unusual liberties
allowed, center in that large cellar kitchen to which I have already
referred. There we spent many winter evenings in uninterrupted
enjoyment. A large fireplace with huge logs shed warmth and cheerfulness
around. In one corner sat Peter sawing his violin, while our youthful
neighbors danced with us and played blindman's buff almost every evening
during the vacation. The most interesting character in this game was a
black boy called Jacob (Peter's lieutenant), who made things lively for
us by always keeping one eye open--a wise precaution to guard himself
from danger, and to keep us on the jump. Hickory nuts, sweet cider, and
_olie-koeks_ (a Dutch name for a fried cake with raisins inside) were
our refreshments when there came a lull in the fun.
As St. Nicholas was supposed to come down the chimney, our stockings
were pinned on a broomstick, laid across two chairs in front of the
fireplace. We retired on Christmas Eve with the most pleasing
anticipations of what would be in our stockings next morning. The
thermometer in that latitude was often twenty degrees below zero, yet,
bright and early, we would run downstairs in our bare feet over the cold
floors to carry stockings, broom, etc., to the nursery. The gorgeous
presents that St. Nicholas now distributes show that he, too, has been
growing up with the country. The boys and girls of 1897 will laugh when
they hear of the contents of our stockings in 1823. There was a little
paper of candy, one of raisins, another, of nuts, a red apple, an
_olie-koek_, and a bright silver quarter of a dollar in the toe. If a
child had been guilty of any erratic performances during the year, which
was often my case, a long stick would protrude from the stocking; if
particularly good, an illustrated catechism or the New Testament would
appear, showing that the St. Nicholas of that time held decided views
on discipline and ethics.
During the day we would take a drive over the snow-clad hills and
valleys in a long red lumber sleigh. All the children it could hold made
the forests echo with their songs and laughter. The sleigh bells and
Peter's fine tenor voice added to the chorus seemed to chant, as we
passed, "Merry Christmas" to the farmers' children and to all we met on
the highway.
Returning home, we were allowed, as a great Christmas treat, to watch
all Peter's preparations for dinner. Attired in a white apron and
turban, holding in his hand a tin candlestick the size of a dinner
plate, containing a tallow candle, with stately step he marched into the
spacious cellar, with Jacob and three little girls dressed in red
flannel at his heels. As the farmers paid the interest on their
mortgages in barrels of pork, headcheese, poultry, eggs, and cider, the
cellars were well crowded for the winter, making the master of an
establishment quite indifferent to all questions of finance. We heard
nothing in those days of greenbacks, silver coinage, or a gold basis.
Laden with vegetables, butter, eggs, and a magnificent turkey, Peter and
his followers returned to the kitchen. There, seated on a big ironing
table, we watched the dressing and roasting of the bird in a tin oven in
front of the fire. Jacob peeled the vegetables, we all sang, and Peter
told us marvelous stories. For tea he made flapjacks, baked in a pan
with a long handle, which he turned by throwing the cake up and
skillfully catching it descending.
Peter was a devout Episcopalian and took great pleasure in helping the
young people decorate the church. He would take us with him and show us
how to make evergreen wreaths. Like Mary's lamb, where'er he went we
were sure to go. His love for us was unbounded and fully returned. He
was the only being, visible or invisible, of whom we had no fear. We
would go to divine service with Peter, Christmas morning and sit with
him by the door, in what was called "the negro pew." He was the only
colored member of the church and, after all the other communicants had
taken the sacrament, he went alone to the altar. Dressed in a new suit
of blue with gilt buttons, he looked like a prince, as, with head erect,
he walked up the aisle, the grandest specimen of manhood in the whole
congregation; and yet so strong was prejudice against color in 1823 that
no one would kneel beside him. On leaving us, on one of these occasions,
Peter told us all to sit still until he returned; but, no sooner had he
started, than the youngest of us slowly followed after him and seated
herself close beside him. As he came back, holding the child by the
hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation!
The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white
man's pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge's children there.
"Oh," he said, "they will not stay there without me." But, as he could
not enter, we instinctively followed him to the negro pew.
Our next great fete was on the anniversary of the birthday of our
Republic. The festivities were numerous and protracted, beginning then,
as now, at midnight with bonfires and cannon; while the day was ushered
in with the ringing of bells, tremendous cannonading, and a continuous
popping of fire-crackers and torpedoes. Then a procession of soldiers
and citizens marched through the town, an oration was delivered, the
Declaration of Independence read, and a great dinner given in the open
air under the trees in the grounds of the old courthouse. Each toast was
announced with the booming of cannon. On these occasions Peter was in
his element, and showed us whatever he considered worth seeing; but I
cannot say that I enjoyed very much either "general training" or the
Fourth of July, for, in addition to my fear of cannon and torpedoes, my
sympathies were deeply touched by the sadness of our cook, whose drunken
father always cut antics in the streets on gala days, the central figure
in all the sports of the boys, much to the mortification of his worthy
daughter. She wept bitterly over her father's public exhibition of
himself, and told me in what a condition he would come home to his
family at night. I would gladly have stayed in with her all day, but the
fear of being called a coward compelled me to go through those trying
ordeals. As my nerves were all on the surface, no words can describe
what I suffered with those explosions, great and small, and my fears
lest King George and his minions should reappear among us. I thought
that, if he had done all the dreadful things stated in the Declaration
of '76, he might come again, burn our houses, and drive us all into the
street. Sir William Johnson's mansion of solid masonry, gloomy and
threatening, still stood in our neighborhood. I had seen the marks of
the Indian's tomahawk on the balustrades and heard of the bloody deeds
there enacted. For all the calamities of the nation I believed King
George responsible. At home and at school we were educated to hate the
English. When we remember that, every Fourth of July, the Declaration
was read with emphasis, and the orator of the day rounded all his
glowing periods with denunciations of the mother country, we need not
wonder at the national hatred of everything English. Our patriotism in
those early days was measured by our dislike of Great Britain.
In September occurred the great event, the review of the county militia,
popularly called "Training Day." Then everybody went to the race course
to see the troops and buy what the farmers had brought in their wagons.
There was a peculiar kind of gingerbread and molasses candy to which we
were treated on those occasions, associated in my mind to this day with
military reviews and standing armies.
Other pleasures were, roaming in the forests and sailing on the mill
pond. One day, when there were no boys at hand and several girls were
impatiently waiting for a sail on a raft, my sister and I volunteered to
man the expedition. We always acted on the assumption that what we had
seen done, we could do. Accordingly we all jumped on the raft, loosened
it from its moorings, and away we went with the current. Navigation on
that mill pond was performed with long poles, but, unfortunately, we
could not lift the poles, and we soon saw we were drifting toward the
dam. But we had the presence of mind to sit down and hold fast to the
raft. Fortunately, we went over right side up and gracefully glided down
the stream, until rescued by the ever watchful Peter. I did not hear the
last of that voyage for a long time. I was called the captain of the
expedition, and one of the boys wrote a composition, which he read in
school, describing the adventure and emphasizing the ignorance of the
laws of navigation shown by the officers in command. I shed tears many
times over that performance.
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL DAYS.
When I was eleven years old, two events occurred which changed
considerably the current of my life. My only brother, who had just
graduated from Union College, came home to die. A young man of great
talent and promise, he was the pride of my father's heart. We early felt
that this son filled a larger place in our father's affections and
future plans than the five daughters together. Well do I remember how
tenderly he watched my brother in his last illness, the sighs and tears
he gave vent to as he slowly walked up and down the hall, and, when the
last sad moment came, and we were all assembled to say farewell in the
silent chamber of death, how broken were his utterances as he knelt and
prayed for comfort and support. I still recall, too, going into the
large darkened parlor to see my brother, and finding the casket,
mirrors, and pictures all draped in white, and my father seated by his
side, pale and immovable. As he took no notice of me, after standing a
long while, I climbed upon his knee, when he mechanically put his arm
about me and, with my head resting against his beating heart, we both
sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of
a dear son, and I wondering what could be said or done to fill the void
in his breast. At length he heaved a deep sigh and said: "Oh, my
daughter, I wish you were a boy!" Throwing my arms about his neck, I
replied: "I will try to be all my brother was."
[Illustration: MARGARET LIVINGSTON CADY.] [Illustration: JUDGE DANIEL
CADY.] Then and there I resolved that I would not give so much time as
heretofore to play, but would study and strive to be at the head of all
my classes and thus delight my father's heart. All that day and far into
the night I pondered the problem of boyhood. I thought that the chief
thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and
courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
Having formed this conclusion I fell asleep. My resolutions, unlike many
such made at night, did not vanish with the coming light. I arose early
and hastened to put them into execution. They were resolutions never to
be forgotten--destined to mold my character anew. As soon as I was
dressed I hastened to our good pastor, Rev. Simon Hosack, who was always
early at work in his garden.
"Doctor," said I, "which do you like best, boys or girls?"
"Why, girls, to be sure; I would not give you for all the boys in
Christendom."
"My father," I replied, "prefers boys; he wishes I was one, and I intend
to be as near like one as possible. I am going to ride on horseback and
study Greek. Will you give me a Greek lesson now, doctor? I want to
begin at once."
"Yes, child," said he, throwing down his hoe, "come into my library and
we will begin without delay."
He entered fully into the feeling of suffering and sorrow which took
possession of me when I discovered that a girl weighed less in the scale
of being than a boy, and he praised my determination to prove the
contrary. The old grammar which he had studied in the University of
Glasgow was soon in my hands, and the Greek article was learned before
breakfast.
Then came the sad pageantry of death, the weeping of friends, the dark
rooms, the ghostly stillness, the exhortation to the living to prepare
for death, the solemn prayer, the mournful chant, the funeral cortege,
the solemn, tolling bell, the burial. How I suffered during those sad
days! What strange undefined fears of the unknown took possession of me!
For months afterward, at the twilight hour, I went with my father to the
new-made grave. Near it stood two tall poplar trees, against one of
which I leaned, while my father threw himself on the grave, with
outstretched arms, as if to embrace his child. At last the frosts and
storms of November came and threw a chilling barrier between the living
and the dead, and we went there no more.
During all this time I kept up my lessons at the parsonage and made
rapid progress. I surprised even my teacher, who thought me capable of
doing anything. I learned to drive, and to leap a fence and ditch on
horseback. I taxed every power, hoping some day to hear my father say:
"Well, a girl is as good as a boy, after all." But he never said it.
When the doctor came over to spend the evening with us, I would whisper
in his ear: "Tell my father how fast I get on," and he would tell him,
and was lavish in his praises. But my father only paced the room,
sighed, and showed that he wished I were a boy; and I, not knowing why
he felt thus, would hide my tears of vexation on the doctor's shoulder.
Soon after this I began to study Latin, Greek, and mathematics with a
class of boys in the Academy, many of whom were much older than I. For
three years one boy kept his place at the head of the class, and I
always stood next. Two prizes were offered in Greek. I strove for one
and took the second. How well I remember my joy in receiving that prize.
There was no sentiment of ambition, rivalry, or triumph over my
companions, nor feeling of satisfaction in receiving this honor in the
presence of those assembled on the day of the exhibition. One thought
alone filled my mind. "Now," said I, "my father will be satisfied with
me." So, as soon as we were dismissed, I ran down the hill, rushed
breathless into his office, laid the new Greek Testament, which was my
prize, on his table and exclaimed: "There, I got it!" He took up the
book, asked me some questions about the class, the teachers, the
spectators, and, evidently pleased, handed it back to me. Then, while I
stood looking and waiting for him to say something which would show that
he recognized the equality of the daughter with the son, he kissed me on
the forehead and exclaimed, with a sigh, "Ah, you should have been a
boy!"
My joy was turned to sadness. I ran to my good doctor. He chased my
bitter tears away, and soothed me with unbounded praises and visions of
future success. He was then confined to the house with his last illness.
He asked me that day if I would like to have, when he was gone, the old
lexicon, Testament, and grammar that we had so often thumbed together.
"Yes, but I would rather have you stay," I replied, "for what can I do
when you are gone?" "Oh," said he tenderly, "I shall not be gone; my
spirit will still be with you, watching you in all life's struggles."
Noble, generous friend! He had but little on earth to bequeath to
anyone, but when the last scene in his life was ended, and his will was
opened, sure enough there was a clause saying: "My Greek lexicon,
Testament, and grammar, and four volumes of Scott's commentaries, I will
to Elizabeth Cady." I never look at these books without a feeling of
thankfulness that in childhood I was blessed with such a friend and
teacher.
I can truly say, after an experience of seventy years, that all the
cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life,
are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from
the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed, and the gloom
connected with everything associated with the name of religion, the
church, the parsonage, the graveyard, and the solemn, tolling bell.
Everything connected with death was then rendered inexpressibly
dolorous. The body, covered with a black pall, was borne on the
shoulders of men; the mourners were in crape and walked with bowed
heads, while the neighbors who had tears to shed, did so copiously and
summoned up their saddest facial expressions. At the grave came the
sober warnings to the living and sometimes frightful prophesies as to
the state of the dead. All this pageantry of woe and visions of the
unknown land beyond the tomb, often haunted my midnight dreams and
shadowed the sunshine of my days. The parsonage, with its bare walls and
floors, its shriveled mistress and her blind sister, more like ghostly
shadows than human flesh and blood; the two black servants, racked with
rheumatism and odoriferous with a pungent oil they used in the vain hope
of making their weary limbs more supple; the aged parson buried in his
library in the midst of musty books and papers--all this only added to
the gloom of my surroundings. The church, which was bare, with no
furnace to warm us, no organ to gladden our hearts, no choir to lead our
songs of praise in harmony, was sadly lacking in all attractions for the
youthful mind. The preacher, shut up in an octagonal box high above our
heads, gave us sermons over an hour long, and the chorister, in a
similar box below him, intoned line after line of David's Psalms, while,
like a flock of sheep at the heels of their shepherd, the congregation,
without regard to time or tune, straggled after their leader.
Years later, the introduction of stoves, a violoncello, Wesley's hymns,
and a choir split the church in twain. These old Scotch Presbyterians
were opposed to all innovations that would afford their people paths of
flowery ease on the road to Heaven. So, when the thermometer was twenty
degrees below zero on the Johnstown Hills, four hundred feet above the
Mohawk Valley, we trudged along through the snow, foot-stoves in hand,
to the cold hospitalities of the "Lord's House," there to be chilled to
the very core by listening to sermons on "predestination,"
"justification by faith," and "eternal damnation."
To be restless, or to fall asleep under such solemn circumstances was a
sure evidence of total depravity, and of the machinations of the devil
striving to turn one's heart from God and his ordinances. As I was
guilty of these shortcomings and many more, I early believed myself a
veritable child of the Evil One, and suffered endless fears lest he
should come some night and claim me as his own. To me he was a personal,
ever-present reality, crouching in a dark corner of the nursery. Ah! how
many times I have stolen out of bed, and sat shivering on the stairs,
where the hall lamp and the sound of voices from the parlor would, in a
measure, mitigate my terror. Thanks to a vigorous constitution and
overflowing animal spirits, I was able to endure for years the strain of
these depressing influences, until my reasoning powers and common sense
triumphed at last over my imagination. The memory of my own suffering
has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with any of the
superstitions of the Christian religion. But there have been many
changes, even in my native town, since those dark days. Our old church
was turned into a mitten factory, and the pleasant hum of machinery and
the glad faces of men and women have chased the evil spirits to their
hiding places. One finds at Johnstown now, beautiful churches,
ornamented cemeteries, and cheerful men and women, quite emancipated
from the nonsense and terrors of the old theologies.
An important event in our family circle was the marriage of my oldest
sister, Tryphena, to Edward Bayard of Wilmington, Delaware. He was a
graduate of Union College, a classmate of my brother, and frequently
visited at my father's house. At the end of his college course, he came
with his brother Henry to study law in Johnstown. A quiet, retired
little village was thought to be a good place in which to sequester
young men bent on completing their education, as they were there safe
from the temptations and distracting influences of large cities. In
addition to this consideration, my father's reputation made his office a
desirable resort for students, who, furthermore, not only improved their
opportunities by reading Blackstone, Kent, and Story, but also by making
love to the Judge's daughters. We thus had the advantage of many
pleasant acquaintances from the leading families in the country, and, in
this way, it was that four of the sisters eventually selected most
worthy husbands.
Though only twenty-one years of age when married, Edward Bayard was a
tall, fully developed man, remarkably fine looking, with cultivated
literary taste and a profound knowledge of human nature. Warm and
affectionate, generous to a fault in giving and serving, he was soon a
great favorite in the family, and gradually filled the void made in all
our hearts by the loss of the brother and son.
My father was so fully occupied with the duties of his profession, which
often called him from home, and my mother so weary with the cares of a
large family, having had ten children, though only five survived at this
time, that they were quite willing to shift their burdens to younger
shoulders. Our eldest sister and her husband, therefore, soon became our
counselors and advisers. They selected our clothing, books, schools,
acquaintances, and directed our reading and amusements. Thus the reins
of domestic government, little by little, passed into their hands, and
the family arrangements were in a manner greatly improved in favor of
greater liberty for the children.
The advent of Edward and Henry Bayard was an inestimable blessing to us.
With them came an era of picnics, birthday parties, and endless
amusements; the buying of pictures, fairy books, musical instruments and
ponies, and frequent excursions with parties on horseback. Fresh from
college, they made our lessons in Latin, Greek, and mathematics so easy
that we studied with real pleasure and had more leisure for play. Henry
Bayard's chief pleasures were walking, riding, and playing all manner of
games, from jack-straws to chess, with the three younger sisters, and we
have often said that the three years he passed in Johnstown were the
most delightful of our girlhood.
Immediately after the death of my brother, a journey was planned to
visit our grandmother Cady, who lived in Canaan, Columbia County, about
twenty miles from Albany. My two younger sisters and myself had never
been outside of our own county before, and the very thought of a journey
roused our enthusiasm to the highest pitch. On a bright day in September
we started, packed in two carriages. We were wild with delight as we
drove down the Mohawk Valley, with its beautiful river and its many
bridges and ferryboats. When we reached Schenectady, the first city we
had ever seen, we stopped to dine at the old Given's Hotel, where we
broke loose from all the moorings of propriety on beholding the paper on
the dining-room wall, illustrating in brilliant colors the great events
in sacred history. There were the Patriarchs, with flowing beards and in
gorgeous attire; Abraham, offering up Isaac; Joseph, with his coat of
many colors, thrown into a pit by his brethren; Noah's ark on an ocean
of waters; Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; Rebecca at the well, and
Moses in the bulrushes. All these distinguished personages were familiar
to us, and to see them here for the first time in living colors, made
silence and eating impossible. We dashed around the room, calling to
each other: "Oh, Kate, look here!" "Oh, Madge, look there!" "See little
Moses!" "See the angels on Jacob's ladder!" Our exclamations could not
be kept within bounds. The guests were amused beyond description, while
my mother and elder sisters were equally mortified; but Mr. Bayard, who
appreciated our childish surprise and delight, smiled and said: "I'll
take them around and show them the pictures, and then they will be able
to dine," which we finally did.
On our way to Albany we were forced to listen to no end of dissertations
on manners, and severe criticisms on our behavior at the hotel, but we
were too happy and astonished with all we saw to take a subjective view
of ourselves. Even Peter in his new livery, who had not seen much more
than we had, while looking out of the corners of his eyes, maintained a
quiet dignity and conjured us "not to act as if we had just come out of
the woods and had never seen anything before." However, there are
conditions in the child soul in which repression is impossible, when the
mind takes in nothing but its own enjoyment, and when even the sense of
hearing is lost in that of sight. The whole party awoke to that fact at
last. Children are not actors. We never had experienced anything like
this journey, and how could we help being surprised and delighted?
When we drove into Albany, the first large city we had ever visited, we
exclaimed, "Why, it's general training, here!" We had acquired our ideas
of crowds from our country militia reviews. Fortunately, there was no
pictorial wall paper in the old City Hotel. But the decree had gone
forth that, on the remainder of the journey, our meals would be served
in a private room, with Peter to wait on us. This seemed like going back
to the nursery days and was very humiliating. But eating, even there,
was difficult, as we could hear the band from the old museum, and, as
our windows opened on the street, the continual panorama of people and
carriages passing by was quite as enticing as the Bible scenes in
Schenectady. In the evening we walked around to see the city lighted, to
look into the shop windows, and to visit the museum. The next morning we
started for Canaan, our enthusiasm still unabated, though strong hopes
were expressed that we would be toned down with the fatigues of the
first day's journey.
The large farm with its cattle, sheep, hens, ducks, turkeys, and geese;
its creamery, looms, and spinning wheel; its fruits and vegetables; the
drives among the grand old hills; the blessed old grandmother, and the
many aunts, uncles, and cousins to kiss, all this kept us still in a
whirlpool of excitement. Our joy bubbled over of itself; it was beyond
our control. After spending a delightful week at Canaan, we departed,
with an addition to our party, much to Peter's disgust, of a bright,
coal-black boy of fifteen summers. Peter kept grumbling that he had
children enough to look after already, but, as the boy was handsome and
intelligent, could read, write, play on the jewsharp and banjo, sing,
dance, and stand on his head, we were charmed with this new-found
treasure, who proved later to be a great family blessing. We were less
vivacious on the return trip. Whether this was due to Peter's untiring
efforts to keep us within bounds, or whether the novelty of the journey
was in a measure gone, it is difficult to determine, but we evidently
were not so buoyant and were duly complimented on our good behavior.
When we reached home and told our village companions what we had seen in
our extensive travels (just seventy miles from home) they were filled
with wonder, and we became heroines in their estimation. After this we
took frequent journeys to Saratoga, the Northern Lakes, Utica, and
Peterboro, but were never again so entirely swept from our feet as with
the biblical illustrations in the dining room of the old Given's Hotel.
As my father's office joined the house, I spent there much of my time,
when out of school, listening to the clients stating their cases,
talking with the students, and reading the laws in regard to woman. In
our Scotch neighborhood many men still retained the old feudal ideas of
women and property. Fathers, at their death, would will the bulk of
their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was
to have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who
had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy
dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a
dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my
father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention to
the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my
father's business, I could not exactly understand why he could not
alleviate the sufferings of these women. So, in order to enlighten me,
he would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The
students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me
all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by
turns. One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them, among
other of my presents, a new coral necklace and bracelets. They all
admired the jewelry and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases
of future ownership. "Now," said Henry Bayard, "if in due time you
should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine; I could take them and
lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I
could even exchange them for a box of cigars, and you could watch them
evaporate in smoke."
With this constant bantering from students and the sad complaints of the
women, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time, my
attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a
pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking
some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to
seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one
of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the
beginning and the end of the law. However, this mutilation of his
volumes was never accomplished, for dear old Flora Campbell, to whom I
confided my plan for the amelioration of the wrongs of my unhappy sex,
warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that
he had discovered my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws
were made, the large number of lawyers and libraries there were all over
the State, and that if his library should burn up it would make no
difference in woman's condition. "When you are grown up, and able to
prepare a speech," said he, "you must go down to Albany and talk to the
legislators; tell them all you have seen in this office--the sufferings
of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on
their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the
old ones will be a dead letter." Thus was the future object of my life
foreshadowed and my duty plainly outlined by him who was most opposed
to my public career when, in due time, I entered upon it.
Until I was sixteen years old, I was a faithful student in the Johnstown
Academy with a class of boys. Though I was the only girl in the higher
classes of mathematics and the languages, yet, in our plays, all the
girls and boys mingled freely together. In running races, sliding
downhill, and snowballing, we made no distinction of sex. True, the boys
would carry the school books and pull the sleighs up hill for their
favorite girls, but equality was the general basis of our school
relations. I dare say the boys did not make their snowballs quite so
hard when pelting the girls, nor wash their faces with the same
vehemence as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of
partiality. However, if any boy was too rough or took advantage of a
girl smaller than himself, he was promptly thrashed by his fellows.
There was an unwritten law and public sentiment in that little Academy
world that enabled us to study and play together with the greatest
freedom and harmony.
From the academy the boys of my class went to Union College at
Schenectady. When those with whom I had studied and contended for prizes
for five years came to bid me good-by, and I learned of the barrier that
prevented me from following in their footsteps--"no girls admitted
here"--my vexation and mortification knew no bounds. I remember, now,
how proud and handsome the boys looked in their new clothes, as they
jumped into the old stage coach and drove off, and how lonely I felt
when they were gone and I had nothing to do, for the plans for my future
were yet undetermined. Again I felt more keenly than ever the
humiliation of the distinctions made on the ground of sex.
My time was now occupied with riding on horseback, studying the game of
chess, and continually squabbling with the law students over the rights
of women. Something was always coming up in the experiences of everyday
life, or in the books we were reading, to give us fresh topics for
argument. They would read passages from the British classics quite as
aggravating as the laws. They delighted in extracts from Shakespeare,
especially from "The Taming of the Shrew," an admirable satire in itself
on the old common law of England. I hated Petruchio as if he were a real
man. Young Bayard would recite with unction the famous reply of Milton's
ideal woman to Adam: "God thy law, thou mine." The Bible, too, was
brought into requisition. In fact it seemed to me that every book taught
the "divinely ordained" headship of man; but my mind never yielded to
this popular heresy.
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD.
Mrs. Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my
girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other
girls, I found myself an active participant in all the joys and sorrows
of that institution. When in family council it was decided to send me to
that intellectual Mecca, I did not receive the announcement with unmixed
satisfaction, as I had fixed my mind on Union College. The thought of a
school without boys, who had been to me such a stimulus both in study
and play, seemed to my imagination dreary and profitless.
The one remarkable feature of my journey to Troy was the railroad from
Schenectady to Albany, the first ever laid in this country. The manner
of ascending a high hill going out of the city would now strike
engineers as stupid to the last degree. The passenger cars were pulled
up by a train, loaded with stones, descending the hill. The more
rational way of tunneling through the hill or going around it had not
yet dawned on our Dutch ancestors. At every step of my journey to Troy I
felt that I was treading on my pride, and thus in a hopeless frame of
mind I began my boarding-school career. I had already studied everything
that was taught there except French, music, and dancing, so I devoted
myself to these accomplishments. As I had a good voice I enjoyed
singing, with a guitar accompaniment, and, having a good ear for time, I
appreciated the harmony in music and motion and took great delight in
dancing. The large house, the society of so many girls, the walks about
the city, the novelty of everything made the new life more enjoyable
than I had anticipated. To be sure I missed the boys, with whom I had
grown up, played with for years, and later measured my intellectual
powers with, but, as they became a novelty, there was new zest in
occasionally seeing them. After I had been there a short time, I heard a
call one day: "Heads out!" I ran with the rest and exclaimed, "What is
it?" expecting to see a giraffe or some other wonder from Barnum's
Museum. "Why, don't you see those boys?" said one. "Oh," I replied, "is
that all? I have seen boys all my life." When visiting family friends in
the city, we were in the way of making the acquaintance of their sons,
and as all social relations were strictly forbidden, there was a new
interest in seeing them. As they were not allowed to call upon us or
write notes, unless they were brothers or cousins, we had, in time, a
large number of kinsmen.
There was an intense interest to me now in writing notes, receiving
calls, and joining the young men in the streets for a walk, such as I
had never known when in constant association with them at school and in
our daily amusements. Shut up with girls, most of them older than
myself, I heard many subjects discussed of which I had never thought
before, and in a manner it were better I had never heard. The healthful
restraint always existing between boys and girls in conversation is apt
to be relaxed with either sex alone. In all my intimate association with
boys up to that period, I cannot recall one word or act for criticism,
but I cannot say the same of the girls during the three years I passed
at the seminary in Troy. My own experience proves to me that it is a
grave mistake to send boys and girls to separate institutions of
learning, especially at the most impressible age. The stimulus of sex
promotes alike a healthy condition of the intellectual and the moral
faculties and gives to both a development they never can acquire alone.
Mrs. Willard, having spent several months in Europe, did not return
until I had been at the seminary some time. I well remember her arrival,
and the joy with which she was greeted by the teachers and pupils who
had known her before. She was a splendid-looking woman, then in her
prime, and fully realized my idea of a queen. I doubt whether any royal
personage in the Old World could have received her worshipers with more
grace and dignity than did this far-famed daughter of the Republic. She
was one of the remarkable women of that period, and did a great
educational work for her sex. She gave free scholarships to a large
number of promising girls, fitting them for teachers, with a proviso
that, when the opportunity arose, they should, in turn, educate others.
I shall never forget one incident that occasioned me much unhappiness. I
had written a very amusing composition, describing my room. A friend
came in to see me just as I had finished it, and, as she asked me to
read it to her, I did so. She enjoyed it very much and proposed an
exchange. She said the rooms were all so nearly alike that, with a
little alteration, she could use it. Being very susceptible to flattery,
her praise of my production won a ready assent; but when I read her
platitudes I was sorry I had changed, and still more so in the
_denouement_.
Those selected to prepare compositions read them before the whole
school. My friend's was received with great laughter and applause. The
one I read not only fell flat, but nearly prostrated me also. As soon as
I had finished, one of the young ladies left the room and, returning in
a few moments with her composition book, laid it before the teacher who
presided that day, showing her the same composition I had just read. I
was called up at once to explain, but was so amazed and confounded that
I could not speak, and I looked the personification of guilt. I saw at a
glance the contemptible position I occupied and felt as if the last day
had come, that I stood before the judgment seat and had heard the awful
sentence pronounced, "Depart ye wicked into everlasting punishment." How
I escaped from that scene to my own room I do not know. I was too
wretched for tears. I sat alone for a long time when a gentle tap
announced my betrayer. She put her arms around me affectionately and
kissed me again and again.
"Oh!" she said, "you are a hero. You went through that trying ordeal
like a soldier. I was so afraid, when you were pressed with questions,
that the whole truth would come out and I be forced to stand in your
place. I am not so brave as you; I could not endure it. Now that you are
through it and know how bitter a trial it is, promise that you will save
me from the same experience. You are so good and noble I know you will
not betray me."
In this supreme moment of misery and disgrace, her loving words and warm
embrace were like balm to my bruised soul and I readily promised all
she asked. The girl had penetrated the weak point in my character. I
loved flattery. Through that means she got my composition in the first
place, pledged me to silence in the second place, and so confused my
moral perceptions that I really thought it praiseworthy to shelter her
from what I had suffered. However, without betrayal on my part, the
trick came to light through the very means she took to make concealment
sure. After compositions were read they were handed over to a certain
teacher for criticism. Miss ---- had copied mine, and returned to me the
original. I had not copied hers, so the two were in the same
handwriting--one with my name outside and one with Miss ----'s.
As I stood well in school, both for scholarship and behavior, my sudden
fall from grace occasioned no end of discussion. So, as soon as the
teacher discovered the two compositions in Miss ----'s writing, she came
to me to inquire how I got one of Miss ----'s compositions. She said,
"Where is yours that you wrote for that day?"
Taking it from my portfolio, I replied, "Here it is."
She then asked, "Did you copy it from her book?"
I replied, "No; I wrote it myself."
"Then why did you not read your own?"
"We agreed to change," said I.
"Did you know that Miss ---- had copied that from the book of another
young lady?"
"No, not until I was accused of doing it myself before the whole
school."
"Why did you not defend yourself on the spot?"
"I could not speak, neither did I know what to say."
"Why have you allowed yourself to remain in such a false position for a
whole week?"
"I do not know."
"Suppose I had not found this out, did you intend to keep silent?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Did Miss ---- ask you to do so?"
"Yes."
I had been a great favorite with this teacher, but she was so disgusted
with my stupidity, as she called my timidity, that she said:
"Really, my child, you have not acted in this matter as if you had
ordinary common sense."
So little do grown people, in familiar surroundings, appreciate the
confusion of a child's faculties, under new and trying experiences. When
poor Miss ----'s turn came to stand up before the whole school and take
the burden on her own shoulders she had so cunningly laid on mine, I
readily shed the tears for her I could not summon for myself. This was
my first sad lesson in human duplicity.
This episode, unfortunately, destroyed in a measure my confidence in my
companions and made me suspicious even of those who came to me with
appreciative words. Up to this time I had accepted all things as they
seemed on the surface. Now I began to wonder what lay behind the visible
conditions about me. Perhaps the experience was beneficial, as it is
quite necessary for a young girl, thrown wholly on herself for the first
time among strangers, to learn caution in all she says and does. The
atmosphere of home life, where all disguises and pretensions are thrown
off, is quite different from a large school of girls, with the petty
jealousies and antagonisms that arise in daily competition in their
dress, studies, accomplishments, and amusements.
The next happening in Troy that seriously influenced my character was
the advent of the Rev. Charles G. Finney, a pulpit orator, who, as a
terrifier of human souls, proved himself the equal of Savonarola. He
held a protracted meeting in the Rev. Dr. Beaman's church, which many of
my schoolmates attended. The result of six weeks of untiring effort on
the part of Mr. Finney and his confreres was one of those intense
revival seasons that swept over the city and through the seminary like
an epidemic, attacking in its worst form the most susceptible. Owing to
my gloomy Calvinistic training in the old Scotch Presbyterian church,
and my vivid imagination, I was one of the first victims. We attended
all the public services, beside the daily prayer and experience meetings
held in the seminary. Our studies, for the time, held a subordinate
place to the more important duty of saving our souls.
To state the idea of conversion and salvation as then understood, one
can readily see from our present standpoint that nothing could be more
puzzling and harrowing to the young mind. The revival fairly started,
the most excitable were soon on the anxious seat. There we learned the
total depravity of human nature and the sinner's awful danger of
everlasting punishment. This was enlarged upon until the most innocent
girl believed herself a monster of iniquity and felt certain of eternal
damnation. Then God's hatred of sin was emphasized and his
irreconcilable position toward the sinner so justified that one felt
like a miserable, helpless, forsaken worm of the dust in trying to
approach him, even in prayer.
Having brought you into a condition of profound humility, the only
cardinal virtue for one under conviction, in the depths of your despair
you were told that it required no herculean effort on your part to be
transformed into an angel, to be reconciled to God, to escape endless
perdition. The way to salvation was short and simple. We had naught to
do but to repent and believe and give our hearts to Jesus, who was ever
ready to receive them. How to do all this was the puzzling question.
Talking with Dr. Finney one day, I said:
"I cannot understand what I am to do. If you should tell me to go to the
top of the church steeple and jump off, I would readily do it, if
thereby I could save my soul; but I do not know how to go to Jesus."
"Repent and believe," said he, "that is all you have to do to be happy
here and hereafter."
"I am very sorry," I replied, "for all the evil I have done, and I
believe all you tell me, and the more sincerely I believe, the more
unhappy I am."
With the natural reaction from despair to hope many of us imagined
ourselves converted, prayed and gave our experiences in the meetings,
and at times rejoiced in the thought that we were Christians--chosen
children of God--rather than sinners and outcasts.
But Dr. Finney's terrible anathemas on the depravity and deceitfulness
of the human heart soon shortened our newborn hopes. His appearance in
the pulpit on these memorable occasions is indelibly impressed on my
mind. I can see him now, his great eyes rolling around the congregation
and his arms flying about in the air like those of a windmill. One
evening he described hell and the devil and the long procession of
sinners being swept down the rapids, about to make the awful plunge
into the burning depths of liquid fire below, and the rejoicing hosts in
the inferno coming up to meet them with the shouts of the devils echoing
through the vaulted arches. He suddenly halted, and, pointing his index
finger at the supposed procession, he exclaimed:
"There, do you not see them!"
I was wrought up to such a pitch that I actually jumped up and gazed in
the direction to which he pointed, while the picture glowed before my
eyes and remained with me for months afterward. I cannot forbear saying
that, although high respect is due to the intellectual, moral, and
spiritual gifts of the venerable ex-president of Oberlin College, such
preaching worked incalculable harm to the very souls he sought to save.
Fear of the judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my
dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health. Dethronement of my reason
was apprehended by friends. But he was sincere, so peace to his ashes!
Returning home, I often at night roused my father from his slumbers to
pray for me, lest I should be cast into the bottomless pit before
morning.
To change the current of my thoughts, a trip was planned to Niagara, and
it was decided that the subject of religion was to be tabooed
altogether. Accordingly our party, consisting of my sister, her husband,
my father and myself, started in our private carriage, and for six weeks
I heard nothing on the subject. About this time Gall and Spurzheim
published their works on phrenology, followed by Combe's "Constitution
of Man," his "Moral Philosophy," and many other liberal works, all so
rational and opposed to the old theologies that they produced a profound
impression on my brother-in-law's mind. As we had these books with us,
reading and discussing by the way, we all became deeply interested in
the new ideas. Thus, after many months of weary wandering in the
intellectual labyrinth of "The Fall of Man," "Original Sin," "Total
Depravity," "God's Wrath," "Satan's Triumph," "The Crucifixion," "The
Atonement," and "Salvation by Faith," I found my way out of the darkness
into the clear sunlight of Truth. My religious superstitions gave place
to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion, as I
looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more and more happy,
day by day. Thus, with a delightful journey in the month of June, an
entire change in my course of reading and the current of my thoughts, my
mind was restored to its normal condition. I view it as one of the
greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy
superstitions; and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to
poison all their joy in life.
After the restraints of childhood at home and in school, what a period
of irrepressible joy and freedom comes to us in girlhood with the first
taste of liberty. Then is our individuality in a measure recognized and
our feelings and opinions consulted; then we decide where and when we
will come and go, what we will eat, drink, wear, and do. To suit one's
own fancy in clothes, to buy what one likes, and wear what one chooses
is a great privilege to most young people. To go out at pleasure, to
walk, to ride, to drive, with no one to say us nay or question our right
to liberty, this is indeed like a birth into a new world of happiness
and freedom. This is the period, too, when the emotions rule us, and we
idealize everything in life; when love and hope make the present an
ecstasy and the future bright with anticipation.
Then comes that dream of bliss that for weeks and months throws a halo
of glory round the most ordinary characters in every-day life, holding
the strongest and most common-sense young men and women in a thraldom
from which few mortals escape. The period when love, in soft silver
tones, whispers his first words of adoration, painting our graces and
virtues day by day in living colors in poetry and prose, stealthily
punctuated ever and anon with a kiss or fond embrace. What dignity it
adds to a young girl's estimate of herself when some strong man makes
her feel that in her hands rest his future peace and happiness! Though
these seasons of intoxication may come once to all, yet they are seldom
repeated. How often in after life we long for one more such rapturous
dream of bliss, one more season of supreme human love and passion!
After leaving school, until my marriage, I had the most pleasant years
of my girlhood. With frequent visits to a large circle of friends and
relatives in various towns and cities, the monotony of home life was
sufficiently broken to make our simple country pleasures always
delightful and enjoyable. An entirely new life now opened to me. The old
bondage of fear of the visible and the invisible was broken and, no
longer subject to absolute authority, I rejoiced in the dawn of a new
day of freedom in thought and action.
My brother-in-law, Edward Bayard, ten years my senior, was an
inestimable blessing to me at this time, especially as my mind was just
then opening to the consideration of all the varied problems of life. To
me and my sisters he was a companion in all our amusements, a teacher
in the higher departments of knowledge, and a counselor in all our
youthful trials and disappointments. He was of a metaphysical turn of
mind, and in the pursuit of truth was in no way trammeled by popular
superstitions. He took nothing for granted and, like Socrates, went
about asking questions. Nothing pleased him more than to get a bevy of
bright young girls about him and teach them how to think clearly and
reason logically.
One great advantage of the years my sisters and myself spent at the Troy
Seminary was the large number of pleasant acquaintances we made there,
many of which ripened into lifelong friendships. From time to time many
of our classmates visited us, and all alike enjoyed the intellectual
fencing in which my brother-in-law drilled them. He discoursed with us
on law, philosophy, political economy, history, and poetry, and together
we read novels without number. The long winter evenings thus passed
pleasantly, Mr. Bayard alternately talking and reading aloud Scott,
Bulwer, James, Cooper, and Dickens, whose works were just then coming
out in numbers from week to week, always leaving us in suspense at the
most critical point of the story. Our readings were varied with
recitations, music, dancing, and games.
As we all enjoyed brisk exercise, even with the thermometer below zero,
we took long walks and sleighrides during the day, and thus the winter
months glided quickly by, while the glorious summer on those blue hills
was a period of unmixed enjoyment. At this season we arose at five in
the morning for a long ride on horseback through the beautiful Mohawk
Valley and over the surrounding hills. Every road and lane in that
region was as familiar to us and our ponies, as were the trees to the
squirrels we frightened as we cantered by their favorite resorts.
Part of the time Margaret Christie, a young girl of Scotch descent, was
a member of our family circle. She taught us French, music, and dancing.
Our days were too short for all we had to do, for our time was not
wholly given to pleasure. We were required to keep our rooms in order,
mend and make our clothes, and do our own ironing. The latter was one of
my mother's politic requirements, to make our laundry lists as short as
possible.
Ironing on hot days in summer was a sore trial to all of us; but Miss
Christie, being of an inventive turn of mind, soon taught us a short way
out of it. She folded and smoothed her undergarments with her hands and
then sat on them for a specified time. We all followed her example and
thus utilized the hours devoted to our French lessons and, while reading
"Corinne" and "Telemaque," in this primitive style we ironed our
clothes. But for dresses, collars and cuffs, and pocket handkerchiefs,
we were compelled to wield the hot iron, hence with these articles we
used all due economy, and my mother's object was thus accomplished.
As I had become sufficiently philosophical to talk over my religious
experiences calmly with my classmates who had been with me through the
Finney revival meetings, we all came to the same conclusion--that we had
passed through no remarkable change and that we had not been born again,
as they say, for we found our tastes and enjoyments the same as ever. My
brother-in-law explained to us the nature of the delusion we had all
experienced, the physical conditions, the mental processes, the church
machinery by which such excitements are worked up, and the impositions
to which credulous minds are necessarily subjected. As we had all been
through that period of depression and humiliation, and had been
oppressed at times with the feeling that all our professions were arrant
hypocrisy and that our last state was worse than our first, he helped us
to understand these workings of the human mind and reconciled us to the
more rational condition in which we now found ourselves. He never grew
weary of expounding principles to us and dissipating the fogs and mists
that gather over young minds educated in an atmosphere of superstition.
We had a constant source of amusement and vexation in the students in my
father's office. A succession of them was always coming fresh from
college and full of conceit. Aching to try their powers of debate on
graduates from the Troy Seminary, they politely questioned all our
theories and assertions. However, with my brother-in-law's training in
analysis and logic, we were a match for any of them. Nothing pleased me
better than a long argument with them on woman's equality, which I tried
to prove by a diligent study of the books they read and the games they
played. I confess that I did not study so much for a love of the truth
or my own development, in these days, as to make those young men
recognize my equality. I soon noticed that, after losing a few games of
chess, my opponent talked less of masculine superiority. Sister Madge
would occasionally rush to the defense with an emphatic "Fudge for these
laws, all made by men! I'll never obey one of them. And as to the
students with their impertinent talk of superiority, all they need is
such a shaking up as I gave the most disagreeable one yesterday. I
invited him to take a ride on horseback. He accepted promptly, and said
he would be most happy to go. Accordingly I told Peter to saddle the
toughest-mouthed, hardest-trotting carriage horse in the stable. Mounted
on my swift pony, I took a ten-mile canter as fast as I could go, with
that superior being at my heels calling, as he found breath, for me to
stop, which I did at last and left him in the hands of Peter, half dead
at his hotel, where he will be laid out, with all his marvelous
masculine virtues, for a week at least. Now do not waste your arguments
on these prigs from Union College. Take each, in turn, the ten-miles'
circuit on 'Old Boney' and they'll have no breath left to prate of
woman's inferiority. You might argue with them all day, and you could
not make them feel so small as I made that popinjay feel in one hour. I
knew 'Old Boney' would keep up with me, if he died for it, and that my
escort could neither stop nor dismount, except by throwing himself from
the saddle."
"Oh, Madge!" I exclaimed; "what will you say when he meets you again?"
"If he complains, I will say 'the next time you ride see that you have a
curb bit before starting.' Surely, a man ought to know what is necessary
to manage a horse, and not expect a woman to tell him."
Our lives were still further varied and intensified by the usual number
of flirtations, so called, more or less lasting or evanescent, from all
of which I emerged, as from my religious experiences, in a more rational
frame of mind. We had been too much in the society of boys and young
gentlemen, and knew too well their real character, to idealize the sex
in general. In addition to our own observations, we had the advantage
of our brother-in-law's wisdom. Wishing to save us as long as possible
from all matrimonial entanglements, he was continually unveiling those
with whom he associated, and so critically portraying their intellectual
and moral condition that it was quite impossible, in our most worshipful
moods, to make gods of any of the sons of Adam.
However, in spite of all our own experiences and of all the warning
words of wisdom from those who had seen life in its many phases, we
entered the charmed circle at last, all but one marrying into the legal
profession, with its odious statute laws and infamous decisions. And
this, after reading Blackstone, Kent, and Story, and thoroughly
understanding the status of the wife under the old common law of
England, which was in force at that time in most of the States of the
Union.
CHAPTER IV.
LIFE AT PETERBORO.
The year, with us, was never considered complete without a visit to
Peterboro, N.Y., the home of Gerrit Smith. Though he was a reformer and
was very radical in many of his ideas, yet, being a man of broad
sympathies, culture, wealth, and position, he drew around him many
friends of the most conservative opinions. He was a man of fine
presence, rare physical beauty, most affable and courteous in manner,
and his hospitalities were generous to an extreme, and dispensed to all
classes of society.
Every year representatives from the Oneida tribe of Indians visited him.
His father had early purchased of them large tracts of land, and there
was a tradition among them that, as an equivalent for the good bargains
of the father, they had a right to the son's hospitality, with annual
gifts of clothing and provisions. The slaves, too, had heard of Gerrit
Smith, the abolitionist, and of Peterboro as one of the safe points _en
route_ for Canada. His mansion was, in fact, one of the stations on the
"underground railroad" for slaves escaping from bondage. Hence they,
too, felt that they had a right to a place under his protecting roof. On
such occasions the barn and the kitchen floor were utilized as chambers
for the black man from the southern plantation and the red man from his
home in the forest.
The spacious home was always enlivened with choice society from every
part of the country. There one would meet members of the families of the
old Dutch aristocracy, the Van Rensselaers, the Van Vechtens, the
Schuylers, the Livingstons, the Bleeckers, the Brinkerhoffs, the Ten
Eycks, the Millers, the Seymours, the Cochranes, the Biddles, the
Barclays, the Wendells, and many others.
As the lady of the house, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, was the daughter of a
wealthy slaveholder of Maryland, many agreeable Southerners were often
among the guests. Our immediate family relatives were well represented
by General John Cochrane and his sisters, General Baird and his wife
from West Point, the Fitzhughs from Oswego and Geneseo, the Backuses and
Tallmans from Rochester, and the Swifts from Geneva. Here one was sure
to meet scholars, philosophers, philanthropists, judges, bishops,
clergymen, and statesmen.
Judge Alfred Conkling, the father of Roscoe Conkling, was, in his late
years, frequently seen at Peterboro. Tall and stately, after all life's
troubled scenes, financial losses and domestic sorrows, he used to say
there was no spot on earth that seemed so like his idea of Paradise. The
proud, reserved judge was unaccustomed to manifestations of affection
and tender interest in his behalf, and when Gerrit, taking him by both
hands would, in his softest tones say, "Good-morning," and inquire how
he had slept and what he would like to do that day, and Nancy would
greet him with equal warmth and pin a little bunch of roses in his
buttonhole, I have seen the tears in his eyes. Their warm sympathies and
sweet simplicity of manner melted the sternest natures and made the most
reserved amiable. There never was such an atmosphere of love and peace,
of freedom and good cheer, in any other home I visited. And this was the
universal testimony of those who were guests at Peterboro. To go
anywhere else, after a visit there, was like coming down from the divine
heights into the valley of humiliation.
How changed from the early days when, as strict Presbyterians, they
believed in all the doctrines of Calvin! Then, an indefinite gloom
pervaded their home. Their consciences were diseased. They attached such
undue importance to forms that they went through three kinds of baptism.
At one time Nancy would read nothing but the Bible, sing nothing but
hymns, and play only sacred music. She felt guilty if she talked on any
subject except religion. She was, in all respects, a fitting mate for
her attractive husband. Exquisitely refined in feeling and manner,
beautiful in face and form, earnest and sincere, she sympathized with
him in all his ideas of religion and reform. Together they passed
through every stage of theological experience, from the uncertain ground
of superstition and speculation to the solid foundation of science and
reason. The position of the Church in the anti-slavery conflict, opening
as it did all questions of ecclesiastical authority, Bible
interpretation, and church discipline, awakened them to new thought and
broader views on religious subjects, and eventually emancipated them
entirely from the old dogmas and formalities of their faith, and lifted
them into the cheerful atmosphere in which they passed the remainder of
their lives. Their only daughter, Elizabeth, added greatly to the
attractions of the home circle, as she drew many young people round her.
Beside her personal charm she was the heiress of a vast estate and had
many admirers. The favored one was Charles Dudley Miller of Utica,
nephew of Mrs. Blandina Bleecker Dudley, founder of the Albany
Observatory. At the close of his college life Mr. Miller had not only
mastered the languages, mathematics, rhetoric, and logic, but had
learned the secret windings of the human heart. He understood the art of
pleasing.
These were the times when the anti-slavery question was up for hot
discussion. In all the neighboring towns conventions were held in which
James G. Birney, a Southern gentleman who had emancipated his slaves,
Charles Stuart of Scotland, and George Thompson of England, Garrison,
Phillips, May, Beriah Greene, Foster, Abby Kelly, Lucretia Mott,
Douglass, and others took part. Here, too, John Brown, Sanborn, Morton,
and Frederick Douglass met to talk over that fatal movement on Harper's
Ferry. On the question of temperance, also, the people were in a
ferment. Dr. Cheever's pamphlet, "Deacon Giles' Distillery," was
scattered far and wide, and, as he was sued for libel, the question was
discussed in the courts as well as at every fireside. Then came the
Father Matthew and Washingtonian movements, and the position of the
Church on these questions intensified and embittered the conflict. This
brought the Cheevers, the Pierponts, the Delevans, the Nortons, and
their charming wives to Peterboro. It was with such company and varied
discussions on every possible phase of political, religious, and social
life that I spent weeks every year. Gerrit Smith was cool and calm in
debate, and, as he was armed at all points on these subjects, he could
afford to be patient and fair with an opponent, whether on the platform
or at the fireside. These rousing arguments at Peterboro made social
life seem tame and profitless elsewhere, and the youngest of us felt
that the conclusions reached in this school of philosophy were not to be
questioned. The sisters of General Cochrane, in disputes with their
Dutch cousins in Schenectady and Albany, would end all controversy by
saying, "This question was fully discussed at Peterboro, and settled."
The youngsters frequently put the lessons of freedom and individual
rights they heard so much of into practice, and relieved their brains
from the constant strain of argument on first principles, by the wildest
hilarity in dancing, all kinds of games, and practical jokes carried
beyond all bounds of propriety. These romps generally took place at Mr.
Miller's. He used to say facetiously, that they talked a good deal about
liberty over the way, but he kept the goddess under his roof. One
memorable occasion in which our enthusiasm was kept at white heat for
two hours I must try to describe, though words cannot do it justice, as
it was pre-eminently a spectacular performance. The imagination even
cannot do justice to the limp, woe-begone appearance of the actors in
the closing scene. These romps were conducted on a purely democratic
basis, without regard to color, sex, or previous condition of servitude.
It was rather a cold day in the month of March, when "Cousin Charley,"
as we called Mr. Miller, was superintending some men who were laying a
plank walk in the rear of his premises. Some half dozen of us were
invited to an early tea at good Deacon Huntington's. Immediately after
dinner, Miss Fitzhugh and Miss Van Schaack decided to take a nap, that
they might appear as brilliant as possible during the evening. That they
might not be late, as they invariably were, Cousin Lizzie and I decided
to rouse them in good season with a generous sprinkling of cold water.
In vain they struggled to keep the blankets around them; with equal
force we pulled them away, and, whenever a stray finger or toe appeared,
we brought fresh batteries to bear, until they saw that passive
resistance must give place to active hostility. We were armed with two
watering pots. They armed themselves with two large-sized syringes used
for showering potato bugs. With these weapons they gave us chase
downstairs. We ran into a closet and held the door shut. They quietly
waited our forthcoming. As soon as we opened the door to peep out, Miss
Fitzhugh, who was large and strong, pulled it wide open and showered us
with a vengeance. Then they fled into a large pantry where stood several
pans of milk.
At this stage Cousin Charley, hearing the rumpus, came to our
assistance. He locked them in the pantry and returned to his work,
whereupon they opened the window and showered him with milk, while he,
in turn, pelted them with wet clothes, soaking in tubs near by. As they
were thinly clad, wet to the skin, and the cold March wind blew round
them (we were all in fatigue costume in starting) they implored us to
let them out, which we did, and, in return for our kindness, they gave
us a broadside of milk in our faces. Cousin Lizzie and I fled to the
dark closet, where they locked us in. After long, weary waiting they
came to offer us terms of capitulation. Lizzie agreed to fill their guns
with milk, and give them our watering pots full of water, and I agreed
to call Cousin Charley under my window until they emptied the contents
of guns and pots on his head. My room was on the first floor, and Miss
Fitzhugh's immediately overhead. On these terms we accepted our freedom.
Accordingly, I gently raised the window and called Charley
confidentially within whispering distance, when down came a shower of
water. As he stepped back to look up and see whence it came, and who
made the attack, a stream of milk hit him on the forehead, his heels
struck a plank, and he fell backward, to all appearance knocked down
with a stream of milk. His humiliation was received with shouts of
derisive laughter, and even the carpenters at work laid down their
hammers and joined in the chorus; but his revenge was swift and capped
the climax. Cold and wet as we all were, and completely tired out, we
commenced to disrobe and get ready for the tea party. Unfortunately I
had forgotten to lock my door, and in walked Cousin Charley with a quart
bottle of liquid blacking, which he prepared to empty on my devoted
head. I begged so eloquently and trembled so at the idea of being dyed
black, that he said he would let me off on one condition, and that was
to get him, by some means, into Miss Fitzhugh's room. So I ran screaming
up the stairs, as if hotly pursued by the enemy, and begged her to let
me in. She cautiously opened the door, but when she saw Charley behind
me she tried to force it shut. However, he was too quick for her. He had
one leg and arm in; but, at that stage of her toilet, to let him in was
impossible, and there they stood, equally strong, firmly braced, she on
one side of the door and he on the other. But the blacking he was
determined she should have; so, gauging her probable position, with one
desperate effort he squeezed in a little farther and, raising the
bottle, he poured the contents on her head. The blacking went streaming
down over her face, white robe, and person, and left her looking more
like a bronze fury than one of Eve's most charming daughters. A yard or
more of the carpet was ruined, the wallpaper and bedclothes spattered,
and the poor victim was unfit to be seen for a week at least. Charley
had a good excuse for his extreme measures, for, as we all by turn
played our tricks on him, it was necessary to keep us in some fear of
punishment. This was but one of the many outrageous pranks we
perpetrated on each other. To see us a few hours later, all absorbed in
an anti-slavery or temperance convention, or dressed in our best, in
high discourse with the philosophers, one would never think we could
have been guilty of such consummate follies. It was, however, but the
natural reaction from the general serious trend of our thoughts.
It was in Peterboro, too, that I first met one who was then considered
the most eloquent and impassioned orator on the anti-slavery platform,
Henry B. Stanton. He had come over from Utica with Alvin Stewart's
beautiful daughter, to whom report said he was engaged; but, as she soon
after married Luther R. Marsh, there was a mistake somewhere. However,
the rumor had its advantages. Regarding him as not in the matrimonial
market, we were all much more free and easy in our manners with him than
we would otherwise have been. A series of anti-slavery conventions was
being held in Madison County, and there I had the pleasure of hearing
him for the first time. As I had a passion for oratory, I was deeply
impressed with his power. He was not so smooth and eloquent as Phillips,
but he could make his audience both laugh and cry; the latter, Phillips
himself said he never could do. Mr. Stanton was then in his prime, a
fine-looking, affable young man, with remarkable conversational talent,
and was ten years my senior, with the advantage that number of years
necessarily gives.
Two carriage-loads of ladies and gentlemen drove off every morning,
sometimes ten miles, to one of these conventions, returning late at
night. I shall never forget those charming drives over the hills in
Madison County, the bright autumnal days, and the bewitching moonlight
nights. The enthusiasm of the people in these great meetings, the
thrilling oratory, and lucid arguments of the speakers, all conspired to
make these days memorable as among the most charming in my life. It
seemed to me that I never had so much happiness crowded into one short
month. I had become interested in the anti-slavery and temperance
questions, and was deeply impressed with the appeals and arguments. I
felt a new inspiration in life and was enthused with new ideas of
individual rights and the basic principles of government, for the
anti-slavery platform was the best school the American people ever had
on which to learn republican principles and ethics. These conventions
and the discussions at my cousin's fireside I count among the great
blessings of my life.
One morning, as we came out from breakfast, Mr. Stanton joined me on the
piazza, where I was walking up and down enjoying the balmy air and the
beauty of the foliage. "As we have no conventions," said he, "on hand,
what do you say to a ride on horseback this morning?" I readily accepted
the suggestion, ordered the horses, put on my habit, and away we went.
The roads were fine and we took a long ride. As we were returning home
we stopped often to admire the scenery and, perchance, each other. When
walking slowly through a beautiful grove, he laid his hand on the horn
of the saddle and, to my surprise, made one of those charming
revelations of human feeling which brave knights have always found
eloquent words to utter, and to which fair ladies have always listened
with mingled emotions of pleasure and astonishment.
One outcome of those glorious days of October, 1839, was a marriage, in
Johnstown, the 10th day of May, 1840, and a voyage to the Old World.
Six weeks of that charming autumn, ending in the Indian summer with its
peculiarly hazy atmosphere, I lingered in Peterboro. It seems in
retrospect like a beautiful dream. A succession of guests was constantly
coming and going, and I still remember the daily drives over those grand
old hills crowned with trees now gorgeous in rich colors, the more
charming because we knew the time was short before the cold winds of
November would change all.
The early setting sun warned us that the shortening days must soon end
our twilight drives, and the moonlight nights were too chilly to linger
long in the rustic arbors or shady nooks outside. With the peculiar
charm of this season of the year there is always a touch of sadness in
nature, and it seemed doubly so to me, as my engagement was not one of
unmixed joy and satisfaction. Among all conservative families there was
a strong aversion to abolitionists and the whole anti-slavery movement.
Alone with Cousin Gerrit in his library he warned me, in deep, solemn
tones, while strongly eulogizing my lover, that my father would never
consent to my marriage with an abolitionist. He felt in duty bound, as
my engagement had occurred under his roof, to free himself from all
responsibility by giving me a long dissertation on love, friendship,
marriage, and all the pitfalls for the unwary, who, without due
consideration, formed matrimonial relations. The general principles laid
down in this interview did not strike my youthful mind so forcibly as
the suggestion that it was better to announce my engagement by letter
than to wait until I returned home, as thus I might draw the hottest
fire while still in safe harbor, where Cousin Gerrit could help me
defend the weak points in my position. So I lingered at Peterboro to
prolong the dream of happiness and postpone the conflict I feared to
meet.
But the Judge understood the advantage of our position as well as we
did, and wasted no ammunition on us. Being even more indignant at my
cousin than at me, he quietly waited until I returned home, when I
passed through the ordeal of another interview, with another
dissertation on domestic relations from a financial standpoint. These
were two of the most bewildering interviews I ever had. They succeeded
in making me feel that the step I proposed to take was the most
momentous and far-reaching in its consequences of any in this mortal
life. Heretofore my apprehensions had all been of death and eternity;
now life itself was filled with fears and anxiety as to the
possibilities of the future. Thus these two noble men, who would have
done anything for my happiness, actually overweighted my conscience and
turned the sweetest dream of my life into a tragedy. How little strong
men, with their logic, sophistry, and hypothetical examples, appreciate
the violence they inflict on the tender sensibilities of a woman's
heart, in trying to subjugate her to their will! The love of protecting
too often degenerates into downright tyranny. Fortunately all these
sombre pictures of a possible future were thrown into the background by
the tender missives every post brought me, in which the brilliant
word-painting of one of the most eloquent pens of this generation made
the future for us both, as bright and beautiful as Spring with her
verdure and blossoms of promise.
However, many things were always transpiring at Peterboro to turn one's
thoughts and rouse new interest in humanity at large. One day, as a bevy
of us girls were singing and chattering in the parlor, Cousin Gerrit
entered and, in mysterious tones, said: "I have a most important secret
to tell you, which you must keep to yourselves religiously for
twenty-four hours."
We readily pledged ourselves in the most solemn manner, individually and
collectively.
"Now," said he, "follow me to the third story."
This we did, wondering what the secret could be. At last, opening a
door, he ushered us into a large room, in the center of which sat a
beautiful quadroon girl, about eighteen years of age. Addressing her, he
said:
"Harriet, I have brought all my young cousins to see you. I want you to
make good abolitionists of them by telling them the history of your
life--what you have seen and suffered in slavery."
Turning to us he said:
"Harriet has just escaped from her master, who is visiting in Syracuse,
and is on her way to Canada. She will start this evening and you may
never have another opportunity of seeing a slave girl face to face, so
ask her all you care to know of the system of slavery."
For two hours we listened to the sad story of her childhood and youth,
separated from all her family and sold for her beauty in a New Orleans
market when but fourteen years of age. The details of her story I need
not repeat. The fate of such girls is too well known to need rehearsal.
We all wept together as she talked, and, when Cousin Gerrit returned to
summon us away, we needed no further education to make us earnest
abolitionists.
Dressed as a Quakeress, Harriet started at twilight with one of Mr.
Smith's faithful clerks in a carriage for Oswego, there to cross the
lake to Canada. The next day her master and the marshals from Syracuse
were on her track in Peterboro, and traced her to Mr. Smith's premises.
He was quite gracious in receiving them, and, while assuring them that
there was no slave there, he said that they were at liberty to make a
thorough search of the house and grounds. He invited them to stay and
dine and kept them talking as long as possible, as every hour helped
Harriet to get beyond their reach; for, although she had eighteen hours
the start of them, yet we feared some accident might have delayed her.
The master was evidently a gentleman, for, on Mr. Smith's assurance that
Harriet was not there, he made no search, feeling that they could not do
so without appearing to doubt his word. He was evidently surprised to
find an abolitionist so courteous and affable, and it was interesting to
hear them in conversation, at dinner, calmly discussing the problem of
slavery, while public sentiment was at white heat on the question. They
shook hands warmly at parting and expressed an equal interest in the
final adjustment of that national difficulty.
In due time the clerk returned with the good news that Harriet was safe
with friends in a good situation in Canada. Mr. Smith then published an
open letter to the master in the New York _Tribune_, saying "that he
would no doubt rejoice to know that his slave Harriet, in whose fate he
felt so deep an interest, was now a free woman, safe under the shadow of
the British throne. I had the honor of entertaining her under my roof,
sending her in my carriage to Lake Ontario, just eighteen hours before
your arrival: hence my willingness to have you search my premises."
Like the varied combinations of the kaleidoscope, the scenes in our
social life at Peterboro were continually changing from grave to gay.
Some years later we had a most hilarious occasion at the marriage of
Mary Cochrane, sister of General John Cochrane, to Chapman Biddle, of
Philadelphia. The festivities, which were kept up for three days,
involved most elaborate preparations for breakfasts, dinners, etc.,
there being no Delmonico's in that remote part of the country. It was
decided in family council that we had sufficient culinary talent under
the roof to prepare the entire _menu_ of substantials and delicacies,
from soup and salmon to cakes and creams. So, gifted ladies and
gentlemen were impressed into the service. The Fitzhughs all had a
natural talent for cooking, and chief among them was Isabella, wife of a
naval officer,--Lieutenant Swift of Geneva,--who had made a profound
study of all the authorities from Archestratus, a poet in Syracuse, the
most famous cook among the Greeks, down to our own Miss Leslie.
Accordingly she was elected manager of the occasion, and to each one was
assigned the specialty in which she claimed to excel. Those who had no
specialty were assistants to those who had. In this humble
office--"assistant at large"--I labored throughout.
Cooking is a high art. A wise Egyptian said, long ago: "The degree of
taste and skill manifested by a nation in the preparation of food may be
regarded as to a very considerable extent proportioned to its culture
and refinement." In early times men, only, were deemed capable of
handling fire, whether at the altar or the hearthstone. We read in the
Scriptures that Abraham prepared cakes of fine meal and a calf tender
and good, which, with butter and milk, he set before the three angels in
the plains of Mamre. We are told, too, of the chief butler and chief
baker as officers in the household of King Pharaoh. I would like to call
the attention of my readers to the dignity of this profession, which
some young women affect to despise. The fact that angels eat, shows that
we may be called upon in the next sphere to cook even for cherubim and
seraphim. How important, then, to cultivate one's gifts in that
direction!
With such facts before us, we stirred and pounded, whipped and ground,
coaxed the delicate meats from crabs and lobsters and the succulent peas
from the pods, and grated corn and cocoanut with the same cheerfulness
and devotion that we played Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" on the
piano, the Spanish Fandango on our guitars, or danced the minuet, polka,
lancers, or Virginia reel.
During the day of the wedding, every stage coach was crowded with guests
from the North, South, East, and West, and, as the twilight deepened,
carriages began to roll in with neighbors and friends living at short
distances, until the house and grounds were full. A son of Bishop Coxe,
who married the tall and stately sister of Roscoe Conkling, performed
the ceremony. The beautiful young bride was given away by her Uncle
Gerrit. The congratulations, the feast, and all went off with fitting
decorum in the usual way. The best proof of the excellence of our viands
was that they were all speedily swept from mortal view, and every
housewife wanted a recipe for something.
As the grand dinner was to come off the next day, our thoughts now
turned in that direction. The responsibility rested heavily on the heads
of the chief actors, and they reported troubled dreams and unduly early
rising. Dear Belle Swift was up in season and her white soup stood
serenely in a tin pan, on an upper shelf, before the town clock struck
seven. If it had not taken that position so early, it might have been
incorporated with higher forms of life than that into which it
eventually fell. Another artist was also on the wing early, and in
pursuit of a tin pan in which to hide her precious compound, she
unwittingly seized this one, and the rich white soup rolled down her
raven locks like the oil on Aaron's beard, and enveloped her in a veil
of filmy whiteness. I heard the splash and the exclamation of surprise
and entered the butler's pantry just in time to see the heiress of the
Smith estate standing like a statue, tin pan in hand, soup in her curls,
her eyebrows and eyelashes,--collar, cuffs, and morning dress
saturated,--and Belle, at a little distance, looking at her and the soup
on the floor with surprise and disgust depicted on every feature. The
tableau was inexpressibly comical, and I could not help laughing
outright; whereupon Belle turned on me, and, with indignant tones, said,
"If you had been up since four o'clock making that soup you would not
stand there like a laughing monkey, without the least feeling of pity!"
Poor Lizzie was very sorry, and would have shed tears, but they could
not penetrate that film of soup. I tried to apologize, but could only
laugh the more when I saw Belle crying and Lizzie standing as if hoping
that the soup might be scraped off her and gathered from the floor and
made to do duty on the occasion.
After breakfast, ladies and gentlemen, alike in white aprons, crowded
into the dining room and kitchen, each to perform the allotted task.
George Biddle of Philadelphia and John B. Miller of Utica, in holiday
spirits, were irrepressible--everywhere at the same moment, helping or
hindering as the case might be. Dear Belle, having only partially
recovered from the white-soup catastrophe, called Mr. Biddle to hold the
ice-cream freezer while she poured in the luscious compound she had just
prepared. He held it up without resting it on anything, while Belle
slowly poured in the cream. As the freezer had no indentations round the
top or rim to brace the thumbs and fingers, when it grew suddenly
heavier his hands slipped and down went the whole thing, spattering poor
Belle and spoiling a beautiful pair of gaiters in which, as she had very
pretty feet, she took a laudable pride. In another corner sat Wealthea
Backus, grating some cocoanut. While struggling in that operation, John
Miller, feeling hilarious, was annoying her in divers ways; at length
she drew the grater across his nose, gently, as she intended, but alas!
she took the skin off, and John's beauty, for the remainder of the
festivities, was marred with a black patch on that prominent feature.
One can readily imagine the fun that must have transpired where so many
amateur cooks were at work round one table, with all manner of culinary
tools and ingredients.
As assistant-at-large I was summoned to the cellar, where Mrs. Cornelia
Barclay of New York was evolving from a pan of flour and water that
miracle in the pie department called puff paste. This, it seems, can
only be accomplished where the thermometer is below forty, and near a
refrigerator where the compound can be kept cold until ready to be
popped into the oven. No jokes or nonsense here. With queenly dignity
the flour and water were gently compressed. Here one hand must not know
what the other doeth. Bits of butter must be so deftly introduced that
even the rolling pin may be unconscious of its work. As the artist gave
the last touch to an exquisite lemon pie, with a mingled expression of
pride and satisfaction on her classic features, she ordered me to bear
it to the oven. In the transit I met Madam Belle. "Don't let that fall,"
she said sneeringly. Fortunately I did not, and returned in triumph to
transport another. I was then summoned to a consultation with the
committee on toasts, consisting of James Cochrane, John Miller, and
myself. Mr. Miller had one for each guest already written, all of which
we accepted and pronounced very good.
Strange to say, a most excellent dinner emerged from all this uproar and
confusion. The table, with its silver, china, flowers, and rich viands,
the guests in satins, velvets, jewels, soft laces, and bright cravats,
together reflecting all the colors of the prism, looked as beautiful as
the rainbow after a thunderstorm.
Twenty years ago I made my last sad visit to that spot so rich with
pleasant memories of bygone days. A few relatives and family friends
gathered there to pay the last tokens of respect to our noble cousin.
It was on one of the coldest days of gray December that we laid him in
the frozen earth, to be seen no more. He died from a stroke of apoplexy
in New York city, at the home of his niece, Mrs. Ellen Cochrane Walter,
whose mother was Mr. Smith's only sister. The journey from New York to
Peterboro was cold and dreary, and climbing the hills from Canastota in
an open sleigh, nine hundred feet above the valley, with the thermometer
below zero, before sunrise, made all nature look as sombre as the sad
errand on which we came.
Outside the mansion everything in its wintry garb was cold and still,
and all within was silent as the grave. The central figure, the light
and joy of that home, had vanished forever. He who had welcomed us on
that threshold for half a century would welcome us no more. We did what
we could to dissipate the gloom that settled on us all. We did not
intensify our grief by darkening the house and covering ourselves with
black crape, but wore our accustomed dresses of chastened colors and
opened all the blinds that the glad sunshine might stream in. We hung
the apartment where the casket stood with wreaths of evergreens, and
overhead we wove his favorite mottoes in living letters, "Equal rights
for all!" "Rescue Cuba now!" The religious services were short and
simple; the Unitarian clergyman from Syracuse made a few remarks, the
children from the orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang
an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives of the
Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays, and Stantons, and
three generations of his immediate family. With a few appropriate words
from General John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in his
last resting place. Two months later, on his birthday, his wife, Ann
Carroll Fitzhugh, passed away and was laid by his side. Theirs was a
remarkably happy union of over half a century, and they were soon
reunited in the life eternal.
CHAPTER V.
OUR WEDDING JOURNEY.
My engagement was a season of doubt and conflict--doubt as to the wisdom
of changing a girlhood of freedom and enjoyment for I knew not what, and
conflict because the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes of
all my family. Whereas, heretofore, friends were continually suggesting
suitable matches for me and painting the marriage relation in the most
dazzling colors, now that state was represented as beset with dangers
and disappointments, and men, of all God's creatures as the most
depraved and unreliable. Hard pressed, I broke my engagement, after
months of anxiety and bewilderment; suddenly I decided to renew it, as
Mr. Stanton was going to Europe as a delegate to the World's
Anti-slavery Convention, and we did not wish the ocean to roll between
us.
Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful step, without
the slightest preparation for a wedding or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton,
coming up the North River, was detained on "Marcy's Overslaugh," a bar
in the river where boats were frequently stranded for hours. This delay
compelled us to be married on Friday, which is commonly supposed to be a
most unlucky day. But as we lived together, without more than the usual
matrimonial friction, for nearly a half a century, had seven children,
all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered,
clothed, and fed, enjoying sound minds in sound bodies, no one need be
afraid of going through the marriage ceremony on Friday for fear of bad
luck. The Scotch clergyman who married us, being somewhat superstitious,
begged us to postpone it until Saturday; but, as we were to sail early
in the coming week, that was impossible. That point settled, the next
difficulty was to persuade him to leave out the word "obey" in the
marriage ceremony. As I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I
supposed I was entering into an equal relation, that point, too, was
conceded. A few friends were invited to be present and, in a simple
white evening dress, I was married. But the good priest avenged himself
for the points he conceded, by keeping us on the rack with a long prayer
and dissertation on the sacred institution for one mortal hour. The Rev.
Hugh Maire was a little stout fellow, vehement in manner and speech, who
danced about the floor, as he laid down the law, in the most original
and comical manner. As Mr. Stanton had never seen him before, the hour
to him was one of constant struggle to maintain his equilibrium. I had
sat under his ministrations for several years, and was accustomed to his
rhetoric, accent, and gestures, and thus was able to go through the
ordeal in a calmer state of mind.
Sister Madge, who had stood by me bravely through all my doubts and
anxieties, went with us to New York and saw us on board the vessel. My
sister Harriet and her husband, Daniel C. Eaton, a merchant in New York
city, were also there. He and I had had for years a standing game of
"tag" at all our partings, and he had vowed to send me "tagged" to
Europe. I was equally determined that he should not. Accordingly, I
had a desperate chase after him all over the vessel, but in vain. He had
the last "tag" and escaped. As I was compelled, under the circumstances,
to conduct the pursuit with some degree of decorum, and he had the
advantage of height, long limbs, and freedom from skirts, I really stood
no chance whatever. However, as the chase kept us all laughing, it
helped to soften the bitterness of parting.
[Illustration: H.B. Stanton] [Illustration: MRS. STANTON AND DAUGHTER,
1857.]
Fairly at sea, I closed another chapter of my life, and my thoughts
turned to what lay in the near future. James G. Birney, the anti-slavery
nominee for the presidency of the United States, joined us in New York,
and was a fellow-passenger on the Montreal for England. He and my
husband were delegates to the World's Anti-slavery Convention, and both
interested themselves in my anti-slavery education. They gave me books
to read, and, as we paced the deck day by day, the question was the
chief theme of our conversation.
Mr. Birney was a polished gentleman of the old school, and was
excessively proper and punctilious in manner and conversation. I soon
perceived that he thought I needed considerable toning down before
reaching England. I was quick to see and understand that his criticisms
of others in a general way and the drift of his discourses on manners
and conversation had a nearer application than he intended I should
discover, though he hoped I would profit by them. I was always grateful
to anyone who took an interest in my improvement, so I laughingly told
him, one day, that he need not make his criticisms any longer in that
roundabout way, but might take me squarely in hand and polish me up as
speedily as possible. Sitting in the saloon at night after a game of
chess, in which, perchance, I had been the victor, I felt complacent
and would sometimes say:
"Well, what have I said or done to-day open to criticism?"
So, in the most gracious manner, he replied on one occasion:
"You went to the masthead in a chair, which I think very unladylike. I
heard you call your husband 'Henry' in the presence of strangers, which
is not permissible in polite society. You should always say 'Mr.
Stanton.' You have taken three moves back in this game."
"Bless me!" I replied, "what a catalogue in one day! I fear my Mentor
will despair of my ultimate perfection."
"I should have more hope," he replied, "if you seemed to feel my rebukes
more deeply, but you evidently think them of too little consequence to
be much disturbed by them."
As he found even more fault with my husband, we condoled with each other
and decided that our friend was rather hypercritical and that we were as
nearly perfect as mortals need be for the wear and tear of ordinary
life. Being both endowed with a good degree of self-esteem, neither the
praise nor the blame of mankind was overpowering to either of us. As the
voyage lasted eighteen days--for we were on a sailing vessel--we had
time to make some improvement, or, at least, to consider all friendly
suggestions.
At this time Mr. Birney was very much in love with Miss Fitzhugh of
Geneseo, to whom he was afterward married. He suffered at times great
depression of spirits, but I could always rouse him to a sunny mood by
introducing her name. That was a theme of which he never grew weary,
and, while praising her, a halo of glory was to him visible around my
head and I was faultless for the time being. There was nothing in our
fellow-passengers to break the monotony of the voyage. They were all
stolid, middle-class English people, returning from various parts of the
world to visit their native land.
When out of their hearing, Mr. Birney used to ridicule them without
mercy; so, one day, by way of making a point, I said with great
solemnity, "Is it good breeding to make fun of the foibles of our
fellow-men, who have not had our advantages of culture and education?"
He felt the rebuke and blushed, and never again returned to that
subject. I am sorry to say I was glad to find him once in fault.
Though some amusement, in whatever extraordinary way I could obtain it,
was necessary to my existence, yet, as it was deemed important that I
should thoroughly understand the status of the anti-slavery movement in
my own country, I spent most of my time reading and talking on that
question. Being the wife of a delegate to the World's Convention, we all
felt it important that I should be able to answer whatever questions I
might be asked in England on all phases of the slavery question.
The captain, a jolly fellow, was always ready to second me in my
explorations into every nook and cranny of the vessel. He imagined that
my reading was distasteful and enforced by the older gentlemen, so he
was continually planning some diversion, and often invited me to sit
with him and listen to his experiences of a sailor's life.
But all things must end in this mortal life, and our voyage was near
its termination, when we were becalmed on the Southern coast of England
and could not make more than one knot an hour. When within sight of the
distant shore, a pilot boat came along and offered to take anyone ashore
in six hours. I was so delighted at the thought of reaching land that,
after much persuasion, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Birney consented to go.
Accordingly we were lowered into the boat in an armchair, with a
luncheon consisting of a cold chicken, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of
wine, with just enough wind to carry our light craft toward our
destination. But, instead of six hours, we were all day trying to reach
the land, and, as the twilight deepened and the last breeze died away,
the pilot said: "We are now two miles from shore, but the only way you
can reach there to-night is by a rowboat."
As we had no provisions left and nowhere to sleep, we were glad to avail
ourselves of the rowboat. It was a bright moonlight night, the air
balmy, the waters smooth, and, with two stout oarsmen, we glided swiftly
along. As Mr. Birney made the last descent and seated himself, doubtful
as to our reaching shore, turning to me he said: "The woman tempted me
and I did leave the good ship." However, we did reach the shore at
midnight and landed at Torquay, one of the loveliest spots in that
country, and our journey to Exeter the next day lay through the most
beautiful scenery in England.
As we had no luggage with us, our detention by customs officers was
brief, and we were soon conducted to a comfortable little hotel, which
we found in the morning was a bower of roses. I had never imagined
anything so beautiful as the drive up to Exeter on the top of a coach,
with four stout horses, trotting at the rate of ten miles an hour. It
was the first day of June, and the country was in all its glory. The
foliage was of the softest green, the trees were covered with blossoms,
and the shrubs with flowers. The roads were perfect; the large,
fine-looking coachman, with his white gloves and reins, his rosy face
and lofty bearing and the postman in red, blowing his horn as we passed
through every village, made the drive seem like a journey in fairyland.
We had heard that England was like a garden of flowers, but we were
wholly unprepared for such wealth of beauty.
In Exeter we had our first view of one of the great cathedrals in the
Old World, and we were all deeply impressed with its grandeur. It was
just at the twilight hour, when the last rays of the setting sun,
streaming through the stained glass windows, deepened the shadows and
threw a mysterious amber light over all. As the choir was practicing,
the whole effect was heightened by the deep tones of the organ
reverberating through the arched roof, and the sound of human voices as
if vainly trying to fill the vast space above. The novelty and solemnity
of the surroundings roused all our religious emotions and thrilled every
nerve in our being. As if moved by the same impulse to linger there a
while, we all sat down, silently waiting for something to break the
spell that bound us. Can one wonder at the power of the Catholic
religion for centuries, with such accessories to stimulate the
imagination to a blind worship of the unknown?
Sitting in the hotel that evening and wanting something to read, we
asked the waiter for the daily papers. As there was no public table or
drawing room for guests, but each party had its own apartment, we needed
a little change from the society of each other. Having been, as it were,
shut from the outside world for eighteen days, we had some curiosity to
see whether our planet was still revolving from west to east. At the
mention of papers in the plural number, the attendant gave us a look of
surprise, and said he would get "it." He returned saying that the
gentleman in No. 4 had "it," but he would be through in fifteen minutes.
Accordingly, at the end of that time, he brought the newspaper, and,
after we had had it the same length of time, he came to take it to
another party. At our lodging house in London, a paper was left for half
an hour each morning, and then it was taken to the next house, thus
serving several families of readers.
The next day brought us to London. When I first entered our lodging
house in Queen Street, I thought it the gloomiest abode I had ever seen.
The arrival of a delegation of ladies, the next day, from Boston and
Philadelphia, changed the atmosphere of the establishment, and filled me
with delightful anticipations of some new and charming acquaintances,
which I fully realized in meeting Emily Winslow, Abby Southwick,
Elizabeth Neal, Mary Grew, Abby Kimber, Sarah Pugh, and Lucretia Mott.
There had been a split in the American anti-slavery ranks, and delegates
came from both branches, and, as they were equally represented at our
lodgings, I became familiar with the whole controversy. The potent
element which caused the division was the woman question, and as the
Garrisonian branch maintained the right of women to speak and vote in
the conventions, all my sympathies were with the Garrisonians, though
Mr. Stanton and Mr. Birney belonged to the other branch, called
political abolitionists. To me there was no question so important as the
emancipation of women from the dogmas of the past, political, religious,
and social. It struck me as very remarkable that abolitionists, who felt
so keenly the wrongs of the slave, should be so oblivious to the equal
wrongs of their own mothers, wives, and sisters, when, according to the
common law, both classes occupied a similar legal status.
Our chief object in visiting England at this time was to attend the
World's Anti-slavery Convention, to meet June 12, 1840, in Freemasons'
Hall, London. Delegates from all the anti-slavery societies of civilized
nations were invited, yet, when they arrived, those representing
associations of women were rejected. Though women were members of the
National Anti-slavery Society, accustomed to speak and vote in all its
conventions, and to take an equally active part with men in the whole
anti-slavery struggle, and were there as delegates from associations of
men and women, as well as those distinctively of their own sex, yet all
alike were rejected because they were women. Women, according to English
prejudices at that time, were excluded by Scriptural texts from sharing
equal dignity and authority with men in all reform associations; hence
it was to English minds pre-eminently unfitting that women should be
admitted as equal members to a World's Convention. The question was
hotly debated through an entire day. My husband made a very eloquent
speech in favor of admitting the women delegates.
When we consider that Lady Byron, Anna Jameson, Mary Howitt, Mrs. Hugo
Reid, Elizabeth Fry, Amelia Opie, Ann Green Phillips, Lucretia Mott, and
many remarkable women, speakers and leaders in the Society of Friends,
were all compelled to listen in silence to the masculine platitudes on
woman's sphere, one may form some idea of the indignation of
unprejudiced friends, and especially that of such women as Lydia Maria
Child, Maria Chapman, Deborah Weston, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, and
Abby Kelly, who were impatiently waiting and watching on this side, in
painful suspense, to hear how their delegates were received. Judging
from my own feelings, the women on both sides of the Atlantic must have
been humiliated and chagrined, except as these feelings were outweighed
by contempt for the shallow reasoning of their opponents and their
comical pose and gestures in some of the intensely earnest flights of
their imagination.
The clerical portion of the convention was most violent in its
opposition. The clergymen seemed to have God and his angels especially
in their care and keeping, and were in agony lest the women should do or
say something to shock the heavenly hosts. Their all-sustaining conceit
gave them abundant assurance that their movements must necessarily be
all-pleasing to the celestials whose ears were open to the proceedings
of the World's Convention. Deborah, Huldah, Vashti, and Esther might
have questioned the propriety of calling it a World's Convention, when
only half of humanity was represented there; but what were their
opinions worth compared with those of the Rev. A. Harvey, the Rev. C.
Stout, or the Rev. J. Burnet, who, Bible in hand, argued woman's
subjection, divinely decreed when Eve was created.
One of our champions in the convention, George Bradburn, a tall
thick-set man with a voice like thunder, standing head and shoulders
above the clerical representatives, swept all their arguments aside by
declaring with tremendous emphasis that, if they could prove to him that
the Bible taught the entire subjection of one-half of the race to the
other, he should consider that the best thing he could do for humanity
would be to bring together every Bible in the universe and make a grand
bonfire of them.
It was really pitiful to hear narrow-minded bigots, pretending to be
teachers and leaders of men, so cruelly remanding their own mothers,
with the rest of womankind, to absolute subjection to the ordinary
masculine type of humanity. I always regretted that the women themselves
had not taken part in the debate before the convention was fully
organized and the question of delegates settled. It seemed to me then,
and does now, that all delegates with credentials from recognized
societies should have had a voice in the organization of the convention,
though subject to exclusion afterward. However, the women sat in a low
curtained seat like a church choir, and modestly listened to the French,
British, and American Solons for twelve of the longest days in June, as
did, also, our grand Garrison and Rogers in the gallery. They scorned a
convention that ignored the rights of the very women who had fought,
side by side, with them in the anti-slavery conflict. "After battling so
many long years," said Garrison, "for the liberties of African slaves, I
can take no part in a convention that strikes down the most sacred
rights of all women." After coming three thousand miles to speak on the
subject nearest his heart, he nobly shared the enforced silence of the
rejected delegates. It was a great act of self-sacrifice that should
never be forgotten by women.
Thomas Clarkson was chosen president of the convention and made a few
remarks in opening, but he soon retired, as his age and many infirmities
made all public occasions too burdensome, and Joseph Sturge, a Quaker,
was made chairman. Sitting next to Mrs. Mott, I said:
"As there is a Quaker in the chair now, what could he do if the spirit
should move you to speak?"
"Ah," she replied, evidently not believing such a contingency possible,
"where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
She had not much faith in the sincerity of abolitionists who, while
eloquently defending the natural rights of slaves, denied freedom of
speech to one-half the people of their own race. Such was the
consistency of an assemblage of philanthropists! They would have been
horrified at the idea of burning the flesh of the distinguished women
present with red-hot irons, but the crucifixion of their pride and
self-respect, the humiliation of the spirit, seemed to them a most
trifling matter. The action of this convention was the topic of
discussion, in public and private, for a long time, and stung many women
into new thought and action and gave rise to the movement for women's
political equality both in England and the United States.
As the convention adjourned, the remark was heard on all sides, "It is
about time some demand was made for new liberties for women." As Mrs.
Mott and I walked home, arm in arm, commenting on the incidents of the
day, we resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and
form a society to advocate the rights of women. At the lodging house on
Queen Street, where a large number of delegates had apartments, the
discussions were heated at every meal, and at times so bitter that, at
last, Mr. Birney packed his valise and sought more peaceful quarters.
Having strongly opposed the admission of women as delegates to the
convention it was rather embarrassing to meet them, during the intervals
between the various sessions, at the table and in the drawing room.
These were the first women I had ever met who believed in the equality
of the sexes and who did not believe in the popular orthodox religion.
The acquaintance of Lucretia Mott, who was a broad, liberal thinker on
politics, religion, and all questions of reform, opened to me a new
world of thought. As we walked about to see the sights of London, I
embraced every opportunity to talk with her. It was intensely gratifying
to hear all that, through years of doubt, I had dimly thought, so freely
discussed by other women, some of them no older than myself--women, too,
of rare intelligence, cultivation, and refinement. After six weeks'
sojourn under the same roof with Lucretia Mott, whose conversation was
uniformly on a high plane, I felt that I knew her too well to sympathize
with the orthodox Friends, who denounced her as a dangerous woman
because she doubted certain dogmas they fully believed.
As Mr. Birney and my husband were invited to speak all over England,
Scotland, and Ireland, and we were uniformly entertained by orthodox
Friends, I had abundant opportunity to know the general feeling among
them toward Lucretia Mott. Even Elizabeth Fry seemed quite unwilling to
breathe the same atmosphere with her. During the six weeks that many of
us remained in London after the convention we were invited to a
succession of public and private breakfasts, dinners, and teas, and on
these occasions it was amusing to watch Mrs. Fry's sedulous efforts to
keep Mrs. Mott at a distance. If Mrs. Mott was on the lawn, Mrs. Fry
would go into the house; if Mrs. Mott was in the house, Mrs. Fry would
stay out on the lawn. One evening, when we were all crowded into two
parlors, and there was no escape, the word went round that Mrs. Fry felt
moved to pray with the American delegates, whereupon a profound silence
reigned. After a few moments Mrs. Fry's voice was heard deploring the
schism among the American Friends; that sol many had been led astray by
false doctrines; urging the Spirit of All Good to show them the error of
their way, and gather them once more into the fold of the great Shepherd
of our faith. The prayer was directed so pointedly at the followers of
Elias Hicks, and at Lucretia Mott in particular, that I whispered to
Lucretia, at the close, that she should now pray for Mrs. Fry, that her
eyes might be opened to her bigotry and uncharitableness, and be led by
the Spirit into higher light. "Oh, no!" she replied, "a prayer of this
character, under the circumstances, is an unfair advantage to take of a
stranger, but I would not resent it in the house of her friends."
In these gatherings we met the leading Quaker families and many other
philanthropists of different denominations interested in the
anti-slavery movement. On all these occasions our noble Garrison spoke
most effectively, and thus our English friends had an opportunity of
enjoying his eloquence, the lack of which had been so grave a loss in
the convention.
We devoted a month sedulously to sightseeing in London, and, in the line
of the traveler's duty, we explored St. Paul's Cathedral, the British
Museum, the Tower, various prisons, hospitals, galleries of art, Windsor
Castle, and St. James's Palace, the Zoological Gardens, the schools and
colleges, the chief theaters and churches, Westminster Abbey, the Houses
of Parliament, and the Courts. We heard the most famous preachers,
actors, and statesmen. In fact, we went to the top and bottom of
everything, from the dome of St. Paul to the tunnel under the Thames,
just then in the process of excavation. We drove through the parks,
sailed up and down the Thames, and then visited every shire but four in
England, in all of which we had large meetings, Mr. Birney and Mr.
Stanton being the chief speakers. As we were generally invited to stay
with Friends, it gave us a good opportunity to see the leading families,
such as the Ashursts, the Alexanders, the Priestmans, the Braithwaites,
and Buxtons, the Gurneys, the Peases, the Wighams of Edinburgh, and the
Webbs of Dublin. We spent a few days with John Joseph Gurney at his
beautiful home in Norwich. He had just returned from America, having
made a tour through the South. When asked how he liked America, he said,
"I like everything but your pie crust and your slavery."
Before leaving London, the whole American delegation, about forty in
number, were invited to dine with Samuel Gurney. He and his brother,
John Joseph Gurney, were, at that time, the leading bankers in London.
Someone facetiously remarked that the Jews were the leading bankers in
London until the Quakers crowded them out.
One of the most striking women I met in England at this time was Miss
Elizabeth Pease. I never saw a more strongly marked face. Meeting her,
forty years after, on the platform of a great meeting in the Town Hall
at Glasgow, I knew her at once. She is now Mrs. Nichol of Edinburgh,
and, though on the shady side of eighty, is still active in all the
reforms of the day.
It surprised us very much at first, when driving into the grounds of
some of these beautiful Quaker homes, to have the great bell rung at the
lodge, and to see the number of liveried servants on the porch and in
the halls, and then to meet the host in plain garb, and to be welcomed
in plain language, "How does thee do, Henry?" "How does thee do
Elizabeth?" This sounded peculiarly sweet to me--a stranger in a strange
land. The wealthy English Quakers we visited at that time, taking them
all in all, were the most charming people I had ever seen. They were
refined and intelligent on all subjects, and though rather conservative
on some points, were not aggressive in pressing their opinions on
others. Their hospitality was charming and generous, their homes the
beau ideal of comfort and order, the cuisine faultless, while peace
reigned over all. The quiet, gentle manner and the soft tones in
speaking, and the mysterious quiet in these well-ordered homes were like
the atmosphere one finds in a modern convent, where the ordinary duties
of the day seem to be accomplished by some magical influence.
Before leaving London we spent a delightful day in June at the home of
Samuel Gurney, surrounded by a fine park with six hundred deer roaming
about--always a beautiful feature in the English landscape. As the
Duchess of Sutherland and Lord Morpeth had expressed a wish to Mrs. Fry
to meet some of the leading American abolitionists, it was arranged that
they should call at her brother's residence on this occasion. Soon after
we arrived, the Duchess, with her brother and Mrs. Fry, in her state
carriage with six horses and outriders, drove up to the door. Mr. Gurney
was evidently embarrassed at the prospect of a lord and a duchess under
his roof. Leaning on the arm of Mrs. Fry, the duchess was formally
introduced to us individually. Mrs. Mott conversed with the
distinguished guests with the same fluency and composure as with her own
countrywomen. However anxious the English people were as to what they
should say and do, the Americans were all quite at their ease.
As Lord Morpeth had some interesting letters from the island of Jamaica
to read to us, we formed a circle on the lawn to listen. England had
just paid one hundred millions of dollars to emancipate the slaves, and
we were all interested in hearing the result of the experiment. The
distinguished guest in turn had many questions to ask in regard to
American slavery. We found none of that prejudice against color in
England which is so inveterate among the American people; at my first
dinner in England I found myself beside a gentleman from Jamaica, as
black as the ace of spades. After the departure of the duchess, dinner
was announced. It was a sumptuous meal, most tastefully served. There
were half a dozen wineglasses at every plate, but abolitionists, in
those days, were all converts to temperance, and, as the bottles went
around there was a general headshaking, and the right hand extended
over the glasses. Our English friends were amazed that none of us drank
wine. Mr. Gurney said he had never before seen such a sight as forty
ladies and gentlemen sitting down to dinner and none of them tasting
wine. In talking with him on that point, he said:
"I suppose your nursing mothers drink beer?"
I laughed, and said, "Oh, no! We should be afraid of befogging the
brains of our children."
"No danger of that," said he; "we are all bright enough, and yet a cask
of beer is rolled into the cellar for the mother with each newborn
child."
Colonel Miller from Vermont, one of our American delegation, was in the
Greek war with Lord Byron. As Lady Byron had expressed a wish to see
him, that her daughter might know something of her father's last days,
an interview was arranged, and the colonel kindly invited me to
accompany him. His account of their acquaintance and the many noble
traits of character Lord Byron manifested, his generous impulses and
acts of self-sacrifice, seemed particularly gratifying to the daughter.
It was a sad interview, arranged chiefly for the daughter's
satisfaction, though Lady Byron listened with a painful interest. As the
colonel was a warm admirer of the great poet, he no doubt represented
him in the best possible light, and his narration of his last days was
deeply interesting. Lady Byron had a quiet, reserved manner, a sad face,
and a low, plaintive voice, like one who had known deep sorrow. I had
seen her frequently in the convention and at social teas, and had been
personally presented to her before this occasion. Altogether I thought
her a sweet, attractive-looking woman.
We had a pleasant interview with Lord Brougham also. The Philadelphia
Anti-slavery Society sent him an elaborately carved inkstand, made from
the wood of Pennsylvania Hall, which was destroyed by a pro-slavery mob.
Mr. Birney made a most graceful speech in presenting the memento, and
Lord Brougham was equally happy in receiving it.
One of the most notable characters we met at this time was Daniel
O'Connell. He made his first appearance in the London convention a few
days after the women were rejected. He paid a beautiful tribute to woman
and said that, if he had been present when the question was under
discussion, he should have spoken and voted for their admission. He was
a tall, well-developed, magnificent-looking man, and probably one of the
most effective speakers Ireland ever produced. I saw him at a great
India meeting in Exeter Hall, where some of the best orators from
France, America, and England were present. There were six natives from
India on the platform who, not understanding anything that was said,
naturally remained listless throughout the proceedings. But the moment
O'Connell began to speak they were all attention, bending forward and
closely watching every movement. One could almost tell what he said from
the play of his expressive features, his wonderful gestures, and the
pose of his whole body. When he finished, the natives joined in the
general applause. He had all Wendell Phillips' power of sarcasm and
denunciation, and added to that the most tender pathos. He could make
his audience laugh or cry at pleasure. It was a rare sight to see him
dressed in "Repeal cloth" in one of his Repeal meetings. We were in
Dublin in the midst of that excitement, when the hopes of new liberties
for that oppressed people all centered on O'Connell. The enthusiasm of
the people for the Repeal of the Union was then at white-heat. Dining
one day with the "Great Liberator," as he was called, I asked him if he
hoped to carry that measure.
"No," he said, "but it is always good policy to claim the uttermost and
then you will be sure to get something."
Could he have looked forward fifty years and have seen the present
condition of his unhappy country, he would have known that English greed
and selfishness could defeat any policy, however wise and far-seeing.
The successive steps by which Irish commerce was ruined and religious
feuds between her people continually fanned into life, and the nation
subjugated, form the darkest page in the history of England. But the
people are awakening at last to their duty, and, for the first time,
organizing English public sentiment in favor of "Home Rule." I attended
several large, enthusiastic meetings when last in England, in which the
most radical utterances of Irish patriots were received with prolonged
cheers. I trust the day is not far off when the beautiful Emerald Isle
will unfurl her banner before the nations of the earth, enthroned as the
Queen Republic of those northern seas!
We visited Wordsworth's home at Grasmere, among the beautiful lakes, but
he was not there. However, we saw his surroundings--the landscape that
inspired some of his poetic dreams, and the dense rows of hollyhocks of
every shade and color, leading from his porch to the gate. The gardener
told us this was his favorite flower. Though it had no special beauty in
itself, taken alone, yet the wonderful combination of royal colors was
indeed striking and beautiful. We saw Harriet Martineau at her country
home as well as at her house in town. As we were obliged to converse
with her through an ear trumpet, we left her to do most of the talking.
She gave us many amusing experiences of her travels in America, and her
comments on the London Convention were rich and racy. She was not an
attractive woman in either manner or appearance, though considered great
and good by all who knew her.
We spent a few days with Thomas Clarkson, in Ipswich. He lived in a very
old house with long rambling corridors, surrounded by a moat, which we
crossed' by means of a drawbridge. He had just written an article
against the colonization scheme, which his wife read aloud to us. He was
so absorbed in the subject that he forgot the article was written by
himself, and kept up a running applause with "hear!" "hear!" the English
mode of expressing approbation. He told us of the severe struggles he
and Wilberforce had gone through in rousing the public sentiment of
England to the demand for emancipation in Jamaica. But their trials were
mild, compared with what Garrison and his coadjutors had suffered in
America.
Having read of all these people, it was difficult to realize, as I
visited them in their own homes from day to day, that they were the same
persons I had so long worshiped from afar!
CHAPTER VI.
HOMEWARD BOUND.
After taking a view of the wonders and surroundings of London we spent a
month in Paris. Fifty years ago there was a greater difference in the
general appearance of things between France and England than now. That
countries only a few hours' journey apart should differ so widely was to
us a great surprise. How changed the sights and sounds! Here was the old
diligence, lumbering along with its various compartments and its
indefinite number of horses, harnessed with rope and leather, sometimes
two, sometimes three abreast, and sometimes one in advance, with an
outrider belaboring the poor beasts without cessation, and the driver
yelling and cracking his whip. The uproar, confusion, and squabbles at
every stopping place are overwhelming; the upper classes, men and women
alike, rushing into each other's arms, embrace and kiss, while drivers
and hostlers on the slightest provocation hurl at each other all the
denunciatory adjectives in the language, and with such vehemence that
you expect every moment to see a deadly conflict. But to-day, as fifty
years ago, they never arrive at that point. Theirs was and is purely an
encounter of words, which they keep up, as they drive off in opposite
directions, just as far as they can hear and see each other, with
threats of vengeance to come. Such an encounter between two Englishmen
would mean the death of one or the other.
All this was in marked contrast with John Bull and his Island. There the
people were as silent as if they had been born deaf and dumb. The
English stagecoach was compact, clean, and polished from top to bottom,
the horses and harness glossy and in order, the well-dressed, dignified
coachman, who seldom spoke a loud word or used his whip, kept his seat
at the various stages, while hostlers watered or changed the steeds; the
postman blew his bugle blast to have the mail in readiness, and the
reserved passengers made no remarks on what was passing; for, in those
days, Englishmen were afraid to speak to each other for fear of
recognizing one not of their class, while to strangers and foreigners
they would not speak except in case of dire necessity. The Frenchman was
ready enough to talk, but, unfortunately, we were separated by different
languages. Thus the Englishman would not talk, the Frenchman could not,
and the intelligent, loquacious American driver, who discourses on
politics, religion, national institutions, and social gossip was unknown
on that side of the Atlantic. What the curious American traveler could
find out himself from observation and pertinacious seeking he was
welcome to, but the Briton would waste no breath to enlighten Yankees as
to the points of interest or customs of his country.
Our party consisted of Miss Pugh, Abby Kimber, Mr. Stanton, and myself.
I had many amusing experiences in making my wants known when alone,
having forgotten most of my French. For instance, traveling night and
day in the diligence to Paris, as the stops were short, one was
sometimes in need of something to eat. One night as my companions were
all asleep, I went out to get a piece of cake or a cracker, or whatever
of that sort I could obtain, but, owing to my clumsy use of the
language, I was misunderstood. Just as the diligence was about to start,
and the shout for us to get aboard was heard, the waiter came running
with a piping hot plate of sweetbreads nicely broiled. I had waited and
wondered why it took so long to get a simple piece of cake or biscuit,
and lo! a piece of hot meat was offered me. I could not take the
frizzling thing in my hand nor eat it without bread, knife, or fork, so
I hurried off to the coach, the man pursuing me to the very door. I was
vexed and disappointed, while the rest of the party were convulsed with
laughter at the parting salute and my attempt to make my way alone. It
was some time before I heard the last of the "sweetbreads."
When we reached Paris we secured a courier who could speak English, to
show us the sights of that wonderful city. Every morning early he was at
the door, rain or shine, to carry out our plans, which, with the aid of
our guidebook, we had made the evening before. In this way, going
steadily, day after day, we visited all points of interest for miles
round and sailed up and down the Seine. The Palace of the Tuileries,
with its many associations with a long line of more or less unhappy
kings and queens, was then in its glory, and its extensive and beautiful
grounds were always gay with crowds of happy people. These gardens were
a great resort for nurses and children and were furnished with all
manner of novel appliances for their amusement, including beautiful
little carriages drawn by four goats with girls or boys driving, boats
sailing in the air, seemingly propelled by oars, and hobby horses
flying round on whirligigs with boys vainly trying to catch each other.
No people have ever taken the trouble to invent so many amusements for
children as have the French. The people enjoyed being always in the open
air, night and day. The parks are crowded with amusement seekers, some
reading and playing games, some sewing, knitting, playing on musical
instruments, dancing, sitting around tables in bevies eating, drinking,
and gayly chatting. And yet, when they drive in carriages or go to their
homes at night, they will shut themselves in as tight as oysters in
their shells. They have a theory that night air is very injurious,--in
the house,--although they will sit outside until midnight. I found this
same superstition prevalent in France fifty years later.
We visited the Hotel des Invalides just as they were preparing the
sarcophagus for the reception of the remains of Napoleon. We witnessed
the wild excitement of that enthusiastic people, and listened with deep
interest to the old soldiers' praises of their great general. The ladies
of our party chatted freely with them. They all had interesting
anecdotes to relate of their chief. They said he seldom slept over four
hours, was an abstemious eater, and rarely changed a servant, as he
hated a strange face about him. He was very fond of a game of chess, and
snuffed continuously; talked but little, was a light sleeper,--the
stirring of a mouse would awaken him,--and always on the watch-tower.
They said that, in his great campaigns, he seemed to be omnipresent. A
sentinel asleep at his post would sometimes waken to find Napoleon on
duty in his place.
The ship that brought back Napoleon's remains was the _Belle Poule_
(the beautiful hen!), which landed at Cherbourg, November 30, 1840. The
body was conveyed to the Church of the Invalides, which adjoins the
tomb. The Prince de Joinville brought the body from Saint Helena, and
Louis Philippe received it.
At that time each soldier had a little patch of land to decorate as he
pleased, in which many scenes from their great battles were illustrated.
One represented Napoleon crossing the Alps. There were the cannon, the
soldiers, Napoleon on horseback, all toiling up the steep ascent,
perfect in miniature. In another was Napoleon, flag in hand, leading the
charge across the bridge of Lodi. In still another was Napoleon in
Egypt, before the Pyramids, seated, impassive, on his horse, gazing at
the Sphinx, as if about to utter his immortal words to his soldiers:
"Here, forty centuries look down upon us." These object lessons of the
past are all gone now and the land used for more prosaic purposes.
I little thought, as I witnessed that great event in France in 1840,
that fifty-seven years later I should witness a similar pageant in the
American Republic, when our nation paid its last tributes to General
Grant. There are many points of similarity in these great events. As men
they were alike aggressive and self-reliant. In Napoleon's will he
expressed the wish that his last resting place might be in the land and
among the people he loved so well. His desire is fulfilled. He rests in
the chief city of the French republic, whose shores are washed by the
waters of the Seine. General Grant expressed the wish that he might be
interred in our metropolis and added: "Wherever I am buried, I desire
that there shall be room for my wife by my side." His wishes, too, are
fulfilled. He rests in the chief city of the American Republic, whose
shores are washed by the waters of the Hudson, and in his magnificent
mausoleum there is room for his wife by his side.
Several members of the Society of Friends from Boston and Philadelphia,
who had attended the World's Anti-slavery Convention in London, joined
our party for a trip on the Continent. Though opposed to war, they all
took a deep interest in the national excitement and in the pageants that
heralded the expected arrival of the hero from Saint Helena. As they all
wore military coats of the time of George Fox, the soldiers, supposing
they belonged to the army of some country, gave them the military salute
wherever we went, much to their annoyance and our amusement.
In going the rounds, Miss Pugh amused us by reading aloud the
description of what we were admiring and the historical events connected
with that particular building or locality. We urged her to spend the
time taking in all she could see and to read up afterward; but no, a
history of France and Galignani's guide she carried everywhere, and,
while the rest of us looked until we were fully satisfied, she took a
bird's-eye view and read the description. Dear little woman! She was a
fine scholar, a good historian, was well informed on all subjects and
countries, proved an invaluable traveling companion, and could tell more
of what we saw than all the rest of us together.
On several occasions we chanced to meet Louis Philippe dashing by in an
open barouche. We felt great satisfaction in remembering that at one
time he was an exile in our country, where he earned his living by
teaching school. What an honor for Yankee children to have been taught,
by a French king, the rudiments of his language.
Having been accustomed to the Puritan Sunday of restraint and solemnity,
I found that day in Paris gay and charming. The first time I entered
into some of the festivities, I really expected to be struck by
lightning. The libraries, art galleries, concert halls, and theaters
were all open to the people. Bands of music were playing in the parks,
where whole families, with their luncheons, spent the day--husbands,
wives, and children, on an excursion together. The boats on the Seine
and all public conveyances were crowded. Those who had but this one day
for pleasure seemed determined to make the most of it. A wonderful
contrast with that gloomy day in London, where all places of amusement
were closed and nothing open to the people but the churches and drinking
saloons. The streets and houses in which Voltaire, La Fayette, Mme. de
Stael, Mme. Roland, Charlotte Corday, and other famous men and women
lived and died, were pointed out to us. We little thought, then, of all
the terrible scenes to be enacted in Paris, nor that France would emerge
from the dangers that beset her on every side into a sister republic. It
has been a wonderful achievement, with kings and Popes all plotting
against her experiment, that she has succeeded in putting kingcraft
under her feet and proclaimed liberty, equality, fraternity for her
people.
After a few weeks in France, we returned to London, traveling through
England, Ireland, and Scotland for several months. We visited the scenes
that Shakespeare, Burns, and Dickens had made classic. We spent a few
days at Huntingdon, the home of Oliver Cromwell, and visited the estate
where he passed his early married life. While there, one of his great
admirers read aloud to us a splendid article in one of the reviews,
written by Carlyle, giving "The Protector," as his friend said, his true
place in history. It was long the fashion of England's historians to
represent Cromwell as a fanatic and hypocrite, but his character was
vindicated by later writers. "Never," says Macaulay, "was a ruler so
conspicuously born for sovereignty. The cup which has intoxicated almost
all others sobered him."
We saw the picturesque ruins of Kenilworth Castle, the birthplace of
Shakespeare, the homes of Byron and Mary Chaworth, wandered through
Newstead Abbey, saw the monument to the faithful dog, and the large
dining room where Byron and his boon companions used to shoot at a mark.
It was a desolate region. We stopped a day or two at Ayr and drove out
to the birthplace of Burns. The old house that had sheltered him was
still there, but its walls now echoed to other voices, and the fields
where he had toiled were plowed by other hands. We saw the stream and
banks where he and Mary sat together, the old stone church where the
witches held their midnight revels, the two dogs, and the bridge of Ayr.
With Burns, as with Sappho, it was love that awoke his heart to song. A
bonny lass who worked with him in the harvest field inspired his first
attempts at rhyme. Life, with Burns, was one long, hard struggle. With
his natural love for the beautiful, the terrible depression of spirits
he suffered from his dreary surroundings was inevitable. The interest
great men took in him, when they awoke to his genius, came too late for
his safety and encouragement. In a glass of whisky he found, at last,
the rest and cheer he never knew when sober. Poverty and ignorance are
the parents of intemperance, and that vice will never be suppressed
until the burdens of life are equally shared by all.
We saw Melrose by moonlight, spent several hours at Abbotsford, and
lingered in the little sanctum sanctorum where Scott wrote his immortal
works. It was so small that he could reach the bookshelves on every
side. We went through the prisons, castles, and narrow streets of
Edinburgh, where the houses are seven and eight stories high, each story
projecting a few feet until, at the uppermost, opposite neighbors could
easily shake hands and chat together. All the intervals from active
sight-seeing we spent in reading the lives of historical personages in
poetry and prose, until our sympathies flowed out to the real and ideal
characters. Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Ellen
Douglas, Jeanie and Effie Deans, Highland Mary, Rebecca the Jewess, Di
Vernon, and Rob Roy all alike seemed real men and women, whose shades or
descendants we hoped to meet on their native heath.
Here among the Scotch lakes and mountains Mr. Stanton and I were
traveling alone for the first time since our marriage, and as we both
enjoyed walking, we made many excursions on foot to points that could
not be reached in any other way. We spent some time among the Grampian
Hills, so familiar to every schoolboy, walking, and riding about on
donkeys. We sailed up and down Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond. My husband
was writing letters for some New York newspapers on the entire trip, and
aimed to get exact knowledge of all we saw; thus I had the advantage of
the information he gathered. On these long tramps I wore a short dress,
reaching just below the knee, of dark-blue cloth, a military cap of the
same material that shaded my eyes, and a pair of long boots, made on the
masculine pattern then generally worn--the most easy style for walking,
as the pressure is equal on the whole foot and the ankle has free play.
Thus equipped, and early trained by my good brother-in-law to long
walks, I found no difficulty in keeping pace with my husband.
Being self-reliant and venturesome in our explorations, we occasionally
found ourselves involved in grave difficulties by refusing to take a
guide. For instance, we decided to go to the top of Ben Nevis alone. It
looked to us a straightforward piece of business to walk up a mountain
side on a bee line, and so, in the face of repeated warnings by our
host, we started. We knew nothing of zigzag paths to avoid the rocks,
the springs, and swamps; in fact we supposed all mountains smooth and
dry, like our native hills that we were accustomed to climb. The
landlord shook his head and smiled when we told him we should return at
noon to dinner, and we smiled, too, thinking he placed a low estimate on
our capacity for walking. But we had not gone far when we discovered the
difficulties ahead. Some places were so steep that I had to hold on to
my companion's coat tails, while he held on to rocks and twigs, or
braced himself with a heavy cane. By the time we were halfway up we were
in a dripping perspiration, our feet were soaking wet, and we were
really too tired to proceed. But, after starting with such supreme
confidence in ourselves, we were ashamed to confess our fatigue to each
other, and much more to return and verify all the prognostications of
the host and his guides. So we determined to push on and do what we had
proposed. With the prospect of a magnificent view and an hour's
delicious rest on the top, we started with renewed courage. A steady
climb of six hours brought us to the goal of promise; our ascent was
accomplished. But alas! it was impossible to stop there--the cold wind
chilled us to the bone in a minute. So we took one glance at the world
below and hurried down the south side to get the mountain between us and
the cold northeaster.
When your teeth are chattering with the cold, and the wind threatening
to make havoc with your raiment, you are not in a favorable condition to
appreciate grand scenery. Like the king of France with twice ten
thousand men, we marched up the hill and then, marched down again. We
found descending still more difficult, as we were in constant fear of
slipping, losing our hold, and rolling to the bottom. We were tired,
hungry, and disappointed, and the fear of not reaching the valley before
nightfall pressed heavily upon us. Neither confessed to the other the
fatigue and apprehension each felt, but, with fresh endeavor and words
of encouragement, we cautiously went on. We accidentally struck a trail
that led us winding down comfortably some distance, but we lost it, and
went clambering down as well as we could in our usual way. To add to our
misery, a dense Scotch mist soon enveloped us, so that we could see but
a short distance ahead, and not knowing the point from which we started,
we feared we might be going far out of our way. The coming twilight,
too, made the prospect still darker. Fortunately our host, having less
faith in us than we had in ourselves, sent a guide to reconnoiter, and,
just at the moment when we began to realize our danger of spending the
night on the mountain, and to admit it to each other, the welcome guide
hailed us in his broad accent. His shepherd dog led the way into the
beaten path. As I could hardly stand I took the guide's arm, and when we
reached the bottom two donkeys were in readiness to take us to the
hotel.
We did not recover from the fatigue of that expedition in several days,
and we made no more experiments of exploring strange places without
guides. We learned, too, that mountains are not so hospitable as they
seem nor so gently undulating as they appear in the distance, and that
guides serve other purposes besides extorting money from travelers. If,
under their guidance, we had gone up and down easily, we should always
have thought we might as well have gone alone. So our experience gave us
a good lesson in humility. We had been twelve hours on foot with nothing
to eat, when at last we reached the hotel. We were in no mood for
boasting of the success of our excursion, and our answers were short to
inquiries as to how we had passed the day.
Being tired of traveling and contending about woman's sphere with the
Rev. John Scoble, an Englishman, who escorted Mr. Birney and Mr. Stanton
on their tour through the country, I decided to spend a month in Dublin;
while the gentlemen held meetings in Cork, Belfast, Waterford, Limerick,
and other chief towns, finishing the series with a large, enthusiastic
gathering in Dublin, at which O'Connell made one of his most withering
speeches on American slavery; the inconsistency of such an "institution"
with the principles of a republican government giving full play to his
powers of sarcasm. On one occasion, when introduced to a slaveholder, he
put his hands behind his back, refusing to recognize a man who bought
and sold his fellow-beings. The Rev. John Scoble was one of the most
conceited men I ever met. His narrow ideas in regard to woman, and the
superiority of the royal and noble classes in his own country, were to
me so exasperating that I grew more and more bellicose every day we
traveled in company. He was terribly seasick crossing the Channel, to my
intense satisfaction. As he always boasted of his distinguished
countrymen, I suggested, in the midst of one of his most agonizing
spasms, that he ought to find consolation in the fact that Lord Nelson
was always seasick on the slightest provocation.
The poverty in Ireland was a continual trial to our sensibilities;
beggars haunted our footsteps everywhere, in the street and on the
highways, crouching on the steps of the front door and on the
curbstones, and surrounding our carriage wherever and whenever we
stopped to shop or make a visit. The bony hands and sunken eyes and
sincere gratitude expressed for every penny proved their suffering real.
As my means were limited and I could not pass one by, I got a pound
changed into pennies, and put them in a green bag, which I took in the
carriage wherever I went. It was but a drop in the ocean, but it was all
I could do to relieve that unfathomed misery. The poverty I saw
everywhere in the Old World, and especially in Ireland, was a puzzling
problem to my mind, but I rejected the idea that it was a necessary link
in human experience--that it always had been and always must be.
As we drove, day by day, in that magnificent Phoenix Park, of fifteen
hundred acres, one of the largest parks, I believe, in the world, I
would often put the question to myself, what right have the few to make
a pleasure ground of these acres, while the many have nowhere to lay
their heads, crouching under stiles and bridges, clothed in rags, and
feeding on sea-weed with no hope, in the slowly passing years, of any
change for the better? The despair stamped on every brow told the sad
story of their wrongs. Those accustomed to such everyday experiences
brush beggars aside as they would so many flies, but those to whom such
sights are new cannot so easily quiet their own consciences. Everyone in
the full enjoyment of all the blessings of life, in his normal
condition, feels some individual responsibility for the poverty of
others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one
feels reproached by one's own abundance. I once heard a young girl,
about to take her summer outing, when asked by her grandmother if she
had all the dresses she needed, reply, "Oh, yes! I was oppressed with a
constant sense of guilt, when packing, to see how much I had, while so
many girls have nothing decent to wear."
More than half a century has rolled by since I stood on Irish soil, and
shed tears of pity for the wretchedness I saw, and no change for the
better has as yet come to that unhappy people--yet this was the land of
Burke, Grattan, Shiel, and Emmett; the land into which Christianity was
introduced in the fifth century, St. Patrick being the chief apostle of
the new faith. In the sixth century Ireland sent forth missionaries from
her monasteries to convert Great Britain and the nations of Northern
Europe. From the eighth to the twelfth century Irish scholars held an
enviable reputation. In fact, Ireland was the center of learning at one
time. The arts, too, were cultivated by her people; and the round
towers, still pointed out to travelers, are believed to be the remains
of the architecture of the tenth century. The ruin of Ireland must be
traced to other causes than the character of the people or the Catholic
religion. Historians give us facts showing English oppressions
sufficient to destroy any nation.
The short, dark days of November intensified, in my eyes, the gloomy
prospects of that people, and made the change to the _Sirius_ of the
Cunard Line, the first regular Atlantic steamship to cross the ocean,
most enjoyable. Once on the boundless ocean, one sees no beggars, no
signs of human misery, no crumbling ruins of vast cathedral walls, no
records of the downfall of mighty nations, no trace, even, of the mortal
agony of the innumerable host buried beneath her bosom. Byron truly
says:
"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."
When we embarked on the _Sirius_, we had grave doubts as to our safety
and the probability of our reaching the other side, as we did not feel
that ocean steamers had yet been fairly tried. But, after a passage of
eighteen days, eleven hours, and fifteen minutes, we reached Boston,
having spent six hours at Halifax. We little thought that the steamer
_Sirius_ of fifty years ago would ever develop into the magnificent
floating palaces of to-day--three times as large and three times as
swift. In spite of the steamer, however, we had a cold, rough, dreary
voyage, and I have no pleasant memories connected with it. Our
fellow-passengers were all in their staterooms most of the time. Our
good friend Mr. Birney had sailed two weeks before us, and as Mr.
Stanton was confined to his berth, I was thrown on my own resources. I
found my chief amusement in reading novels and playing chess with a
British officer on his way to Canada. When it was possible I walked on
deck with the captain, or sat in some sheltered corner, watching the
waves. We arrived in New York, by rail, the day before Christmas.
Everything looked bright and gay in our streets. It seemed to me that
the sky was clearer, the air more refreshing, and the sunlight more
brilliant than in any other land!
CHAPTER VII.
MOTHERHOOD.
We found my sister Harriet in a new home in Clinton Place (Eighth
Street), New York city, then considered so far up town that Mr. Eaton's
friends were continually asking him why he went so far away from the
social center, though in a few months they followed him. Here we passed
a week. I especially enjoyed seeing my little niece and nephew, the only
grandchildren in the family. The girl was the most beautiful child I
ever saw, and the boy the most intelligent and amusing. He was very fond
of hearing me recite the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes entitled "The
Height of the Ridiculous," which I did many times, but he always wanted
to see the lines that almost killed the man with laughing. He went
around to a number of the bookstores one day and inquired for them. I
told him afterward they were never published; that when Mr. Holmes saw
the effect on his servant he suppressed them, lest they should produce
the same effect on the typesetters, editors, and the readers of the
Boston newspapers. My explanation never satisfied him. I told him he
might write to Mr. Holmes, and ask the privilege of reading the original
manuscript, if it still was or ever had been in existence. As one of my
grand-nephews was troubled in exactly the same way, I decided to appeal
myself to Dr. Holmes for the enlightenment of this second generation. So
I wrote him the following letter, which he kindly answered, telling us
that his "wretched man" was a myth like the heroes in "Mother Goose's
Melodies":
"DEAR DR. HOLMES:
"I have a little nephew to whom I often recite 'The Height of the
Ridiculous,' and he invariably asks for the lines that produced the
fatal effect on your servant. He visited most of the bookstores in
New York city to find them, and nothing but your own word, I am
sure, will ever convince him that the 'wretched man' is but a
figment of your imagination. I tried to satisfy him by saying you
did not dare to publish the lines lest they should produce a
similar effect on the typesetters, editors, and the readers of the
Boston journals.
"However, he wishes me to ask you whether you kept a copy of the
original manuscript, or could reproduce the lines with equal power.
If not too much trouble, please send me a few lines on this point,
and greatly oblige,
"Yours sincerely,
"ELIZABETH CADY STANTON."
"MY DEAR MRS. STANTON:
"I wish you would explain to your little nephew that the story of
the poor fellow who almost died laughing was a kind of a dream of
mine, and not a real thing that happened, any more than that an old
woman 'lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know
what to do,' or that Jack climbed the bean stalk and found the
giant who lived at the top of it. You can explain to him what is
meant by imagination, and thus turn my youthful rhymes into a text
for a discourse worthy of the Concord School of Philosophy. I have
not my poems by me here, but I remember that 'The Height of the
Ridiculous' ended with this verse:
"Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man,
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can."
"But tell your nephew he mustn't cry about it any more than because
geese go barefoot and bald eagles have no nightcaps. The verses are
in all the editions of my poems.
"Believe me, dear Mrs. Stanton,
"Very Truly and Respectfully Yours,
"OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES."
After spending the holidays in New York city, we started for Johnstown
in a "stage sleigh, conveying the United States mail," drawn by spanking
teams of four horses, up the Hudson River valley. We were three days
going to Albany, stopping over night at various points; a journey now
performed in three hours. The weather was clear and cold, the sleighing
fine, the scenery grand, and our traveling companions most entertaining,
so the trip was very enjoyable. From Albany to Schenectady we went in
the railway cars; then another sleighride of thirty miles brought us to
Johnstown. My native hills, buried under two feet of snow, tinted with
the last rays of the setting sun, were a beautiful and familiar sight.
Though I had been absent but ten months, it seemed like years, and I was
surprised to find how few changes had occurred since I left. My father
and mother, sisters Madge and Kate, the old house and furniture, the
neighbors, all looked precisely the same as when I left them. I had
seen so much and been so constantly on the wing that I wondered that all
things here should have stood still. I expected to hear of many births,
marriages, deaths, and social upheavals, but the village news was
remarkably meager. This hunger for home news on returning is common, I
suppose, to all travelers.
Our trunks unpacked, wardrobes arranged in closets and drawers, the
excitement of seeing friends over, we spent some time in making plans
for the future.
My husband, after some consultation with my father, decided to enter his
office and commence the study of the law. As this arrangement kept me
under the parental roof, I had two added years of pleasure, walking,
driving, and riding on horseback with my sisters. Madge and Kate were
dearer to me than ever, as I saw the inevitable separation awaiting us
in the near future. In due time they were married and commenced
housekeeping--Madge in her husband's house near by, and Kate in Buffalo.
All my sisters were peculiarly fortunate in their marriages; their
husbands being men of fine presence, liberal education, high moral
character, and marked ability. These were pleasant and profitable years.
I devoted them to reading law, history, and political economy, with
occasional interruptions to take part in some temperance or anti-slavery
excitement.
Eliza Murray and I had classes of colored children in the Sunday school.
On one occasion, when there was to be a festival, speaking in the
church, a procession through the streets, and other public performances
for the Sunday-school celebration, some narrow-minded bigots objected to
the colored children taking part. They approached Miss Murray and me
with most persuasive tones on the wisdom of not allowing them to march
in the procession to the church. We said, "Oh, no! It won't do to
disappoint the children. They are all dressed, with their badges on, and
looking forward with great pleasure to the festivities of the day.
Besides, we would not cater to any of these contemptible prejudices
against color." We were all assembled in the courthouse preparatory to
forming in the line of march. Some were determined to drive the colored
children home, but Miss Murray and I, like two defiant hens, kept our
little brood close behind us, determined to conquer or perish in the
struggle. At last milder counsels prevailed, and it was agreed that they
might march in the rear. We made no objection and fell into line, but,
when we reached the church door, it was promptly closed as the last
white child went in. We tried two other doors, but all were guarded. We
shed tears of vexation and pity for the poor children, and, when they
asked us the reason why they could not go in, we were embarrassed and
mortified with the explanation we were forced to give. However, I
invited them to my father's house, where Miss Murray and I gave them
refreshments and entertained them for the rest of the day.
The puzzling questions of theology and poverty that had occupied so much
of my thoughts, now gave place to the practical one, "what to do with a
baby." Though motherhood is the most important of all the
professions,--requiring more knowledge than any other department in
human affairs,--yet there is not sufficient attention given to the
preparation for this office. If we buy a plant of a horticulturist we
ask him many questions as to its needs, whether it thrives best in
sunshine or in shade, whether it needs much or little water, what
degrees of heat or cold; but when we hold in our arms for the first
time, a being of infinite possibilities, in whose wisdom may rest the
destiny of a nation, we take it for granted that the laws governing its
life, health, and happiness are intuitively understood, that there is
nothing new to be learned in regard to it. Yet here is a science to
which philosophers have, as yet, given but little attention. An
important fact has only been discovered and acted upon within the last
ten years, that children come into the world tired, and not hungry,
exhausted with the perilous journey. Instead of being thoroughly bathed
and dressed, and kept on the rack while the nurse makes a prolonged
toilet and feeds it some nostrum supposed to have much needed medicinal
influence, the child's face, eyes, and mouth should be hastily washed
with warm water, and the rest of its body thoroughly oiled, and then it
should be slipped into a soft pillow case, wrapped in a blanket, and
laid to sleep. Ordinarily, in the proper conditions, with its face
uncovered in a cool, pure atmosphere, it will sleep twelve hours. Then
it should be bathed, fed, and clothed in a high-necked, long-sleeved
silk shirt and a blanket, all of which could be done in five minutes. As
babies lie still most of the time the first six weeks, they need no
dressing. I think the nurse was a full hour bathing and dressing my
firstborn, who protested with a melancholy wail every blessed minute.
Ignorant myself of the initiative steps on the threshold of time, I
supposed this proceeding was approved by the best authorities. However,
I had been thinking, reading, observing, and had as little faith in the
popular theories in regard to babies as on any other subject. I saw
them, on all sides, ill half the time, pale and peevish, dying early,
having no joy in life. I heard parents complaining of weary days and
sleepless nights, while each child, in turn, ran the gauntlet of red
gum, jaundice, whooping cough, chicken-pox, mumps, measles, scarlet
fever, and fits. They all seemed to think these inflictions were a part
of the eternal plan--that Providence had a kind of Pandora's box, from
which he scattered these venerable diseases most liberally among those
whom he especially loved. Having gone through the ordeal of bearing a
child, I was determined, if possible, to keep him, so I read everything
I could find on the subject. But the literature on this subject was as
confusing and unsatisfactory as the longer and shorter catechisms and
the Thirty-nine Articles of our faith. I had recently visited our dear
friends, Theodore and Angelina Grimke-Weld, and they warned me against
books on this subject. They had been so misled by one author, who
assured them that the stomach of a child could only hold one
tablespoonful, that they nearly starved their firstborn to death. Though
the child dwindled, day by day, and, at the end of a month, looked like
a little old man, yet they still stood by the distinguished author.
Fortunately, they both went off, one day, and left the child with Sister
"Sarah," who thought she would make an experiment and see what a child's
stomach could hold, as she had grave doubts about the tablespoonful
theory. To her surprise the baby took a pint bottle full of milk, and
had the sweetest sleep thereon he had known in his earthly career. After
that he was permitted to take what he wanted, and "the author" was
informed of his libel on the infantile stomach.
So here, again, I was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt
without chart or compass. The life and well-being of the race seemed to
hang on the slender thread of such traditions as were handed down
by-ignorant mothers and nurses. One powerful ray of light illuminated
the darkness; it was the work of Andrew Combe on "Infancy." He had,
evidently watched some of the manifestations of man in the first stages
of his development, and could tell, at least, as much of babies as
naturalists could of beetles and bees. He did give young mothers some
hints of what to do, the whys and wherefores of certain lines of
procedure during antenatal life, as well as the proper care thereafter.
I read several chapters to the nurse. Although, out of her ten children,
she had buried five, she still had too much confidence in her own wisdom
and experience to pay much attention to any new idea that might be
suggested to her. Among other things, Combe said that a child's bath
should be regulated by the thermometer, in order to be always of the
same temperature. She ridiculed the idea, and said her elbow was better
than any thermometer, and, when I insisted on its use, she would
invariably, with a smile of derision, put her elbow in first, to show
how exactly it tallied with the thermometer. When I insisted that the
child should not be bandaged, she rebelled outright, and said she would
not take the responsibility of nursing a child without a bandage. I
said, "Pray, sit down, dear nurse, and let us reason together. Do not
think I am setting up my judgment against yours, with all your
experience. I am simply trying to act on the opinions of a
distinguished physician, who says there should be no pressure on a child
anywhere; that the limbs and body should be free; that it is cruel to
bandage an infant from hip to armpit, as is usually done in America; or
both body and legs, as is done in Europe; or strap them to boards, as is
done by savages on both continents. Can you give me one good reason,
nurse, why a child should be bandaged?"
"Yes," she said emphatically, "I can give you a dozen."
"I only asked for one," I replied.
"Well," said she, after much hesitation, "the bones of a newborn infant
are soft, like cartilage, and, unless you pin them up snugly, there is
danger of their falling apart."
"It seems to me," I replied, "you have given the strongest reason why
they should be carefully guarded against the slightest pressure. It is
very remarkable that kittens and puppies should be so well put together
that they need no artificial bracing, and the human family be left
wholly to the mercy of a bandage. Suppose a child was born where you
could not get a bandage, what then? Now I think this child will remain
intact without a bandage, and, if I am willing to take the risk, why
should you complain?"
"Because," said she, "if the child should die, it would injure my name
as a nurse. I therefore wash my hands of all these new-fangled notions."
So she bandaged the child every morning, and I as regularly took it off.
It has been fully proved since to be as useless an appendage as the
vermiform. She had several cups with various concoctions of herbs
standing on the chimney-corner, ready for insomnia, colic, indigestion,
etc., etc., all of which were spirited away when she was at her dinner.
In vain I told her we were homeopathists, and afraid of everything in
the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms lower than the two-hundredth
dilution. I tried to explain the Hahnemann system of therapeutics, the
philosophy of the principle _similia similibus curantur_, but she had no
capacity for first principles, and did not understand my discourse. I
told her that, if she would wash the baby's mouth with pure cold water
morning and night and give it a teaspoonful to drink occasionally during
the day, there would be no danger of red gum; that if she would keep the
blinds open and let in the air and sunshine, keep the temperature of the
room at sixty-five degrees, leave the child's head uncovered so that it
could breathe freely, stop rocking and trotting it and singing such
melancholy hymns as "Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!" the baby and
I would both be able to weather the cape without a bandage. I told her I
should nurse the child once in two hours, and that she must not feed it
any of her nostrums in the meantime; that a child's stomach, being made
on the same general plan as our own, needed intervals of rest as well as
ours. She said it would be racked with colic if the stomach was empty
any length of time, and that it would surely have rickets if it were
kept too still. I told her if the child had no anodynes, nature would
regulate its sleep and motions. She said she could not stay in a room
with the thermometer at sixty-five degrees, so I told her to sit in the
next room and regulate the heat to suit herself; that I would ring a
bell when her services were needed.
The reader will wonder, no doubt, that I kept such a cantankerous
servant. I could get no other. Dear "Mother Monroe," as wise as she was
good, and as tender as she was strong, who had nursed two generations of
mothers in our village, was engaged at that time, and I was compelled to
take an exotic. I had often watched "Mother Monroe" with admiration, as
she turned and twisted my sister's baby. It lay as peacefully in her
hands as if they were lined with eider down. She bathed and dressed it
by easy stages, turning the child over and over like a pancake. But she
was so full of the magnetism of human love, giving the child, all the
time, the most consoling assurance that the operation was to be a short
one, that the whole proceeding was quite entertaining to the observer
and seemingly agreeable to the child, though it had a rather surprised
look as it took a bird's-eye view, in quick succession, of the ceiling
and the floor. Still my nurse had her good points. She was very pleasant
when she had her own way. She was neat and tidy, and ready to serve me
at any time, night or day. She did not wear false teeth that rattled
when she talked, nor boots that squeaked when she walked. She did not
snuff nor chew cloves, nor speak except when spoken to. Our discussions,
on various points, went on at intervals, until I succeeded in planting
some ideas in her mind, and when she left me, at the end of six weeks,
she confessed that she had learned some valuable lessons. As the baby
had slept quietly most of the time, had no crying spells, nor colic, and
I looked well, she naturally came to the conclusion that pure air,
sunshine, proper dressing, and regular feeding were more necessary for
babies than herb teas and soothing syrups.
Besides the obstinacy of the nurse, I had the ignorance of physicians
to contend with. When the child was four days old we discovered that the
collar bone was bent. The physician, wishing to get a pressure on the
shoulder, braced the bandage round the wrist. "Leave that," he said,
"ten days, and then it will be all right." Soon after he left I noticed
that the child's hand was blue, showing that the circulation was
impeded. "That will never do," said I; "nurse, take it off." "No,
indeed," she answered, "I shall never interfere with the doctor." So I
took it off myself, and sent for another doctor, who was said to know
more of surgery. He expressed great surprise that the first physician
called should have put on so severe a bandage. "That," said he, "would
do for a grown man, but ten days of it on a child would make him a
cripple." However, he did nearly the same thing, only fastening it round
the hand instead of the wrist. I soon saw that the ends of the fingers
were all purple, and that to leave that on ten days would be as
dangerous as the first. So I took that off.
"What a woman!" exclaimed the nurse. "What do you propose to do?"
"Think out something better, myself; so brace me up with some pillows
and give the baby to me."
She looked at me aghast and said, "You'd better trust the doctors, or
your child will be a helpless cripple."
"Yes," I replied, "he would be, if we had left either of those bandages
on, but I have an idea of something better."
"Now," said I, talking partly to myself and partly to her, "what we want
is a little pressure on that bone; that is what both those men aimed at.
How can we get it without involving the arm, is the question?"
"I am sure I don't know," said she, rubbing her hands and taking two or
three brisk turns round the room.
"Well, bring me three strips of linen, four double." I then folded one,
wet in arnica and water, and laid it on the collar bone, put two other
bands, like a pair of suspenders, over the shoulders, crossing them both
in front and behind, pinning the ends to the diaper, which gave the
needed pressure without impeding the circulation anywhere. As I finished
she gave me a look of budding confidence, and seemed satisfied that all
was well. Several times, night and day, we wet the compress and
readjusted the bands, until all appearances of inflammation had
subsided.
At the end of ten days the two sons of Aesculapius appeared and made
their examination and said all was right, whereupon I told them how
badly their bandages worked and what I had done myself. They smiled at
each other, and one said:
"Well, after all, a mother's instinct is better than a man's reason."
"Thank you, gentlemen, there was no instinct about it. I did some hard
thinking before I saw how I could get a pressure on the shoulder without
impeding the circulation, as you did."
Thus, in the supreme moment of a young mother's life, when I needed
tender care and support, I felt the whole responsibility of my child's
supervision; but though uncertain at every step of my own knowledge, I
learned another lesson in self-reliance. I trusted neither men nor books
absolutely after this, either in regard to the heavens above or the
earth beneath, but continued to use my "mother's instinct," if "reason"
is too dignified a term to apply to woman's thoughts. My advice to every
mother is, above all other arts and sciences, study first what relates
to babyhood, as there is no department of human action in which there is
such lamentable ignorance.
At the end of six weeks my nurse departed, and I had a good woman in her
place who obeyed my orders, and now a new difficulty arose from an
unexpected quarter. My father and husband took it into their heads that
the child slept too much. If not awake when they wished to look at him
or to show him to their friends, they would pull him out of his crib on
all occasions. When I found neither of them was amenable to reason on
this point, I locked the door, and no amount of eloquent pleading ever
gained them admittance during the time I considered sacred to the baby's
slumbers. At six months having, as yet, had none of the diseases
supposed to be inevitable, the boy weighed thirty pounds. Then the
stately Peter came again into requisition, and in his strong arms the
child spent many of his waking hours. Peter, with a long, elephantine
gait, slowly wandered over the town, lingering especially in the busy
marts of trade. Peter's curiosity had strengthened with years, and,
wherever a crowd gathered round a monkey and hand organ, a vender's
wagon, an auction stand, or the post office at mail time, there stood
Peter, black as coal, with "the beautiful boy in white," the most
conspicuous figure in the crowd. As I told Peter never to let children
kiss the baby, for fear of some disease, he kept him well aloft,
allowing no affectionate manifestations except toward himself.
My reading, at this time, centered on hygiene. I came to the
conclusion, after much thought and observation, that children never
cried unless they were uncomfortable. A professor at Union College, who
used to combat many of my theories, said he gave one of his children a
sound spanking at six weeks, and it never disturbed him a night
afterward. Another Solomon told me that a very weak preparation of opium
would keep a child always quiet and take it through the dangerous period
of teething without a ripple on the surface of domestic life. As
children cannot tell what ails them, and suffer from many things of
which parents are ignorant, the crying of the child should arouse them
to an intelligent examination. To spank it for crying is to silence the
watchman on the tower through fear, to give soothing syrup is to drug
the watchman while the evils go on. Parents may thereby insure eight
hours' sleep at the time, but at the risk of greater trouble in the
future with sick and dying children. Tom Moore tells us "the heart from
love to one, grows bountiful to all." I know the care of one child made
me thoughtful of all. I never hear a child cry, now, that I do not feel
that I am bound to find out the reason.
In my extensive travels on lecturing tours, in after years, I had many
varied experiences with babies. One day, in the cars, a child was crying
near me, while the parents were alternately shaking and slapping it.
First one would take it with an emphatic jerk, and then the other. At
last I heard the father say in a spiteful tone, "If you don't stop I'll
throw you out of the window." One naturally hesitates about interfering
between parents and children, so I generally restrain myself as long as
I can endure the torture of witnessing such outrages, but at length I
turned and said:
"Let me take your child and see if I can find out what ails it."
"Nothing ails it," said the father, "but bad temper."
The child readily came to me. I felt all around to see if its clothes
pinched anywhere, or if there were any pins pricking. I took off its hat
and cloak to see if there were any strings cutting its neck or choking
it. Then I glanced at the feet, and lo! there was the trouble. The boots
were at least one size too small. I took them off, and the stockings,
too, and found the feet as cold as ice and the prints of the stockings
clearly traced on the tender flesh. We all know the agony of tight
boots. I rubbed the feet and held them in my hands until they were warm,
when the poor little thing fell asleep. I said to the parents, "You are
young people, I see, and this is probably your first child." They said,
"Yes." "You don't intend to be cruel, I know, but if you had thrown
those boots out of the window, when you threatened to throw the child,
it would have been wiser. This poor child has suffered ever since it was
dressed this morning." I showed them the marks on the feet, and called
their attention to the fact that the child fell asleep as soon as its
pain was relieved. The mother said she knew the boots were tight, as it
was with difficulty she could get them on, but the old ones were too
shabby for the journey and they had no time to change the others.
"Well," said the husband, "if I had known those boots were tight, I
would have thrown them out of the window."
"Now," said I, "let me give you one rule: when your child cries,
remember it is telling you, as well as it can, that something hurts it,
either outside or in, and do not rest until you find what it is.
Neither spanking, shaking, or scolding can relieve pain."
I have seen women enter the cars with their babies' faces completely
covered with a blanket shawl. I have often thought I would like to cover
their faces for an hour and see how they would bear it. In such
circumstances, in order to get the blanket open, I have asked to see the
baby, and generally found it as red as a beet. Ignorant nurses and
mothers have discovered that children sleep longer with their heads
covered. They don't know why, nor the injurious effect of breathing over
and over the same air that has been thrown off the lungs polluted with
carbonic acid gas. This stupefies the child and prolongs the unhealthy
slumber.
One hot day, in the month of May, I entered a crowded car at Cedar
Rapids, Ia., and took the only empty seat beside a gentleman who seemed
very nervous about a crying child. I was scarcely seated when he said:
"Mother, do you know anything about babies?"
"Oh, yes!" I said, smiling, "that is a department of knowledge on which
I especially pride myself."
"Well," said he, "there is a child that has cried most of the time for
the last twenty-four hours. What do you think ails it?"
Making a random supposition, I replied, "It probably needs a bath."
He promptly rejoined, "If you will give it one, I will provide the
necessary means."
I said, "I will first see if the child will come to me and if the mother
is willing."
I found the mother only too glad to have a few minutes' rest, and the
child too tired to care who took it. She gave me a suit of clean
clothes throughout, the gentleman spread his blanket shawl on the seat,
securing the opposite one for me and the bathing appliances. Then he
produced a towel, sponge, and an india-rubber bowl full of water, and I
gave the child a generous drink and a thorough ablution. It stretched
and seemed to enjoy every step of the proceeding, and, while I was
brushing its golden curls as gently as I could, it fell asleep; so I
covered it with the towel and blanket shawl, not willing to disturb it
for dressing. The poor mother, too, was sound asleep, and the gentleman
very happy. He had children of his own and, like me, felt great pity for
the poor, helpless little victim of ignorance and folly. I engaged one
of the ladies to dress it when it awoke, as I was soon to leave the
train. It slept the two hours I remained--how much longer I never heard.
A young man, who had witnessed the proceeding, got off at the same
station and accosted me, saying:
"I should be very thankful if you would come and see my baby. It is only
one month old and cries all the time, and my wife, who is only sixteen
years old, is worn out with it and neither of us know what to do, so we
all cry together, and the doctor says he does not see what ails it."
So I went on my mission of mercy and found the child bandaged as tight
as a drum. When I took out the pins and unrolled it, it fairly popped
like the cork out of a champagne bottle. I rubbed its breast and its
back and soon soothed it to sleep. I remained a long time, telling them
how to take care of the child and the mother, too. I told them
everything I could think of in regard to clothes, diet, and pure air. I
asked the mother why she bandaged her child as she did. She said her
nurse told her that there was danger of hernia unless the abdomen was
well bandaged. I told her that the only object of a bandage was to
protect the navel, for a few days, until it was healed, and for that
purpose all that was necessary was a piece of linen four inches square,
well oiled, folded four times double, with a hole in the center, laid
over it. I remembered, next day, that I forgot to tell them to give the
child water, and so I telegraphed them, "Give the baby water six times a
day." I heard of that baby afterward. It lived and flourished, and the
parents knew how to administer to the wants of the next one. The father
was a telegraph operator and had many friends--knights of the
key--throughout Iowa. For many years afterward, in leisure moments,
these knights would "call up" this parent and say, over the wire, "Give
the baby water six times a day." Thus did they "repeat the story, and
spread the truth from pole to pole."
CHAPTER VIII.
BOSTON AND CHELSEA.
In the autumn of 1843 my husband was admitted to the bar and commenced
the practice of law in Boston with Mr. Bowles, brother-in-law of the
late General John A. Dix. This gave me the opportunity to make many
pleasant acquaintances among the lawyers in Boston, and to meet,
intimately, many of the noble men and women among reformers, whom I had
long worshiped at a distance. Here, for the first time, I met Lydia
Maria Child, Abby Kelly, Paulina Wright, Elizabeth Peabody, Maria
Chapman and her beautiful sisters, the Misses Weston, Oliver and
Marianna Johnson, Joseph and Thankful Southwick and their three bright
daughters. The home of the Southwicks was always a harbor of rest for
the weary, where the anti-slavery hosts were wont to congregate, and
where one was always sure to meet someone worth knowing. Their
hospitality was generous to an extreme, and so boundless that they were,
at last, fairly eaten out of house and home. Here, too, for the first
time, I met Theodore Parker, John Pierpont, John G. Whittier, Emerson,
Alcott, Lowell, Hawthorne, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel E. Sewall, Sidney Howard
Gay, Pillsbury, Foster, Frederick Douglass, and last though not least,
those noble men, Charles Hovey and Francis Jackson, the only men who
ever left any money to the cause of woman suffrage. I also met Miss
Jackson, afterward Mrs. Eddy, who left half her fortune, fifty thousand
dollars, for the same purpose.
I was a frequent visitor at the home of William Lloyd Garrison. Though
he had a prolonged battle to fight in the rough outside world, his home
was always a haven of rest. Mrs. Garrison was a sweet-tempered,
conscientious woman, who tried, under all circumstances, to do what was
right. She had sound judgment and rare common sense, was tall and
fine-looking, with luxuriant brown hair, large tender blue eyes,
delicate features, and affable manners. They had an exceptionally fine
family of five sons and one daughter. Fanny, now the wife of Henry
Villard, the financier, was the favorite and pet. All the children, in
their maturer years, have fulfilled the promises of their childhood.
Though always in straitened circumstances, the Garrisons were very
hospitable. It was next to impossible for Mr. Garrison to meet a friend
without inviting him to his house, especially at the close of a
convention.
I was one of twelve at one of his impromptu tea parties. We all took it
for granted that his wife knew we were coming, and that her preparations
were already made. Surrounded by half a dozen children, she was
performing the last act in the opera of Lullaby, wholly unconscious of
the invasion downstairs. But Mr. Garrison was equal to every emergency,
and, after placing his guests at their ease in the parlor, he hastened
to the nursery, took off his coat, and rocked the baby until his wife
had disposed of the remaining children. Then they had a consultation
about the tea, and when, basket in hand, the good man sallied forth for
the desired viands, Mrs. Garrison, having made a hasty toilet, came
down to welcome her guests. She was as genial and self-possessed as if
all things had been prepared. She made no apologies for what was lacking
in the general appearance of the house nor in the variety of the
_menu_--it was sufficient for her to know that Mr. Garrison was happy in
feeling free to invite his friends. The impromptu meal was excellent,
and we had a most enjoyable evening. I have no doubt that Mrs. Garrison
had more real pleasure than if she had been busy all day making
preparations and had been tired out when her guests arrived.
The anti-slavery conventions and fairs, held every year during the
holidays, brought many charming people from other States, and made
Boston a social center for the coadjutors of Garrison and Phillips.
These conventions surpassed any meetings I had ever attended; the
speeches were eloquent and the debates earnest and forcible. Garrison
and Phillips were in their prime, and slavery was a question of national
interest. The hall in which the fairs were held, under the auspices of
Mrs. Chapman and her cohorts, was most artistically decorated. There one
could purchase whatever the fancy could desire, for English friends,
stimulated by the appeals of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Pease, used
to send boxes of beautiful things, gathered from all parts of the
Eastern Continent. There, too, one could get a most _recherche_ luncheon
in the society of the literati of Boston; for, however indifferent many
were to slavery _per se_, they enjoyed these fairs, and all classes
flocked there till far into the night. It was a kind of ladies' exchange
for the holiday week, where each one was sure to meet her friends. The
fair and the annual convention, coming in succession, intensified the
interest in both. I never grew weary of the conventions, though I
attended all the sessions, lasting, sometimes, until eleven o'clock at
night. The fiery eloquence of the abolitionists, the amusing episodes
that occurred when some crank was suppressed and borne out on the
shoulders of his brethren, gave sufficient variety to the proceedings to
keep the interest up to high-water mark.
There was one old man dressed in white, carrying a scythe, who imagined
himself the personification of "Time," though called "Father Lampson."
Occasionally he would bubble over with some prophetic vision, and, as he
could not be silenced, he was carried out. He usually made himself as
limp as possible, which added to the difficulty of his exit and the
amusement of the audience. A ripple of merriment would unsettle, for a
moment, even the dignity of the platform when Abigail Folsom, another
crank, would shout from the gallery, "Stop not, my brother, on the order
of your going, but go." The abolitionists were making the experiment, at
this time, of a free platform, allowing everyone to speak as moved by
the spirit, but they soon found that would not do, as those evidently
moved by the spirit of mischief were quite as apt to air their vagaries
as those moved by the spirit of truth.
However, the Garrisonian platform always maintained a certain degree of
freedom outside its regular programme, and, although this involved extra
duty in suppressing cranks, yet the meeting gained enthusiasm by some
good spontaneous speaking on the floor as well as on the platform. A
number of immense mass meetings were held in Faneuil Hall, a large,
dreary place, with its bare walls and innumerable dingy windows. The
only attempt at an ornament was the American eagle, with its wings
spread and claws firmly set, in the middle of the gallery. The gilt was
worn off its beak, giving it the appearance, as Edmund Quincy said, of
having a bad cold in the head.
This old hall was sacred to so many memories connected with the early
days of the Revolution that it was a kind of Mecca for the lovers of
liberty visiting Boston. The anti-slavery meetings held there were often
disturbed by mobs that would hold the most gifted orator at bay hour
after hour, and would listen only to the songs of the Hutchinson family.
Although these songs were a condensed extract of the whole anti-slavery
constitution and by-laws, yet the mob was as peaceful under these paeans
to liberty as a child under the influence of an anodyne. What a welcome
and beautiful vision that was when the four brothers, in blue broadcloth
and white collars, turned down _a la_ Byron, and little sister Abby in
silk, soft lace, and blue ribbon, appeared on the platform to sing their
quaint ballads of freedom! Fresh from the hills of New Hampshire, they
looked so sturdy, so vigorous, so pure, so true that they seemed fitting
representatives of all the cardinal virtues, and even a howling mob
could not resist their influence. Perhaps, after one of their ballads,
the mob would listen five minutes to Wendell Phillips or Garrison until
he gave them some home thrusts, when all was uproar again. The Northern
merchants who made their fortunes out of Southern cotton, the
politicians who wanted votes, and the ministers who wanted to keep peace
in the churches, were all as much opposed to the anti-slavery agitation
as were the slaveholders themselves. These were the classes the mob
represented, though seemingly composed of gamblers, liquor dealers, and
demagogues. For years the anti-slavery struggle at the North was carried
on against statecraft, priestcraft, the cupidity of the moneyed classes,
and the ignorance of the masses, but, in spite of all these forces of
evil, it triumphed at last.
I was in Boston at the time that Lane and Wright, some metaphysical
Englishmen, and our own Alcott held their famous philosophical
conversations, in which Elizabeth Peabody took part. I went to them
regularly. I was ambitious to absorb all the wisdom I could, but,
really, I could not give an intelligent report of the points under
discussion at any sitting. Oliver Johnson asked me, one day, if I
enjoyed them. I thought, from a twinkle in his eye, that he thought I
did not, so I told him I was ashamed to confess that I did not know what
they were talking about. He said, "Neither do I,--very few of their
hearers do,--so you need not be surprised that they are incomprehensible
to you, nor think less of your own capacity."
I was indebted to Mr. Johnson for several of the greatest pleasures I
enjoyed in Boston. He escorted me to an entire course of Theodore
Parker's lectures, given in Marlborough Chapel. This was soon after the
great preacher had given his famous sermon on "The Permanent and
Transient in Religion," when he was ostracised, even by the Unitarians,
for his radical utterances, and not permitted to preach in any of their
pulpits. His lectures were deemed still more heterodox than that sermon.
He shocked the orthodox churches of that day--more, even, than Ingersoll
has in our times.
The lectures, however, were so soul-satisfying to me that I was
surprised at the bitter criticisms I heard expressed. Though they were
two hours long, I never grew weary, and, when the course ended, I said
to Mr. Johnson:
"I wish I could hear them over again."
"Well, you can," said he, "Mr. Parker is to repeat them in
Cambridgeport, beginning next week." Accordingly we went there and heard
them again with equal satisfaction.
During the winter in Boston I attended all the lectures, churches,
theaters, concerts, and temperance, peace, and prison-reform conventions
within my reach. I had never lived in such an enthusiastically literary
and reform latitude before, and my mental powers were kept at the
highest tension. We went to Chelsea, for the summer, and boarded with
the Baptist minister, the Rev. John Wesley Olmstead, afterward editor of
_The Watchman and Reflector_. He had married my cousin, Mary Livingston,
one of the most lovely, unselfish characters I ever knew. There I had
the opportunity of meeting several of the leading Baptist ministers in
New England, and, as I was thoroughly imbued with Parker's ideas, we had
many heated discussions on theology. There, too, I met Orestes Bronson,
a remarkably well-read man, who had gone through every phase of
religious experience from blank atheism to the bosom of the Catholic
Church, where I believe he found repose at the end of his days. He was
so arbitrary and dogmatic that most people did not like him; but I
appreciated his acquaintance, as he was a liberal thinker and had a
world of information which he readily imparted to those of a teachable
spirit. As I was then in a hungering, thirsting condition for truth on
every subject, the friendship of such a man was, to me, an inestimable
blessing. Reading Theodore Parker's lectures, years afterward, I was
surprised to find how little there was in them to shock anybody--the
majority of thinking people having grown up to them.
While living in Chelsea two years, I used to walk (there being no public
conveyances running on Sunday) from the ferry to Marlborough Chapel to
hear Mr. Parker preach. It was a long walk, over two miles, and I was so
tired, on reaching the chapel, that I made it a point to sleep through
all the preliminary service, so as to be fresh for the sermon, as the
friend next whom I sat always wakened me in time. One Sunday, when my
friend was absent, it being a very warm day and I unusually fatigued, I
slept until the sexton informed me that he was about to close the doors!
In an unwary moment I imparted this fact to my Baptist friends. They
made all manner of fun ever afterward of the soothing nature of Mr.
Parker's theology, and my long walk, every Sunday, to repose in the
shadow of a heterodox altar. Still, the loss of the sermon was the only
vexatious part of it, and I had the benefit of the walk and the
refreshing slumber, to the music of Mr. Parker's melodious voice and the
deep-toned organ.
Mrs. Oliver Johnson and I spent two days at the Brook Farm Community
when in the height of its prosperity. There I met the Ripleys,--who
were, I believe, the backbone of the experiment,--William Henry
Channing, Bronson Alcott, Charles A. Dana, Frederick Cabot, William
Chase, Mrs. Horace Greeley, who was spending a few days there, and many
others, whose names I cannot recall. Here was a charming family of
intelligent men and women, doing their own farm and house work, with
lectures, readings, music, dancing, and games when desired; realizing,
in a measure, Edward Bellamy's beautiful vision of the equal conditions
of the human family in the year 2000. The story of the beginning and end
of this experiment of community life has been told so often that I will
simply say that its failure was a grave disappointment to those most
deeply interested in its success. Mr. Channing told me, years after,
when he was pastor of the Unitarian church in Rochester, as we were
wandering through Mount Hope one day, that, when the Roxbury community
was dissolved and he was obliged to return to the old life of
competition, he would gladly have been laid under the sod, as the
isolated home seemed so solitary, silent, and selfish that the whole
atmosphere was oppressive.
In 1843 my father moved to Albany, to establish my brothers-in-law, Mr.
Wilkeson and Mr. McMartin, in the legal profession. That made Albany the
family rallying point for a few years. This enabled me to spend several
winters at the Capital and to take an active part in the discussion of
the Married Woman's Property Bill, then pending in the legislature.
William H. Seward, Governor of the State from 1839 to 1843, recommended
the Bill, and his wife, a woman of rare intelligence, advocated it in
society. Together we had the opportunity of talking with many members,
both of the Senate and the Assembly, in social circles, as well as in
their committee rooms. Bills were pending from 1836 until 1848, when the
measure finally passed.
My second son was born in Albany, in March, 1844, under more favorable
auspices than the first, as I knew, then, what to do with a baby.
Returning to Chelsea we commenced housekeeping, which afforded me
another chapter of experience. A new house, newly furnished, with
beautiful views of Boston Bay, was all I could desire. Mr. Stanton
announced to me, in starting, that his business would occupy all his
time, and that I must take entire charge of the housekeeping. So, with
two good servants and two babies under my sole supervision, my time was
pleasantly occupied.
When first installed as mistress over an establishment, one has that
same feeling of pride and satisfaction that a young minister must have
in taking charge of his first congregation. It is a proud moment in a
woman's life to reign supreme within four walls, to be the one to whom
all questions of domestic pleasure and economy are referred, and to hold
in her hand that little family book in which the daily expenses, the
outgoings and incomings, are duly registered. I studied up everything
pertaining to housekeeping, and enjoyed it all. Even washing day--that
day so many people dread--had its charms for me. The clean clothes on
the lines and on the grass looked so white, and smelled so sweet, that
it was to me a pretty sight to contemplate. I inspired my laundress with
an ambition to have her clothes look white and to get them out earlier
than our neighbors, and to have them ironed and put away sooner.
As Mr. Stanton did not come home to dinner, we made a picnic of our noon
meal on Mondays, and all thoughts and energies were turned to speed the
washing. No unnecessary sweeping or dusting, no visiting nor
entertaining angels unawares on that day--it was held sacred to soap
suds, blue-bags, and clotheslines. The children, only, had no deviation
in the regularity of their lives. They had their drives and walks,
their naps and rations, in quantity and time, as usual. I had all the
most approved cook books, and spent half my time preserving, pickling,
and experimenting in new dishes. I felt the same ambition to excel in
all departments of the culinary art that I did at school in the
different branches of learning. My love of order and cleanliness was
carried throughout, from parlor to kitchen, from the front door to the
back. I gave a man an extra shilling to pile the logs of firewood with
their smooth ends outward, though I did not have them scoured white, as
did our Dutch grandmothers. I tried, too, to give an artistic touch to
everything--the dress of my children and servants included. My dining
table was round, always covered with a clean cloth of a pretty pattern
and a centerpiece of flowers in their season, pretty dishes, clean
silver, and set with neatness and care. I put my soul into everything,
and hence enjoyed it. I never could understand how housekeepers could
rest with rubbish all round their back doors; eggshells, broken dishes,
tin cans, and old shoes scattered round their premises; servants ragged
and dirty, with their hair in papers, and with the kitchen and dining
room full of flies. I have known even artists to be indifferent to their
personal appearance and their surroundings. Surely a mother and child,
tastefully dressed, and a pretty home for a framework, is, as a picture,
even more attractive than a domestic scene hung on the wall. The love of
the beautiful can be illustrated as well in life as on canvas. There is
such a struggle among women to become artists that I really wish some of
their gifts could be illustrated in clean, orderly, beautiful homes.
Our house was pleasantly situated on the Chelsea Hills, commanding a
fine view of Boston, the harbor, and surrounding country. There, on the
upper piazza, I spent some of the happiest days of my life, enjoying, in
turn, the beautiful outlook, my children, and my books. Here, under the
very shadow of Bunker Hill Monument, my third son was born. Shortly
after this Gerrit Smith and his wife came to spend a few days with us,
so this boy, much against my will, was named after my cousin. I did not
believe in old family names unless they were peculiarly euphonious. I
had a list of beautiful names for sons and daughters, from which to
designate each newcomer; but, as yet, not one on my list had been used.
However, I put my foot down, at No. 4, and named him Theodore, and, thus
far, he has proved himself a veritable "gift of God," doing his
uttermost, in every way possible, to fight the battle of freedom for
woman.
During the visit of my cousin I thought I would venture on a small,
select dinner party, consisting of the Rev. John Pierpont and his wife,
Charles Sumner, John G. Whittier, and Joshua Leavitt. I had a new cook,
Rose, whose viands, thus far, had proved delicious, so I had no anxiety
on that score. But, unfortunately, on this occasion I had given her a
bottle of wine for the pudding sauce and whipped cream, of which she
imbibed too freely, and hence there were some glaring blunders in the
_menu_ that were exceedingly mortifying. As Mr. Smith and my husband
were both good talkers, I told them they must cover all defects with
their brilliant conversation, which they promised to do.
Rose had all the points of a good servant, phrenologically and
physiologically. She had a large head, with great bumps of caution and
order, her eyes were large and soft and far apart. In selecting her,
scientifically, I had told my husband, in triumph, several times what a
treasure I had found. Shortly after dinner, one evening when I was out,
she held the baby while the nurse was eating her supper, and carelessly
burned his foot against the stove. Then Mr. Stanton suggested that, in
selecting the next cook, I would better not trust to science, but
inquire of the family where she lived as to her practical virtues. Poor
Rose! she wept over her lapses when sober, and made fair promises for
the future, but I did not dare to trust her, so we parted. The one
drawback to the joys of housekeeping was then, as it is now, the lack of
faithful, competent servants. The hope of co-operative housekeeping, in
the near future, gives us some promise of a more harmonious domestic
life.
One of the books in my library I value most highly is the first volume
of Whittier's poems, published in 1838, "Dedicated to Henry B. Stanton,
as a token of the author's personal friendship, and of his respect for
the unreserved devotion of exalted talents to the cause of humanity and
freedom." Soon after our marriage we spent a few days with our gifted
Quaker poet, on his farm in Massachusetts.
I shall never forget those happy days in June; the long walks and
drives, and talks under the old trees of anti-slavery experiences, and
Whittier's mirth and indignation as we described different scenes in the
World's Anti-slavery Convention in London. He laughed immoderately at
the Tom Campbell episode. Poor fellow! he had taken too much wine that
day, and when Whittier's verses, addressed to the convention, were
read, he criticised them severely, and wound up by saying that the soul
of a poet was not in him. Mr. Stanton sprang to his feet and recited
some of Whittier's stirring stanzas on freedom, which electrified the
audience, and, turning to Campbell, he said: "What do you say to that?"
"Ah! that's real poetry," he replied. "And John Greenleaf Whittier is
its author," said Mr. Stanton.
I enjoyed, too, the morning and evening service, when the revered mother
read the Scriptures and we all bowed our heads in silent worship. There
was, at times, an atmosphere of solemnity pervading everything, that was
oppressive in the midst of so much that appealed to my higher nature.
There was a shade of sadness in even the smile of the mother and sister,
and a rigid plainness in the house and its surroundings, a depressed
look in Whittier himself that the songs of the birds, the sunshine, and
the bracing New England air seemed powerless to chase away, caused, as I
afterward heard, by pecuniary embarrassment, and fears in regard to the
delicate health of the sister. She, too, had rare poetical talent, and
in her Whittier found not only a helpful companion in the practical
affairs of life, but one who sympathized with him in the highest flights
of which his muse was capable. Their worst fears were realized in the
death of the sister not long after. In his last volume several of her
poems were published, which are quite worthy the place the brother's
appreciation has given them. Whittier's love and reverence for his
mother and sister, so marked in every word and look, were charming
features of his home life. All his poems to our sex breathe the same
tender, worshipful sentiments.
Soon after this visit at Amesbury, our noble friend spent a few days
with us in Chelsea, near Boston. One evening, after we had been talking
a long time of the unhappy dissensions among anti-slavery friends, by
way of dissipating the shadows I opened the piano, and proposed that we
should sing some cheerful songs. "Oh, no!" exclaimed Mr. Stanton, "do
not touch a note; you will put every nerve of Whittier's body on edge."
It seemed, to me, so natural for a poet to love music that I was
surprised to know that it was a torture to him.
From our upper piazza we had a fine view of Boston harbor. Sitting there
late one moonlight night, admiring the outlines of Bunker Hill Monument
and the weird effect of the sails and masts of the vessels lying in the
harbor, we naturally passed from the romance of our surroundings to
those of our lives. I have often noticed that the most reserved people
are apt to grow confidential at such an hour. It was under such
circumstances that the good poet opened to me a deeply interesting page
of his life, a sad romance of love and disappointment, that may not yet
be told, as some who were interested in the events are still among the
living.
Whittier's poems were not only one of the most important factors in the
anti-slavery war and victory, but they have been equally potent in
emancipating the minds of his generation from the gloomy superstitions
of the puritanical religion. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his eulogy of
Whittier, says that his influence on the religious thought of the
American people has been far greater than that of the occupant of any
pulpit.
As my husband's health was delicate, and the New England winters proved
too severe for him, we left Boston, with many regrets, and sought a more
genial climate in Central New York.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIRST WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
In the spring of 1847 we moved to Seneca Falls. Here we spent sixteen
years of our married life, and here our other children--two sons and two
daughters--were born.
Just as we were ready to leave Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Eaton and their two
children arrived from Europe, and we decided to go together to
Johnstown, Mr. Eaton being obliged to hurry to New York on business, and
Mr. Stanton to remain still in Boston a few months. At the last moment
my nurse decided she could not leave her friends and go so far away.
Accordingly my sister and I started, by rail, with five children and
seventeen trunks, for Albany, where we rested over night and part of the
next day. We had a very fatiguing journey, looking after so many trunks
and children, for my sister's children persisted in standing on the
platform at every opportunity, and the younger ones would follow their
example. This kept us constantly on the watch. We were thankful when
safely landed once more in the old homestead in Johnstown, where we
arrived at midnight. As our beloved parents had received no warning of
our coming, the whole household was aroused to dispose of us. But now in
safe harbor, 'mid familiar scenes and pleasant memories, our slumbers
were indeed refreshing. How rapidly one throws off all care and anxiety
under the parental roof, and how at sea one feels, no matter what the
age may be, when the loved ones are gone forever and the home of
childhood is but a dream of the past.
After a few days of rest I started, alone, for my new home, quite happy
with the responsibility of repairing a house and putting all things in
order. I was already acquainted with many of the people and the
surroundings in Seneca Falls, as my sister, Mrs. Bayard, had lived there
several years, and I had frequently made her long visits. We had quite a
magnetic circle of reformers, too, in central New York. At Rochester
were William Henry Channing, Frederick Douglass, the Anthonys, Posts,
Hallowells, Stebbins,--some grand old Quaker families at
Farmington,--the Sedgwicks, Mays, Mills, and Matilda Joslyn Gage at
Syracuse; Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, and Beriah Green at Whitesboro.
The house we were to occupy had been closed for some years and needed
many repairs, and the grounds, comprising five acres, were overgrown
with weeds. My father gave me a check and said, with a smile, "You
believe in woman's capacity to do and dare; now go ahead and put your
place in order." After a minute survey of the premises and due
consultation with one or two sons of Adam, I set the carpenters,
painters, paper-hangers, and gardeners at work, built a new kitchen and
woodhouse, and in one month took possession. Having left my children
with my mother, there were no impediments to a full display of my
executive ability. In the purchase of brick, timber, paint, etc., and in
making bargains with workmen, I was in frequent consultation with Judge
Sackett and Mr. Bascom. The latter was a member of the Constitutional
Convention, then in session in Albany, and as he used to walk down
whenever he was at home, to see how my work progressed, we had long
talks, sitting on boxes in the midst of tools and shavings, on the
status of women. I urged him to propose an amendment to Article II,
Section 3, of the State Constitution, striking out the word "male,"
which limits the suffrage to men. But, while he fully agreed with all I
had to say on the political equality of women, he had not the courage to
make himself the laughing-stock of the convention. Whenever I cornered
him on this point, manlike he turned the conversation to the painters
and carpenters. However, these conversations had the effect of bringing
him into the first woman's convention, where he did us good service.
In Seneca Falls my life was comparatively solitary, and the change from
Boston was somewhat depressing. There, all my immediate friends were
reformers, I had near neighbors, a new home with all the modern
conveniences, and well-trained servants. Here our residence was on the
outskirts of the town, roads very often muddy and no sidewalks most of
the way, Mr. Stanton was frequently from home, I had poor servants, and
an increasing number of children. To keep a house and grounds in good
order, purchase every article for daily use, keep the wardrobes of half
a dozen human beings in proper trim, take the children to dentists,
shoemakers, and different schools, or find teachers at home, altogether
made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I
could impress into the service. Then, too, the novelty of housekeeping
had passed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was
now irksome. I had so many cares that the company I needed for
intellectual stimulus was a trial rather than a pleasure.
There was quite an Irish settlement at a short distance, and continual
complaints were coming to me that my boys threw stones at their pigs,
cows, and the roofs of their houses. This involved constant diplomatic
relations in the settlement of various difficulties, in which I was so
successful that, at length, they constituted me a kind of umpire in all
their own quarrels. If a drunken husband was pounding his wife, the
children would run for me. Hastening to the scene of action, I would
take Patrick by the collar, and, much to his surprise and shame, make
him sit down and promise to behave himself. I never had one of them
offer the least resistance, and in time they all came to regard me as
one having authority. I strengthened my influence by cultivating good
feeling. I lent the men papers to read, and invited their children into
our grounds; giving them fruit, of which we had abundance, and my
children's old clothes, books, and toys. I was their physician,
also--with my box of homeopathic medicines I took charge of the men,
women, and children in sickness. Thus the most amicable relations were
established, and, in any emergency, these poor neighbors were good
friends and always ready to serve me.
But I found police duty rather irksome, especially when called out dark
nights to prevent drunken fathers from disturbing their sleeping
children, or to minister to poor mothers in the pangs of maternity.
Alas! alas! who can measure the mountains of sorrow and suffering
endured in unwelcome motherhood in the abodes of ignorance, poverty,
and vice, where terror-stricken women and children are the victims of
strong men frenzied with passion and intoxicating drink?
Up to this time life had glided by with comparative ease, but now the
real struggle was upon me. My duties were too numerous and varied, and
none sufficiently exhilarating or intellectual to bring into play my
higher faculties. I suffered with mental hunger, which, like an empty
stomach, is very depressing. I had books, but no stimulating
companionship. To add to my general dissatisfaction at the change from
Boston, I found that Seneca Falls was a malarial region, and in due time
all the children were attacked with chills and fever which, under
homeopathic treatment in those days, lasted three months. The servants
were afflicted in the same way. Cleanliness, order, the love of the
beautiful and artistic, all faded away in the struggle to accomplish
what was absolutely necessary from hour to hour. Now I understood, as I
never had before, how women could sit down and rest in the midst of
general disorder. Housekeeping, under such conditions, was impossible,
so I packed our clothes, locked up the house, and went to that harbor of
safety, home, as I did ever after in stress of weather.
I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to
contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's
best development if in contact, the chief part of her life, with
servants and children. Fourier's phalansterie community life and
co-operative households had a new significance for me. Emerson says, "A
healthy discontent is the first step to progress." The general
discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper,
physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which
everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied,
anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling
that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of
society in general, and of women in particular. My experience at the
World's Anti-slavery Convention, all I had read of the legal status of
women, and the oppression I saw everywhere, together swept across my
soul, intensified now by many personal experiences. It seemed as if all
the elements had conspired to impel me to some onward step. I could not
see what to do or where to begin--my only thought was a public meeting
for protest and discussion.
In this tempest-tossed condition of mind I received an invitation to
spend the day with Lucretia Mott, at Richard Hunt's, in Waterloo. There
I met several members of different families of Friends, earnest,
thoughtful women. I poured out, that day, the torrent of my
long-accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I
stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare
anything. My discontent, according to Emerson, must have been healthy,
for it moved us all to prompt action, and we decided, then and there, to
call a "Woman's Rights Convention." We wrote the call that evening and
published it in the _Seneca County Courier_ the next day, the 14th of
July, 1848, giving only five days' notice, as the convention was to be
held on the 19th and 20th. The call was inserted without signatures,--in
fact it was a mere announcement of a meeting,--but the chief movers and
managers were Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt, Martha C.
Wright, and myself. The convention, which was held two days in the
Methodist Church, was in every way a grand success. The house was
crowded at every session, the speaking good, and a religious earnestness
dignified all the proceedings.
These were the hasty initiative steps of "the most momentous reform that
had yet been launched on the world--the first organized protest against
the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny
of one-half the race." No words could express our astonishment on
finding, a few days afterward, that what seemed to us so timely, so
rational, and so sacred, should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule to
the entire press of the nation. With our Declaration of Rights and
Resolutions for a text, it seemed as if every man who could wield a pen
prepared a homily on "woman's sphere." All the journals from Maine to
Texas seemed to strive with each other to see which could make our
movement appear the most ridiculous. The anti-slavery papers stood by us
manfully and so did Frederick Douglass, both in the convention and in
his paper, _The North Star_, but so pronounced was the popular voice
against us, in the parlor, press, and pulpit, that most of the ladies
who had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one,
withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our
friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the
whole proceeding.
If I had had the slightest premonition of all that was to follow that
convention, I fear I should not have had the courage to risk it, and I
must confess that it was with fear and trembling that I consented to
attend another, one month afterward, in Rochester. Fortunately, the
first one seemed to have drawn all the fire, and of the second but
little was said. But we had set the ball in motion, and now, in quick
succession, conventions were held in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, and in the City of New York, and have been kept up nearly
every year since.
The most noteworthy of the early conventions were those held in
Massachusetts, in which such men as Garrison, Phillips, Channing,
Parker, and Emerson took part. It was one of these that first attracted
the attention of Mrs. John Stuart Mill, and drew from her pen that able
article on "The Enfranchisement of Woman," in the _Westminster Review_
of October, 1852.
The same year of the convention, the Married Woman's Property Bill,
which had given rise to some discussion on woman's rights in New York,
had passed the legislature. This encouraged action on the part of women,
as the reflection naturally arose that, if the men who make the laws
were ready for some onward step, surely the women themselves should
express some interest in the legislation. Ernestine L. Rose, Paulina
Wright (Davis), and I had spoken before committees of the legislature
years before, demanding equal property rights for women. We had
circulated petitions for the Married Woman's Property Bill for many
years, and so also had the leaders of the Dutch aristocracy, who desired
to see their life-long accumulations descend to their daughters and
grandchildren rather than pass into the hands of dissipated, thriftless
sons-in-law. Judge Hertell, Judge Fine, and Mr. Geddes of Syracuse
prepared and championed the several bills, at different times, before
the legislature. Hence the demands made in the convention were not
entirely new to the reading and thinking public of New York--the first
State to take any action on the question. As New York was the first
State to put the word "male" in her constitution in 1778, it was fitting
that she should be first in more liberal legislation. The effect of the
convention on my own mind was most salutary. The discussions had cleared
my ideas as to the primal steps to be taken for woman's enfranchisement,
and the opportunity of expressing myself fully and freely on a subject I
felt so deeply about was a great relief. I think all women who attended
the convention felt better for the statement of their wrongs, believing
that the first step had been taken to right them.
Soon after this I was invited to speak at several points in the
neighborhood. One night, in the Quaker Meeting House at Farmington, I
invited, as usual, discussion and questions when I had finished. We all
waited in silence for a long time; at length a middle-aged man, with a
broad-brimmed hat, arose and responded in a sing-song tone: "All I have
to say is, if a hen can crow, let her crow," emphasizing "crow" with an
upward inflection on several notes of the gamut. The meeting adjourned
with mingled feelings of surprise and merriment. I confess that I felt
somewhat chagrined in having what I considered my unanswerable arguments
so summarily disposed of, and the serious impression I had made on the
audience so speedily dissipated. The good man intended no disrespect, as
he told me afterward. He simply put the whole argument in a nutshell:
"Let a woman do whatever she can."
With these new duties and interests, and a broader outlook on human
life, my petty domestic annoyances gradually took a subordinate place.
Now I began to write articles for the press, letters to conventions held
in other States, and private letters to friends, to arouse them to
thought on this question.
The pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Mr. Bogue, preached several
sermons on Woman's Sphere, criticising the action of the conventions in
Seneca Falls and Rochester. Elizabeth McClintock and I took notes and
answered him in the county papers. Gradually we extended our labors and
attacked our opponents in the New York _Tribune_, whose columns were
open to us in the early days, Mr. Greeley being, at that time, one of
our most faithful champions.
In answering all the attacks, we were compelled to study canon and civil
law, constitutions, Bibles, science, philosophy, and history, sacred and
profane. Now my mind, as well as my hands, was fully occupied, and
instead of mourning, as I had done, over what I had lost in leaving
Boston, I tried in every way to make the most of life in Seneca Falls.
Seeing that elaborate refreshments prevented many social gatherings, I
often gave an evening entertainment without any. I told the young
people, whenever they wanted a little dance or a merry time, to make our
house their rallying point, and I would light up and give them a glass
of water and some cake. In that way we had many pleasant informal
gatherings. Then, in imitation of Margaret Fuller's Conversationals, we
started one which lasted several years. We selected a subject each week
on which we all read and thought; each, in turn, preparing an essay ten
minutes in length.
These were held, at different homes, Saturday of each week. On coming
together we chose a presiding officer for the evening, who called the
meeting to order, and introduced the essayist. That finished, he asked
each member, in turn, what he or she had read or thought on the subject,
and if any had criticisms to make on the essay. Everyone was expected to
contribute something. Much information was thus gained, and many spicy
discussions followed. All the ladies, as well as the gentlemen, presided
in turn, and so became familiar with parliamentary rules. The evening
ended with music, dancing, and a general chat. In this way we read and
thought over a wide range of subjects and brought together the best
minds in the community. Many young men and women who did not belong to
what was considered the first circle,--for in every little country
village there is always a small clique that constitutes the
aristocracy,--had the advantages of a social life otherwise denied them.
I think that all who took part in this Conversation Club would testify
to its many good influences.
I had three quite intimate young friends in the village who spent much
of their spare time with me, and who added much to my happiness: Frances
Hoskins, who was principal of the girls' department in the academy, with
whom I discussed politics and religion; Mary Bascom, a good talker on
the topics of the day, and Mary Crowninshield, who played well on the
piano. As I was very fond of music, Mary's coming was always hailed with
delight. Her mother, too, was a dear friend of mine, a woman of rare
intelligence, refinement, and conversational talent. She was a Schuyler,
and belonged to the Dutch aristocracy in Albany. She died suddenly,
after a short illness. I was with her in the last hours and held her
hand until the gradually fading spark of life went out. Her son is
Captain A.S. Crowninshield of our Navy.
My nearest neighbors were a very agreeable, intelligent family of sons
and daughters. But I always felt that the men of that household were
given to domineering. As the mother was very amiable and
self-sacrificing, the daughters found it difficult to rebel. One summer,
after general house-cleaning, when fresh paint and paper had made even
the kitchen look too dainty for the summer invasion of flies, the queens
of the household decided to move the sombre cook-stove into a spacious
woodhouse, where it maintained its dignity one week, in the absence of
the head of the home. The mother and daughters were delighted with the
change, and wondered why they had not made it before during the summer
months. But their pleasure was shortlived. Father and sons rose early
the first morning after his return and moved the stove back to its old
place. When the wife and daughters came down to get their breakfast (for
they did all their own work) they were filled with grief and
disappointment. The breakfast was eaten in silence, the women humbled
with a sense of their helplessness, and the men gratified with a sense
of their power. These men would probably all have said "home is woman's
sphere," though they took the liberty of regulating everything in her
sphere.
[Illustration: MRS. STANTON AND SON, 1854.]
[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony 1820-Feb. 15, 1858--]
CHAPTER X.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
The reports of the conventions held in Seneca Falls and Rochester, N.Y.,
in 1848, attracted the attention of one destined to take a most
important part in the new movement--Susan B. Anthony, who, for her
courage and executive ability, was facetiously called by William Henry
Channing, the Napoleon of our struggle. At this time she was teaching in
the academy at Canajoharie, a little village in the beautiful valley of
the Mohawk.
"The Woman's Declaration of Independence" issued from those conventions
startled and amused her, and she laughed heartily at the novelty and
presumption of the demand. But, on returning home to spend her vacation,
she was surprised to find that her sober Quaker parents and sister,
having attended the Rochester meetings, regarded them as very profitable
and interesting, and the demands made as proper and reasonable. She was
already interested in the anti-slavery and temperance reforms, was an
active member of an organization called "The Daughters of Temperance,"
and had spoken a few times in their public meetings. But the new gospel
of "Woman's Rights," found a ready response in her mind, and, from that
time, her best efforts have been given to the enfranchisement of women.
As, from this time, my friend is closely connected with my narrative
and will frequently appear therein, a sketch of her seems appropriate.
Lord Bacon has well said: "He that hath wife and children hath given
hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises
either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest
merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless
men; which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the
public."
This bit of Baconian philosophy, as alike applicable to women, was the
subject, not long since, of a conversation with a remarkably gifted
Englishwoman. She was absorbed in many public interests and had
conscientiously resolved never to marry, lest the cares necessarily
involved in matrimony should make inroads upon her time and thought, to
the detriment of the public good. "Unless," said she, "some women
dedicate themselves to the public service, society is robbed of needed
guardians for the special wants of the weak and unfortunate. There
should be, in the secular world, certain orders corresponding in a
measure to the grand sisterhoods of the Catholic Church, to the members
of which, as freely as to men, all offices, civic and ecclesiastical,
should be open." That this ideal will be realized may be inferred from
the fact that exceptional women have, in all ages, been leaders in great
projects of charity and reform, and that now many stand waiting only the
sanction of their century, ready for wide altruistic labors.
The world has ever had its vestal virgins, its holy women, mothers of
ideas rather than of men; its Marys, as well as its Marthas, who, rather
than be busy housewives, preferred to sit at the feet of divine wisdom,
and ponder the mysteries of the unknown. All hail to Maria Mitchell,
Harriet Hosmer, Charlotte Cushman, Alice and Phoebe Gary, Louisa Alcott,
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Frances Willard, and Clara Barton! All honor to
the noble women who have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual and
moral needs of mankind!
Susan B. Anthony was of sturdy New England stock, and it was at the foot
of Old Greylock, South Adams, Mass., that she gave forth her first
rebellious cry. There the baby steps were taken, and at the village
school the first stitches were learned, and the A B C duly mastered.
When five winters had passed over Susan's head, there came a time of
great domestic commotion, and, in her small way, the child seized the
idea that permanence is not the rule of life. The family moved to
Battenville, N.Y., where Mr. Anthony became one of the wealthiest men in
Washington County. Susan can still recall the stately coldness of the
great house--how large the bare rooms, with their yellow-painted floors,
seemed, in contrast with her own diminutiveness, and the outlook of the
schoolroom where for so many years, with her brothers and sisters, she
pursued her studies under private tutors.
Mr. Anthony was a stern Hicksite Quaker. In Susan's early life he
objected on principle to all forms of frivolous amusement, such as
music, dancing, or novel reading, while games and even pictures were
regarded as meaningless luxuries. Such puritanical convictions might
have easily degenerated into mere cant; but underlying all was a broad
and firm basis of wholesome respect for individual freedom and a brave
adherence to truth. He was a man of good business capacity, and a
thorough manager of his wide and lucrative interests. He saw that
compensation and not chance ruled in the commercial world, and he
believed in the same just, though often severe, law in the sphere of
morals. Such a man was not apt to walk humbly in the path mapped out by
his religious sect. He early offended by choosing a Baptist for a wife.
For this first offense he was "disowned," and, according to Quaker
usage, could only be received into fellowship again by declaring himself
"sorry" for his crime in full meeting. He was full of devout
thankfulness for the good woman by his side, and destined to be thankful
to the very end for this companion, so calm, so just, so far-seeing. He
rose in meeting, and said he was "sorry" that the rules of the society
were such that, in marrying the woman he loved, he had committed
offense! He admitted that he was "sorry" for something, so was taken
back into the body of the faithful! But his faith had begun to weaken in
many minor points of discipline. His coat soon became a cause of offense
and called forth another reproof from those buttoned up in conforming
garments. The petty forms of Quakerism began to lose their weight with
him altogether, and he was finally disowned for allowing the village
youth to be taught dancing in an upper room of his dwelling. He was
applied to for this favor on the ground that young men were under great
temptation to drink if the lessons were given in the hotel; and, being a
rigid temperance man, he readily consented, though his principles, in
regard to dancing, would not allow his own sons and daughters to join in
the amusement. But the society could accept no such discrimination in
what it deemed sin, nor such compromise with worldly frivolity, and so
Mr. Anthony was seen no more in meeting. But, in later years, in
Rochester he was an attentive listener to Rev. William Henry Channing.
The effect of all this on Susan is the question of interest. No doubt
she early weighed the comparative moral effects of coats cut with capes
and those cut without, of purely Quaker conjugal love and that
deteriorated with Baptist affection. Susan had an earnest soul and a
conscience tending to morbidity; but a strong, well-balanced body and
simple family life soothed her too active moral nature and gave the
world, instead of a religious fanatic, a sincere, concentrated worker.
Every household art was taught her by her mother, and so great was her
ability that the duty demanding especial care was always given into her
hands. But ever, amid school and household tasks, her day-dream was
that, in time, she might be a "high-seat" Quaker. Each Sunday, up to the
time of the third disobedience, Mr. Anthony went to the Quaker meeting
house, some thirteen miles from home, his wife and children usually
accompanying him, though, as non-members, they were rigidly excluded
from all business discussions. Exclusion was very pleasant in the bright
days of summer; but, on one occasion in December, decidedly unpleasant
for the seven-year-old Susan. When the blinds were drawn, at the close
of the religious meeting, and non-members retired, Susan sat still. Soon
she saw a thin old lady with blue goggles come down from the "high
seat." Approaching her, the Quakeress said softly, "Thee is not a
member--thee must go out." "No; my mother told me not to go out in the
cold," was the child's firm response. "Yes, but thee must go out--thee
is not a member." "But my father is a member." "Thee is not a member,"
and Susan felt as if the spirit was moving her and soon found herself in
outer coldness. Fingers and toes becoming numb, and a bright fire in a
cottage over the way beckoning warmly to her, the exile from the chapel
resolved to seek secular shelter. But alas! she was confronted by a huge
dog, and just escaped with whole skin though capeless jacket. We may be
sure there was much talk, that night, at the home fireside, and the good
Baptist wife declared that no child of hers should attend meeting again
till made a member. Thereafter, by request of her father, Susan became a
member of the Quaker church.
Later, definite convictions took root in Miss Anthony's heart. Hers is,
indeed, a sincerely religious nature. To be a simple, earnest Quaker was
the aspiration of her girlhood; but she shrank from adopting the formal
language and plain dress. Dark hours of conflict were spent over all
this, and she interpreted her disinclination as evidence of
unworthiness. Poor little Susan! As we look back with the knowledge of
our later life, we translate the heart-burnings as unconscious protests
against labeling your free soul, against testing your reasoning
conviction of to-morrow by any shibboleth of to-day's belief. We hail
this child-intuition as a prophecy of the uncompromising truthfulness of
the mature woman. Susan Anthony was taught simply that she must enter
into the holy of holies of her own self, meet herself, and be true to
the revelation. She first found words to express her convictions in
listening to Rev. William Henry Channing, whose teaching had a lasting
spiritual influence upon her. To-day Miss Anthony is an agnostic. As to
the nature of the Godhead and of the life beyond her horizon she does
not profess to know anything. Every energy of her soul is centered upon
the needs of this world. To her, work is worship. She has not stood
aside, shivering in the cold shadows of uncertainty, but has moved on
with the whirling world, has done the good given her to do, and thus, in
darkest hours, has been sustained by an unfaltering faith in the final
perfection of all things. Her belief is not orthodox, but it is
religious. In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of
the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles' time, a Puritan; but in
this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a
Reformer.
For the arduous work that awaited Miss Anthony her years of young
womanhood had given preparation. Her father, though a man of wealth,
made it a matter of conscience to train his girls, as well as his boys,
to self-support. Accordingly Susan chose the profession of teacher, and
made her first essay during a summer vacation in a school her father had
established for the children of his employes. Her success was so marked,
not only in imparting knowledge, but also as a disciplinarian, that she
followed this career steadily for fifteen years, with the exception of
some months given in Philadelphia to her own training. Of the many
school rebellions which she overcame, one rises before me, prominent in
its ludicrous aspect. This was in the district school at Center Falls,
in the year 1839. Bad reports were current there of male teachers driven
out by a certain strapping lad. Rumor next told of a Quaker maiden
coming to teach--a Quaker maiden of peace principles. The anticipated
day and Susan arrived. She looked very meek to the barbarian of fifteen,
so he soon began his antics. He was called to the platform, told to lay
aside his jacket, and, thereupon, with much astonishment received from
the mild Quaker maiden, with a birch rod applied calmly but with
precision, an exposition of the _argumentum ad hominem_ based on the _a
posteriori_ method of reasoning. Thus Susan departed from her
principles, but not from the school.
But, before long, conflicts in the outside world disturbed our young
teacher. The multiplication table and spelling book no longer enchained
her thoughts; larger questions began to fill her mind. About the year
1850 Susan B. Anthony hid her ferule away. Temperance, anti-slavery,
woman suffrage,--three pregnant questions,--presented themselves,
demanding her consideration. Higher, ever higher, rose their appeals,
until she resolved to dedicate her energy and thought to the burning
needs of the hour. Owing to early experience of the disabilities of her
sex, the first demand for equal rights for women found echo in Susan's
heart. And, though she was in the beginning startled to hear that women
had actually met in convention, and by speeches and resolutions had
declared themselves man's peer in political rights, and had urged
radical changes in State constitutions and the whole system of American
jurisprudence; yet the most casual review convinced her that these
claims were but the logical outgrowth of the fundamental theories of our
republic.
At this stage of her development I met my future friend and coadjutor
for the first time. How well I remember the day! George Thompson and
William Lloyd Garrison having announced an anti-slavery meeting in
Seneca Falls, Miss Anthony came to attend it. These gentlemen were my
guests. Walking home, after the adjournment, we met Mrs. Bloomer and
Miss Anthony on the corner of the street, waiting to greet us. There she
stood, with her good, earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray
delaine, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons,
the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why
I did not at once invite her home with me to dinner, I do not know. She
accuses me of that neglect, and has never forgiven me, as she wished to
see and hear all she could of our noble friends. I suppose my mind was
full of what I had heard, or my coming dinner, or the probable behavior
of three mischievous boys who had been busily exploring the premises
while I was at the meeting.
That I had abundant cause for anxiety in regard to the philosophical
experiments these young savages might try the reader will admit, when
informed of some of their performances. Henry imagined himself possessed
of rare powers of invention (an ancestral weakness for generations), and
so made a life preserver of corks, and tested its virtues on his
brother, who was about eighteen months old. Accompanied by a troop of
expectant boys, the baby was drawn in his carriage to the banks of the
Seneca, stripped, the string of corks tied under his arms, and set
afloat in the river, the philosopher and his satellites, in a rowboat,
watching the experiment. The baby, accustomed to a morning bath in a
large tub, splashed about joyfully, keeping his head above water. He was
as blue as indigo and as cold as a frog when rescued by his anxious
mother. The next day the same victimized infant was seen, by a passing
friend, seated on the chimney, on the highest peak of the house. Without
alarming anyone, the friend hurried up to the housetop and rescued the
child. Another time the three elder brothers entered into a conspiracy,
and locked up the fourth, Theodore, in the smoke-house. Fortunately, he
sounded the alarm loud and clear, and was set free in safety, whereupon
the three were imprisoned in a garret with two barred windows. They
summarily kicked out the bars, and, sliding down on the lightning rod,
betook themselves to the barn for liberty. The youngest boy, Gerrit,
then only five years old, skinned his hands in the descent. This is a
fair sample of the quiet happiness I enjoyed in the first years of
motherhood.
It was 'mid such exhilarating scenes that Miss Anthony and I wrote
addresses for temperance, anti-slavery, educational, and woman's rights
conventions. Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals, petitions,
agricultural reports, and constitutional arguments; for we made it a
matter of conscience to accept every invitation to speak on every
question, in order to maintain woman's right to do so. To this end we
took turns on the domestic watchtowers, directing amusements, settling
disputes, protecting the weak against the strong, and trying to secure
equal rights to all in the home as well as the nation. I can recall many
a stern encounter between my friend and the young experimenter. It is
pleasant to remember that he never seriously injured any of his victims,
and only once came near fatally shooting himself with a pistol. The ball
went through his hand; happily a brass button prevented it from
penetrating his heart.
It is often said, by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she has been
my good angel, always pushing and goading me to work, and that but for
her pertinacity I should never have accomplished the little I have. On
the other hand it has been said that I forged the thunderbolts and she
fired them. Perhaps all this is, in a measure, true. With the cares of a
large family I might, in time, like too many women, have become wholly
absorbed in a narrow family selfishness, had not my friend been
continually exploring new fields for missionary labors. Her description
of a body of men on any platform, complacently deciding questions in
which woman had an equal interest, without an equal voice, readily
roused me to a determination to throw a firebrand into the midst of
their assembly.
Thus, whenever I saw that stately Quaker girl coming across my lawn, I
knew that some happy convocation of the sons of Adam was to be set by
the ears, by one of our appeals or resolutions. The little portmanteau,
stuffed with facts, was opened, and there we had what the Rev. John
Smith and Hon. Richard Roe had said: false interpretations of Bible
texts, the statistics of women robbed of their property, shut out of
some college, half paid for their work, the reports of some disgraceful
trial; injustice enough to turn any woman's thoughts from stockings and
puddings. Then we would get out our pens and write articles for papers,
or a petition to the legislature; indite letters to the faithful, here
and there; stir up the women in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts;
call on _The Lily, The Una, The Liberator, The Standard_ to remember our
wrongs as well as those of the slave. We never met without issuing a
pronunciamento on some question. In thought and sympathy we were one,
and in the division of labor we exactly complemented each other. In
writing we did better work than either could alone. While she is slow
and analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the better
writer, she the better critic. She supplied the facts and statistics, I
the philosophy and rhetoric, and, together, we have made arguments that
have stood unshaken through the storms of long years; arguments that no
one has answered. Our speeches may be considered the united product of
our two brains.
So entirely one are we that, in all our associations, ever side by side
on the same platform, not one feeling of envy or jealousy has ever
shadowed our lives. We have indulged freely in criticism of each other
when alone, and hotly contended whenever we have differed, but in our
friendship of years there has never been the break of one hour. To the
world we always seem to agree and uniformly reflect each other. Like
husband and wife, each has the feeling that we must have no differences
in public. Thus united, at an early day we began to survey the state and
nation, the future field of our labors. We read, with critical eyes, the
proceedings of Congress and legislatures, of general assemblies and
synods, of conferences and conventions, and discovered that, in all
alike, the existence of woman was entirely ignored.
Night after night, by an old-fashioned fireplace, we plotted and planned
the coming agitation; how, when, and where each entering wedge could be
driven, by which women might be recognized and their rights secured.
Speedily the State was aflame with disturbances in temperance and
teachers' conventions, and the press heralded the news far and near that
women delegates had suddenly appeared, demanding admission in men's
conventions; that their rights had been hotly contested session after
session, by liberal men on the one side, the clergy and learned
professors on the other; an overwhelming majority rejecting the women
with terrible anathemas and denunciations. Such battles were fought over
and over in the chief cities of many of the Northern States, until the
bigotry of men in all the reforms and professions was thoroughly
exposed. Every right achieved, to enter a college, to study a
profession, to labor in some new industry, or to advocate a reform
measure was contended for inch by inch.
Many of those enjoying all these blessings now complacently say, "If
these pioneers in reform had only pressed their measures more
judiciously, in a more ladylike manner, in more choice language, with a
more deferential attitude, the gentlemen could not have behaved so
rudely." I give, in these pages, enough of the characteristics of these
women, of the sentiments they expressed, of their education, ancestry,
and position to show that no power could have met the prejudice and
bigotry of that period more successfully than they did who so bravely
and persistently fought and conquered them.
Miss Anthony first carried her flag of rebellion into the State
conventions of teachers, and there fought, almost single-handed, the
battle for equality. At the close of the first decade she had compelled
conservatism to yield its ground so far as to permit women to
participate in all debates, deliver essays, vote, and hold honored
positions as officers. She labored as sincerely in the temperance
movement, until convinced that woman's moral power amounted to little as
a civil agent, until backed by ballot and coined into State law. She
still never loses an occasion to defend co-education and prohibition,
and solves every difficulty with the refrain, "woman suffrage," as
persistent as the "never more" of Poe's raven.
CHAPTER XI.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Continued_.
It was in 1852 that anti-slavery, through the eloquent lips of such men
as George Thompson, Phillips, and Garrison, first proclaimed to Miss
Anthony its pressing financial necessities. To their inspired words she
gave answer, four years afterward, by becoming a regularly employed
agent in the Anti-slavery Society. For her espoused cause she has always
made boldest demands. In the abolition meetings she used to tell each
class why it should support the movement financially; invariably calling
upon Democrats to give liberally, as the success of the cause would
enable them to cease bowing the knee to the slave power.
There is scarce a town, however small, from New York to San Francisco,
that has not heard her ringing voice. Who can number the speeches she
has made on lyceum platforms, in churches, schoolhouses, halls, barns,
and in the open air, with a lumber wagon or a cart for her rostrum? Who
can describe the varied audiences and social circles she has cheered and
interested? Now we see her on the far-off prairies, entertaining, with
sterling common sense, large gatherings of men, women, and children,
seated on rough boards in some unfinished building; again, holding
public debates in some town with half-fledged editors and clergymen;
next, sailing up the Columbia River and, in hot haste to meet some
appointment, jolting over the rough mountains of Oregon and Washington;
and then, before legislative assemblies, constitutional conventions, and
congressional committees, discussing with senators and judges the letter
and spirit of constitutional law.
Miss Anthony's style of speaking is rapid and vehement. In debate she is
ready and keen, and she is always equal to an emergency. Many times in
traveling with her through the West, especially on our first trip to
Kansas and California, we were suddenly called upon to speak to the
women assembled at the stations. Filled with consternation, I usually
appealed to her to go first; and, without a moment's hesitation, she
could always fill five minutes with some appropriate words and inspire
me with thoughts and courage to follow. The climax of these occasions
was reached in an institution for the deaf and dumb in Michigan. I had
just said to my friend, "There is one comfort in visiting this place; we
shall not be asked to speak," when the superintendent, approaching us,
said, "Ladies, the pupils are assembled in the chapel, ready to hear
you. I promised to invite you to speak to them as soon as I heard you
were in town." The possibility of addressing such an audience was as
novel to Miss Anthony as to me; yet she promptly walked down the aisle
to the platform, as if to perform an ordinary duty, while I, half
distracted with anxiety, wondering by what process I was to be placed in
communication with the deaf and dumb, reluctantly followed. But the
manner was simple enough, when illustrated. The superintendent, standing
by our side, repeated, in the sign language, what was said as fast as
uttered; and by laughter, tears, and applause, the pupils showed that
they fully appreciated the pathos, humor, and argument.
One night, crossing the Mississippi at McGregor, Iowa, we were icebound
in the middle of the river. The boat was crowded with people, hungry,
tired, and cross with the delay. Some gentlemen, with whom we had been
talking on the cars, started the cry, "Speech on woman suffrage!"
Accordingly, in the middle of the Mississippi River, at midnight, we
presented our claims to political representation, and debated the
question of universal suffrage until we landed. Our voyagers were quite
thankful that we had shortened the many hours, and we equally so at
having made several converts and held a convention on the very bosom of
the great "Mother of Waters." Only once in all these wanderings was Miss
Anthony taken by surprise, and that was on being asked to speak to the
inmates of an insane asylum. "Bless me!" said she, "it is as much as I
can do to talk to the sane! What could I say to an audience of
lunatics?" Her companion, Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis, replied: "This
is a golden moment for you, the first opportunity you have ever had,
according to the constitutions, to talk to your 'peers,' for is not the
right of suffrage denied to 'idiots, criminals, lunatics, and women'?"
Much curiosity has been expressed as to the love-life of Miss Anthony;
but, if she has enjoyed or suffered any of the usual triumphs or
disappointments of her sex, she has not yet vouchsafed this information
to her biographers. While few women have had more sincere and lasting
friendships, or a more extensive correspondence with a large circle of
noble men, yet I doubt if one of them can boast of having received from
her any exceptional attention. She has often playfully said, when
questioned on this point, that she could not consent that the man she
loved, described in the Constitution as a white male, native born,
American citizen, possessed of the right of self-government, eligible to
the office of President of the great Republic, should unite his
destinies in marriage with a political slave and pariah. "No, no; when I
am crowned with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen,
I may give some consideration to this social institution; but until then
I must concentrate all my energies on the enfranchisement of my own
sex." Miss Anthony's love-life, like her religion, has manifested itself
in steadfast, earnest labors for men in general. She has been a watchful
and affectionate daughter, sister, friend, and those who have felt the
pulsations of her great heart know how warmly it beats for all.
As the custom has long been observed, among married women, of
celebrating the anniversaries of their wedding-day, quite properly the
initiative has been taken, in late years, of doing honor to the great
events in the lives of single women. Being united in closest bonds to
her profession, Dr. Harriet K. Hunt of Boston celebrated her
twenty-fifth year of faithful services as a physician by giving to her
friends and patrons a large reception, which she called her silver
wedding. From a feeling of the sacredness of her life work, the admirers
of Susan B. Anthony have been moved to mark, by reception and
convention, her rapid-flowing years and the passing decades of the
suffrage movement. To the most brilliant occasion of this kind, the
invitation cards were as follows:
The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on
Tuesday evening, February 15th, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday
of Susan B. Anthony, when her friends will have an opportunity to
show their appreciation of her long services in behalf of woman's
emancipation.
No. 49 East 23d St., New York,
February 10, 1870.
Elizabeth B. Phelps,
Anna B. Darling,
Charlotte Beebe Wilbour.
In response to the invitation, the parlors of the bureau were crowded
with friends to congratulate Miss Anthony on the happy event, many
bringing valuable gifts as an expression of their gratitude. Among other
presents were a handsome gold watch and checks to the amount of a
thousand dollars. The guests were entertained with music, recitations,
the reading of many piquant letters of regret from distinguished people,
and witty rhymes written for the occasion by the Cary sisters. Miss
Anthony received her guests with her usual straightforward simplicity,
and in a few earnest words expressed her thanks for the presents and
praises showered upon her. The comments of the leading journals, next
day, were highly complimentary, and as genial as amusing. All dwelt on
the fact that, at last, a woman had arisen brave enough to assert her
right to grow old and openly declare that half a century had rolled over
her head.
Of carefully prepared written speeches Miss Anthony has made few; but
these, by the high praise they called forth, prove that she can--in
spite of her own declaration to the contrary--put her sterling thoughts
on paper concisely and effectively. After her exhaustive plea, in 1880,
for a Sixteenth Amendment before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate,
Senator Edmunds accosted her, as she was leaving the Capitol, and said
he neglected to tell her, in the committee room, that she had made an
argument, no matter what his personal feelings were as to the
conclusions reached, which was unanswerable--an argument, unlike the
usual platform oratory given at hearings, suited to a committee of men
trained to the law.
It was in 1876 that Miss Anthony gave her much criticised lecture on
"Social Purity" in Boston. As to the result she felt very anxious; for
the intelligence of New England composed her audience, and it did not
still her heart-beats to see, sitting just in front of the platform, her
revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison. But surely every fear vanished
when she felt the grand old abolitionist's hand warmly pressing hers,
and heard him say that to listen to no one else would he have had
courage to leave his sick room, and that he felt fully repaid by her
grand speech, which neither in matter nor manner would he have changed
in the smallest particular. But into Miss Anthony's private
correspondence one must look for examples of her most effective writing.
Verb or substantive is often wanting, but you can always catch the
thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a strikingly
strange dialect, but one that touches, at times, the deepest chords of
pathos and humor, and, when stirred by some great event, is highly
eloquent.
From being the most ridiculed and mercilessly persecuted woman, Miss
Anthony has become the most honored and respected in the nation. Witness
the praises of press and people, and the enthusiastic ovations she
received on her departure for Europe in 1883. Never were warmer
expressions of regret for an absence, nor more sincere prayers for a
speedy return, accorded to any American on leaving his native shores.
This slow awaking to the character of her services shows the abiding
sense of justice in the human soul. Having spent the winter of 1882-83
in Washington, trying to press to a vote the bill for a Sixteenth
Amendment before Congress, and the autumn in a vigorous campaign through
Nebraska, where a constitutional amendment to enfranchise women had been
submitted to the people, she felt the imperative need of an entire
change in the current of her thoughts. Accordingly, after one of the
most successful conventions ever held at the national capital, and a
most flattering ovation in the spacious parlors of the Riggs House, and
a large reception in Philadelphia, she sailed for Europe.
Fortunate in being perfectly well during the entire voyage, our traveler
received perpetual enjoyment in watching the ever varying sea and sky.
To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean,
she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with
awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery,
spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of
life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in
man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be as
Gods!'"
In all her journeyings through Germany, Italy, and France, Miss Anthony
was never the mere sight-seer, but always the humanitarian and reformer
in traveler's guise. Few of the great masterpieces of art gave her real
enjoyment. The keen appreciation of the beauties of sculpture, painting,
and architecture, which one would have expected to find in so deep a
religious nature, was wanting, warped, no doubt, by her early Quaker
training. That her travels gave her more pain than pleasure was,
perhaps, not so much that she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty,
but that she quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery; not because
her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but that it
vibrated in every fiber to the depths to which mankind had fallen.
Wandering through a gorgeous palace one day, she exclaimed, "What do you
find to admire here? If it were a school of five hundred children being
educated into the right of self-government I could admire it, too; but
standing for one man's pleasure, I say no!" In the quarters of one of
the devotees, at the old monastery of the Certosa, at Florence, there
lies, on a small table, an open book, in which visitors register. On the
occasion of Miss Anthony's visit the pen and ink proved so unpromising
that her entire party declined this opportunity to make themselves
famous, but she made the rebellious pen inscribe, "Perfect equality for
women, civil, political, religious. Susan B. Anthony, U.S.A." Friends,
who visited the monastery next day, reported that lines had been drawn
through this heretical sentiment.
During her visit at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, in Berlin, Miss
Anthony quite innocently posted her letters in the official envelopes of
our Suffrage Association, which bore the usual mottoes, "No just
government can be formed without the consent of the governed," etc. In a
few days an official brought back a large package, saying, "Such
sentiments are not allowed to pass through the post office." Probably
nothing saved her from arrest as a socialist, under the tyrannical
police regulations, but the fact that she was the guest of the Minister
Plenipotentiary of the United States.
My son Theodore wrote of Miss Anthony's visit in Paris: "I had never
before seen her in the role of tourist. She seemed interested only in
historical monuments, and in the men and questions of the hour. The
galleries of the Louvre had little attraction for her, but she gazed
with deep pleasure at Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame, and the ruins of the
Tuileries. She was always ready to listen to discussions on the
political problems before the French people, the prospects of the
Republic, the divorce agitation, and the education of women. 'I had
rather see Jules Ferry than all the pictures of the Louvre, Luxembourg,
and Salon,' she remarked at table. A day or two later she saw Ferry at
Laboulaye's funeral. The three things which made the deepest impression
on Miss Anthony, during her stay at Paris, were probably the interment
of Laboulaye (the friend of the United States and of the woman
movement); the touching anniversary demonstration of the Communists, at
the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise, on the very spot where the last
defenders of the Commune of 1871 were ruthlessly shot and buried in a
common grave; and a woman's rights meeting, held in a little hall in the
Rue de Rivoli, at which the brave, far-seeing Mlle. Hubertine Auchet was
the leading spirit."
While on the Continent Miss Anthony experienced the unfortunate
sensation of being deaf and dumb; to speak and not to be understood, to
hear and not to comprehend, were to her bitter realities. We can imagine
to what desperation she was brought when her Quaker prudishness could
hail an emphatic oath in English from a French official with the
exclamation, "Well, it sounds good to hear someone even swear in old
Anglo-Saxon!" After two months of enforced silence, she was buoyant in
reaching the British Islands once more, where she could enjoy public
speaking and general conversation. Here she was the recipient of many
generous social attentions, and, on May 25, a large public meeting of
representative people, presided over by Jacob Bright, was called, in our
honor, by the National Association of Great Britain. She spoke on the
educational and political status of women in America, I of their
religious and social position.
Before closing my friend's biography I shall trace two golden threads in
this closely woven life of incident. One of the greatest services
rendered by Miss Anthony to the suffrage cause was in casting a vote in
the Presidential election of 1872, in order to test the rights of women
under the Fourteenth Amendment. For this offense the brave woman was
arrested, on Thanksgiving Day, the national holiday handed down to us by
Pilgrim Fathers escaped from England's persecutions. She asked for a
writ of habeas corpus. The writ being flatly refused, in January, 1873,
her counsel gave bonds. The daring defendant finding, when too late,
that this not only kept her out of jail, but her case out of the Supreme
Court of the United States, regretfully determined to fight on, and gain
the uttermost by a decision in the United States Circuit Court. Her
trial was set down for the Rochester term in May. Quickly she canvassed
the whole county, laying before every probable juror the strength of her
case. When the time for the trial arrived, the District Attorney,
fearing the result, if the decision were left to a jury drawn from Miss
Anthony's enlightened county, transferred the trial to the Ontario
County term, in June, 1873.
It was now necessary to instruct the citizens of another county. In this
task Miss Anthony received valuable assistance from Matilda Joslyn Gage;
and, to meet all this new expense, financial aid was generously given,
unsolicited, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, and other
sympathizers. But in vain was every effort; in vain the appeal of Miss
Anthony to her jurors; in vain the moral influence of the leading
representatives of the bar of Central New York filling the courtroom,
for Judge Hunt, without precedent to sustain him, declaring it a case of
law and not of fact, refused to give the case to the jury, reserving to
himself final decision. Was it not an historic scene which was enacted
there in that little courthouse in Canandaigua? All the inconsistencies
were embodied in that Judge, punctilious in manner, scrupulous in
attire, conscientious in trivialities, and obtuse on great principles,
fitly described by Charles O'Conor--"A very ladylike Judge." Behold him
sitting there, balancing all the niceties of law and equity in his Old
World scales, and at last saying, "The prisoner will stand up."
Whereupon the accused arose. "The sentence of the court is that you pay
a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution." Then
the unruly defendant answers: "May it please your Honor, I shall never
pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," and more to the same effect, all
of which she has lived up to. The "ladylike" Judge had gained some
insight into the determination of the prisoner; so, not wishing to
incarcerate her to all eternity, he added gently: "Madam, the court
will not order you committed until the fine is paid."
It was on the 17th of June that the verdict was given. On that very day,
a little less than a century before, the brave militia was driven back
at Bunker Hill--back, back, almost wiped out; yet truth was in their
ranks, and justice, too. But how ended that rebellion of weak colonists?
The cause of American womanhood, embodied for the moment in the liberty
of a single individual, received a rebuff on June 17, 1873; but, just as
surely as our Revolutionary heroes were in the end victorious, so will
the inalienable rights of our heroines of the nineteenth century receive
final vindication.
In his speech of 1880, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard,
Wendell Phillips said--what as a rule is true--that "a reformer, to be
conscientious, must be free from bread-winning." I will open Miss
Anthony's accounts and show that this reformer, being, perhaps, the
exception which proves the rule, has been consistently and
conscientiously in debt. Turning over her year-books the pages give a
fair record up to 1863. Here began the first herculean labor. The
Woman's Loyal League, sadly in need of funds, was not an incorporated
association, so its secretary assumed the debts. Accounts here became
quite lamentable, the deficit reaching five thousand dollars. It must be
paid, and, in fact, will be paid. Anxious, weary hours were spent in
crowding the Cooper Institute, from week to week, with paying audiences,
to listen to such men as Phillips, Curtis, and Douglass, who contributed
their services, and lifted the secretary out of debt. At last, after
many difficulties, her cash-book of 1863 was honorably pigeon-holed. In
1867 we can read account of herculean labor the second. Twenty thousand
tracts are needed to convert the voters of Kansas to woman suffrage.
Traveling expenses to Kansas, and the tracts, make the debtor column
overreach the creditor some two thousand dollars. There is recognition
on these pages of more than one thousand dollars obtained by soliciting
advertisements, but no note is made of the weary, burning July days
spent in the streets of New York to procure this money, nor of the ready
application of the savings made by petty economies from her salary from
the Hovey Committee.
It would have been fortunate for my brave friend, if cash-books 1868,
1869, and 1870 had never come down from their shelves; for they sing and
sing, in notes of debts, till all unite in one vast chorus of far more
than ten thousand dollars. These were the days of the _Revolution_, the
newspaper, not the war, though it was warfare for the debt-ridden
manager. Several thousand dollars she paid with money earned by
lecturing, and with money given her for personal use. One Thanksgiving
was, in truth, a time for returning thanks; for she received, canceled,
from her cousin, Anson Lapham, her note for four thousand dollars. After
the funeral of Paulina Wright Davis, the bereaved widower pressed into
Miss Anthony's hand canceled notes for five hundred dollars, bearing on
the back the words, "In memory of my beloved wife." One other note was
canceled in recognition of her perfect forgetfulness of self-interest
and ready sacrifice to the needs of others. When laboring, in 1874, to
fill every engagement, in order to meet her debts, her mother's sudden
illness called her home. Without one selfish regret, the anxious
daughter hastened to Rochester. When recovery was certain, and Miss
Anthony was about to return to her fatiguing labors, her mother gave
her, at parting, her note for a thousand dollars, on which was written,
in trembling lines, "In just consideration of the tender sacrifice made
to nurse me in severe illness." At last all the _Revolution_ debt was
paid, except that due to her generous sister, Mary Anthony, who used
often humorously to assure her she was a fit subject for the bankrupt
act.
There is something humorously pathetic in the death of the
_Revolution_--that firstborn of Miss Anthony. Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard
generously assumed the care of the troublesome child, and, in order to
make the adoption legal, gave the usual consideration--one dollar. The
very night of the transfer Miss Anthony went to Rochester with the
dollar in her pocket, and the little change left after purchasing her
ticket. She arrived safely with her debts, but nothing more--her pocket
had been picked! Oh, thief, could you but know what value of faithful
work you purloined!
From the close of the year 1876 Miss Anthony's accounts showed favorable
signs as to the credit column. Indeed, at the end of five years there
was a solid balance of several thousand dollars earned on lecturing
tours. But alas! the accounts grow dim again--in fact the credit column
fades away. "The History of Woman Suffrage" ruthlessly swallowed up
every vestige of Miss Anthony's bank account. But, in 1886, by the will
of Mrs. Eddy, daughter of Francis Jackson of Boston, Miss Anthony
received twenty-four thousand dollars for the Woman's Suffrage Movement,
which lifted her out of debt once more.
In vain will you search these telltale books for evidence of personal
extravagance; for, although Miss Anthony thinks it true economy to buy
the best, her tastes are simple. Is there not something very touching in
the fact that she never bought a book or picture for her own enjoyment?
The meager personal balance-sheets show four lapses from
discipline,--lapses that she even now regards as ruthless
extravagance,--viz.: the purchase of two inexpensive brooches, a much
needed watch, and a pair of cuffs to match a point-lace collar presented
by a friend. Those interested in Miss Anthony's personal appearance long
ago ceased to trust her with the purchase-money for any ornament; for,
however firm her resolution to comply with their wish, the check
invariably found its way to the credit column of those little cash-books
as "money received for the cause." Now, reader, you have been admitted
to a private view of Miss Anthony's financial records, and you can
appreciate her devotion to an idea. Do you not agree with me that a
"bread-winner" can be a conscientious reformer?
In finishing this sketch of the most intimate friend I have had for the
past forty-five years,--with whom I have spent weeks and months under
the same roof,--I can truly say that she is the most upright,
courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous human being I have ever known.
I have seen her beset on every side with the most petty annoyances,
ridiculed and misrepresented, slandered and persecuted; I have known
women refuse to take her extended hand; women to whom she presented
copies of "The History of Woman Suffrage," return it unnoticed; others
to keep it without one word of acknowledgment; others to write most
insulting letters in answer to hers of affectionate conciliation. And
yet, under all the cross-fires incident to a reform, never has her hope
flagged, her self-respect wavered, or a feeling of resentment shadowed
her mind. Oftentimes, when I have been sorely discouraged, thinking that
the prolonged struggle was a waste of force which in other directions
might be rich in achievement, with her sublime faith in humanity, she
would breathe into my soul renewed inspiration, saying, "Pity rather
than blame those who persecute us." So closely interwoven have been our
lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling
of incompleteness--united, such strength of self-assertion that no
ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us
insurmountable. Reviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever liken her
to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so simply, so grandly she
stands, free from every extraneous ornament, supporting her one vast
idea--the enfranchisement of woman.
As our estimate of ourselves and our friendship may differ somewhat from
that taken from an objective point of view, I will give an extract from
what our common friend Theodore Tilton wrote of us in 1868:
"Miss Susan B. Anthony, a well-known, indefatigable, and lifelong
advocate of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights, has been,
since 1851, Mrs. Stanton's intimate associate in reformatory
labors. These celebrated women are of about equal age, but of the
most opposite characteristics, and illustrate the theory of
counterparts in affection by entertaining for each other a
friendship of extraordinary strength.
"Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony
is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains
and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity;
but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to
which they are devoting their lives.
"Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that,
opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the
other's deficiencies as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus
they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and, at the same
time, diminish each other's discretion.
"But, whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one or the
impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are
evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design;
the harm by accident. These two women, sitting together in their
parlors, have, for the last thirty years, been diligent forgers of
all manner of projectiles, from fireworks to thunderbolts, and have
hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner
of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies;
sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members,
more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims;
and, in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's
teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole
country. Nor will they, themselves deny the charge. In fact this
noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum, keeping up what
Daniel Webster called 'The rub-a-dub of agitation.'"
CHAPTER XII.
MY FIRST SPEECH BEFORE A LEGISLATURE.
Women had been willing so long to hold a subordinate position, both in
private and public affairs, that a gradually growing feeling of
rebellion among them quite exasperated the men, and their manifestations
of hostility in public meetings were often as ridiculous as humiliating.
True, those gentlemen were all quite willing that women should join
their societies and churches to do the drudgery; to work up the
enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to
pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members
of their various organizations; to beg money for the Church; to
circulate petitions from door to door; to visit saloons; to pray with or
defy rumsellers; to teach school at half price, and sit round the
outskirts of a hall, in teachers' State conventions, like so many
wallflowers; but they would not allow them to sit on the platform,
address the assembly, or vote for men and measures.
Those who had learned the first lessons of human rights from the lips of
Henry B. Stanton, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith would not accept any
such position. When women abandoned the temperance reform, all interest
in the question gradually died out in the State, and practically nothing
was done in New York for nearly twenty years. Gerrit Smith made one or
two attempts toward an "anti-dramshop" party, but, as women could not
vote, they felt no interest in the measure, and failure was the result.
I soon convinced Miss Anthony that the ballot was the key to the
situation; that when we had a voice in the laws we should be welcome to
any platform. In turning the intense earnestness and religious
enthusiasm of this great-souled woman into this channel, I soon felt the
power of my convert in goading me forever forward to more untiring work.
Soon fastened, heart to heart, with hooks of steel in a friendship that
years of confidence and affection have steadily strengthened, we have
labored faithfully together.
From the year 1850 conventions were held in various States, and their
respective legislatures were continually besieged; New York was
thoroughly canvassed by Miss Anthony and others. Appeals, calls for
meetings, and petitions were circulated without number. In 1854 I
prepared my first speech for the New York legislature. That was a great
event in my life. I felt so nervous over it, lest it should not be
worthy the occasion, that Miss Anthony suggested that I should slip up
to Rochester and submit it to the Rev. William Henry Channing, who was
preaching there at that time. I did so, and his opinion was so favorable
as to the merits of my speech that I felt quite reassured. My father
felt equally nervous when he saw, by the Albany _Evening Journal_, that
I was to speak at the Capitol, and asked me to read my speech to him
also. Accordingly, I stopped at Johnstown on my way to Albany, and, late
one evening, when he was alone in his office, I entered and took my seat
on the opposite side of his table. On no occasion, before or since, was
I ever more embarrassed--an audience of one, and that the one of all
others whose approbation I most desired, whose disapproval I most
feared. I knew he condemned the whole movement, and was deeply grieved
at the active part I had taken. Hence I was fully aware that I was about
to address a wholly unsympathetic audience. However, I began, with a
dogged determination to give all the power I could to my manuscript, and
not to be discouraged or turned from my purpose by any tender appeals or
adverse criticisms. I described the widow in the first hours of her
grief, subject to the intrusions of the coarse minions of the law,
taking inventory of the household goods, of the old armchair in which
her loved one had breathed his last, of the old clock in the corner that
told the hour he passed away. I threw all the pathos I could into my
voice and language at this point, and, to my intense satisfaction, I saw
tears filling my father's eyes. I cannot express the exultation I felt,
thinking that now he would see, with my eyes, the injustice women
suffered under the laws he understood so well.
Feeling that I had touched his heart I went on with renewed confidence,
and, when I had finished, I saw he was thoroughly magnetized. With
beating heart I waited for him to break the silence. He was evidently
deeply pondering over all he had heard, and did not speak for a long
time. I believed I had opened to him a new world of thought. He had
listened long to the complaints of women, but from the lips of his own
daughter they had come with a deeper pathos and power. At last, turning
abruptly, he said: "Surely you have had a happy, comfortable life, with
all your wants and needs supplied; and yet that speech fills me with
self-reproach; for one might naturally ask, how can a young woman,
tenderly brought up, who has had no bitter personal experience, feel so
keenly the wrongs of her sex? Where did you learn this lesson?" "I
learned it here," I replied, "in your office, when a child, listening to
the complaints women made to you. They who have sympathy and imagination
to make the sorrows of others their own can readily learn all the hard
lessons of life from the experience of others." "Well, well!" he said,
"you have made your points clear and strong; but I think I can find you
even more cruel laws than those you have quoted." He suggested some
improvements in my speech, looked up other laws, and it was one o'clock
in the morning before we kissed each other good-night. How he felt on
the question after that I do not know, as he never said anything in
favor of or against it. He gladly gave me any help I needed, from time
to time, in looking up the laws, and was very desirous that whatever I
gave to the public should be carefully prepared.
Miss Anthony printed twenty thousand copies of this address, laid it on
the desk of every member of the legislature, both in the Assembly and
Senate, and, in her travels that winter, she circulated it throughout
the State. I am happy to say I never felt so anxious about the fate of a
speech since.
The first woman's convention in Albany was held at this time, and we had
a kind of protracted meeting for two weeks after. There were several
hearings before both branches of the legislature, and a succession of
meetings in Association Hall, in which Phillips, Channing, Ernestine L.
Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, and Susan B. Anthony took part. Being at the
capital of the State, discussion was aroused at every fireside, while
the comments of the press were numerous and varied. Every little country
paper had something witty or silly to say about the uprising of the
"strong-minded." Those editors whose heads were about the size of an
apple were the most opposed to the uprising of women, illustrating what
Sidney Smith said long ago: "There always was, and there always will be
a class of men so small that, if women were educated, there would be
nobody left below them." Poor human nature loves to have something to
look down upon!
Here is a specimen of the way such editors talked at that time. The
_Albany Register_, in an article on "Woman's Rights in the Legislature,"
dated March 7, 1854, says:
"While the feminine propagandists of women's rights confined
themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged
boots, and to the holding of conventions and speech-making in
concert rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as
they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances
of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with
blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke
is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these
performances, and are looking for some healthier and more
intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust
is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the
novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism.
"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should
sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who would step out from
the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and
taking upon themselves the duties and the business of men, stalk
into the public gaze, and, by engaging in the politics, the rough
controversies and trafficking of the world, upheave existing
institutions, and overrun all the social relations of life.
"It is a melancholy reflection that, among our American women, who
have been educated to better things, there should be found any who
are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the
ringleted, gloved exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how
such a man as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed Dr. Channing,
may be deluded by her into becoming one of her disciples. They are
not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake
weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and
her doctrines; nor would they be the first examples of a low
ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute for true fame, if
they are dishonest. Such men there are always, and, honest or
dishonest, their true position is that of being tied to the apron
strings of some strong-minded woman, and to be exhibited as rare
specimens of human wickedness or human weakness and folly. But that
one educated American should become her disciple and follow her
insane teachings is a marvel."
When we see the abuse and ridicule to which the best of men were
subjected for standing on our platform in the early days, we need not
wonder that so few have been brave enough to advocate our cause in later
years, either in conventions or in the halls of legislation.
After twelve added years of agitation, following the passage of the
Property Bill, New York conceded other civil rights to married women.
Pending the discussion of these various bills, Susan B. Anthony
circulated petitions, both for the civil and political rights of women,
throughout the State, traveling in stage coaches, open wagons, and
sleighs in all seasons, and on foot, from door to door through towns and
cities, doing her uttermost to rouse women to some sense of their
natural rights as human beings, and to their civil and political rights
as citizens of a republic. And while expending her time, strength, and
money to secure these blessings for the women of the State, they would
gruffly tell her that they had all the rights they wanted, or rudely
shut the door in her face; leaving her to stand outside, petition in
hand, treating her with as much contempt as if she was asking alms for
herself. None but those who did that work in the early days, for the
slaves and the women, can ever know the hardships and humiliations that
were endured. But it was done because it was only through petitions--a
power seemingly so inefficient--that disfranchised classes could be
heard in the State and National councils; hence their importance.
The frivolous objections some women made to our appeals were as
exasperating as they were ridiculous. To reply to them politely, at all
times, required a divine patience. On one occasion, after addressing the
legislature, some of the ladies, in congratulating me, inquired, in a
deprecating tone, "What do you do with your children?" "Ladies," I said,
"it takes me no longer to speak, than you to listen; what have you done
with your children the two hours you have been sitting here? But, to
answer your question, I never leave my children to go to Saratoga,
Washington, Newport, or Europe, or even to come here. They are, at this
moment, with a faithful nurse at the Delevan House, and, having
accomplished my mission, we shall all return home together."
When my children reached the magic number of seven, my good angel, Susan
B. Anthony, would sometimes take one or two of them to her own quiet
home, just out of Rochester, where, on a well-cultivated little farm,
one could enjoy uninterrupted rest and the choicest fruits of the
season. That was always a safe harbor for my friend, as her family
sympathized fully in the reforms to which she gave her life. I have many
pleasant memories of my own flying visits to that hospitable Quaker home
and the broad catholic spirit of Daniel and Lucy Anthony. Whatever
opposition and ridicule their daughter endured elsewhere, she enjoyed
the steadfast sympathy and confidence of her own home circle. Her
faithful sister Mary, a most successful teacher in the public schools of
Rochester for a quarter of a century, and a good financier, who with her
patrimony and salary had laid by a competence, took on her shoulders
double duty at home in cheering the declining years of her parents, that
Susan might do the public work in the reforms in which they were equally
interested. Now, with life's earnest work nearly accomplished, the
sisters are living happily together; illustrating another of the many
charming homes of single women, so rapidly multiplying of late.
Miss Anthony, who was a frequent guest at my home, sometimes stood guard
when I was absent. The children of our household say that among their
earliest recollections is the tableau of "Mother and Susan," seated by a
large table covered with books and papers, always writing and talking
about the Constitution, interrupted with occasional visits from others
of the faithful. Hither came Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Paulina Wright
Davis, Frances Dana Gage, Dr. Harriet Hunt, Rev. Antoinette Brown, Lucy
Stone, and Abby Kelly, until all these names were as familiar as
household words to the children.
Martha C. Wright of Auburn was a frequent visitor at the center of the
rebellion, as my sequestered cottage on Locust Hill was facetiously
called. She brought to these councils of war not only her own wisdom,
but that of the wife and sister of William H. Seward, and sometimes
encouraging suggestions from the great statesman himself, from whose
writings we often gleaned grand and radical sentiments. Lucretia Mott,
too, being an occasional guest of her sister, Martha C. Wright, added
the dignity of her presence at many of these important consultations.
She was uniformly in favor of toning down our fiery pronunciamentos. For
Miss Anthony and myself, the English language had no words strong enough
to express the indignation we felt at the prolonged injustice to women.
We found, however, that, after expressing ourselves in the most vehement
manner and thus in a measure giving our feelings an outlet, we were
reconciled to issue the documents in milder terms. If the men of the
State could have known the stern rebukes, the denunciations, the wit,
the irony, the sarcasm that were garnered there, and then judiciously
pigeonholed and milder and more persuasive appeals substituted, they
would have been truly thankful that they fared no worse.
Senator Seward frequently left Washington to visit in our neighborhood,
at the house of Judge G.V. Sackett, a man of wealth and political
influence. One of the Senator's standing anecdotes, at dinner, to
illustrate the purifying influence of women at the polls, which he
always told with great zest for my especial benefit, was in regard to
the manner in which his wife's sister exercised the right of suffrage.
He said: "Mrs. Worden having the supervision of a farm near Auburn, was
obliged to hire two or three men for its cultivation. It was her custom,
having examined them as to their capacity to perform the required labor,
their knowledge of tools, horses, cattle, and horticulture, to inquire
as to their politics. She informed them that, being a widow and having
no one to represent her, she must have Republicans to do her voting and
to represent her political opinions, and it always so happened that the
men who offered their services belonged to the Republican party. I
remarked to her, one day, 'Are you sure your men vote as they promise?'
'Yes,' she replied, 'I trust nothing to their discretion. I take them in
my carriage within sight of the polls and put them in charge of some
Republican who can be trusted. I see that they have the right tickets
and then I feel sure that I am faithfully represented, and I know I am
right in so doing. I have neither husband, father, nor son; I am
responsible for my own taxes; am amenable to all the laws of the State;
must pay the penalty of my own crimes if I commit any; hence I have the
right, according to the principles of our government, to representation,
and so long as I am not permitted to vote in person, I have a right to
do so by proxy; hence I hire men to vote my principles.'"
These two sisters, Mrs. Worden and Mrs. Seward, daughters of Judge
Miller, an influential man, were women of culture and remarkable natural
intelligence, and interested in all progressive ideas. They had rare
common sense and independence of character, great simplicity of manner,
and were wholly indifferent to the little arts of the toilet.
I was often told by fashionable women that they objected to the woman's
rights movement because of the publicity of a convention, the immodesty
of speaking from a platform, and the trial of seeing one's name in the
papers. Several ladies made such remarks to me one day, as a bevy of us
were sitting together in one of the fashionable hotels in Newport. We
were holding a convention there at that time, and some of them had been
present at one of the sessions. "Really," said I, "ladies, you surprise
me; our conventions are not as public as the ballroom where I saw you
all dancing last night. As to modesty, it may be a question, in many
minds, whether it is less modest to speak words of soberness and truth,
plainly dressed on a platform, than gorgeously arrayed, with bare arms
and shoulders, to waltz in the arms of strange gentlemen. And as to the
press, I noticed you all reading, in this morning's papers, with evident
satisfaction, the personal compliments and full descriptions of your
dresses at the last ball. I presume that any one of you would have felt
slighted if your name had not been mentioned in the general description.
When my name is mentioned, it is in connection with some great reform
movement. Thus we all suffer or enjoy the same publicity--we are alike
ridiculed. Wise men pity and ridicule you, and fools pity and ridicule
me--you as the victims of folly and fashion, me as the representative of
many of the disagreeable 'isms' of the age, as they choose to style
liberal opinions. It is amusing, in analyzing prejudices, to see on what
slender foundation they rest." And the ladies around me were so
completely cornered that no one attempted an answer.
I remember being at a party at Secretary Seward's home, at Auburn, one
evening, when Mr. Burlingame, special ambassador from China to the
United States, with a Chinese delegation, were among the guests. As soon
as the dancing commenced, and young ladies and gentlemen, locked in each
other's arms, began to whirl in the giddy waltz, these Chinese gentlemen
were so shocked that they covered their faces with their fans,
occasionally peeping out each side and expressing their surprise to each
other. They thought us the most immodest women on the face of the earth.
Modesty and taste are questions of latitude and education; the more
people know,--the more their ideas are expanded by travel, experience,
and observation,--the less easily they are shocked. The narrowness and
bigotry of women are the result of their circumscribed sphere of thought
and action.
A few years after Judge Hurlbert had published his work on "Human
Rights," in which he advocated woman's right to the suffrage, and I had
addressed the legislature, we met at a dinner party in Albany. Senator
and Mrs. Seward were there. The Senator was very merry on that occasion
and made Judge Hurlbert and myself the target for all his ridicule on
the woman's rights question, in which the most of the company joined, so
that we stood quite alone. Sure that we had the right on our side and
the arguments clearly defined in our minds, and both being cool and
self-possessed, and in wit and sarcasm quite equal to any of them, we
fought the Senator, inch by inch, until he had a very narrow platform to
stand on. Mrs. Seward maintained an unbroken silence, while those ladies
who did open their lips were with the opposition, supposing, no doubt,
that Senator Seward represented his wife's opinions.
When we ladies withdrew from the table my embarrassment may be easily
imagined. Separated from the Judge, I would now be an hour with a bevy
of ladies who evidently felt repugnance to all my most cherished
opinions. It was the first time I had met Mrs. Seward, and I did not
then know the broad, liberal tendencies of her mind. What a tide of
disagreeable thoughts rushed through me in that short passage from the
dining room to the parlor. How gladly I would have glided out the front
door! But that was impossible, so I made up my mind to stroll round as
if self-absorbed, and look at the books and paintings until the Judge
appeared; as I took it for granted that, after all I had said at the
table on the political, religious, and social equality of women, not a
lady would have anything to say to me.
Imagine, then, my surprise when, the moment the parlor door was closed
upon us, Mrs. Seward, approaching me most affectionately, said:
"Let me thank you for the brave words you uttered at the dinner table,
and for your speech before the legislature, that thrilled my soul as I
read it over and over."
I was filled with joy and astonishment. Recovering myself, I said, "Is
it possible, Mrs. Seward, that you agree with me? Then why, when I was
so hard pressed by foes on every side, did you not come to the defense?
I supposed that all you ladies were hostile to every one of my ideas on
this question."
"No, no!" said she; "I am with you thoroughly, but I am a born coward;
there is nothing I dread more than Mr. Seward's ridicule. I would rather
walk up to the cannon's mouth than encounter it." "I, too, am with you,"
"And I," said two or three others, who had been silent at the table.
I never had a more serious, heartfelt conversation than with these
ladies. Mrs. Seward's spontaneity and earnestness had moved them all
deeply, and when the Senator appeared the first words he said were:
"Before we part I must confess that I was fairly vanquished by you and
the Judge, on my own principles" (for we had quoted some of his most
radical utterances). "You have the argument, but custom and prejudice
are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic."
CHAPTER XIII.
REFORMS AND MOBS.
There was one bright woman among the many in our Seneca Falls literary
circle to whom I would give more than a passing notice--Mrs. Amelia
Bloomer, who represented three novel phases of woman's life. She was
assistant postmistress; an editor of a reform paper advocating
temperance and woman's rights; and an advocate of the new costume which
bore her name!
In 1849 her husband was appointed postmaster, and she became his deputy,
was duly sworn in, and, during the administration of Taylor and
Fillmore, served in that capacity. When she assumed her duties the
improvement in the appearance and conduct of the office was generally
acknowledged. A neat little room adjoining the public office became a
kind of ladies' exchange, where those coming from different parts of the
town could meet to talk over the news of the day and read the papers and
magazines that came to Mrs. Bloomer as editor of the _Lily_. Those who
enjoyed the brief reign of a woman in the post office can readily
testify to the void felt by the ladies of the village when Mrs.
Bloomer's term expired and a man once more reigned in her stead.
However, she still edited the _Lily_, and her office remained a
fashionable center for several years. Although she wore the bloomer
dress, its originator was Elizabeth Smith Miller, the only daughter of
Gerrit Smith. In the winter of 1852 Mrs. Miller came to visit me in
Seneca Falls, dressed somewhat in the Turkish style--short skirt, full
trousers of fine black broadcloth; a Spanish cloak, of the same
material, reaching to the knee; beaver hat and feathers and dark furs;
altogether a most becoming costume and exceedingly convenient for
walking in all kinds of weather. To see my cousin, with a lamp in one
hand and a baby in the other, walk upstairs with ease and grace, while,
with flowing robes, I pulled myself up with difficulty, lamp and baby
out of the question, readily convinced me that there was sore need of
reform in woman's dress, and I promptly donned a similar attire. What
incredible freedom I enjoyed for two years! Like a captive set free from
his ball and chain, I was always ready for a brisk walk through sleet
and snow and rain, to climb a mountain, jump over a fence, work in the
garden, and, in fact, for any necessary locomotion.
Bloomer is now a recognized word in the English language. Mrs. Bloomer,
having the _Lily_ in which to discuss the merits of the new dress, the
press generally took up the question, and much valuable information was
elicited on the physiological results of woman's fashionable attire; the
crippling effect of tight waists and long skirts, the heavy weight on
the hips, and high heels, all combined to throw the spine out of plumb
and lay the foundation for all manner of nervous diseases. But, while
all agreed that some change was absolutely necessary for the health of
women, the press stoutly ridiculed those who were ready to make the
experiment.
A few sensible women, in different parts of the country, adopted the
costume, and farmers' wives especially proved its convenience. It was
also worn by skaters, gymnasts, tourists, and in sanitariums. But, while
the few realized its advantages, the many laughed it to scorn, and
heaped such ridicule on its wearers that they soon found that the
physical freedom enjoyed did not compensate for the persistent
persecution and petty annoyances suffered at every turn. To be rudely
gazed at in public and private, to be the conscious subjects of
criticism, and to be followed by crowds of boys in the streets, were
all, to the very last degree, exasperating. A favorite doggerel that our
tormentors chanted, when we appeared in public places, ran thus:
"Heigh! ho! in rain and snow,
The bloomer now is all the go.
Twenty tailors take the stitches,
Twenty women wear the breeches.
Heigh! ho! in rain or snow,
The bloomer now is all the go."
The singers were generally invisible behind some fence or attic window.
Those who wore the dress can recall countless amusing and annoying
experiences. The patience of most of us was exhausted in about two
years; but our leader, Mrs. Miller, bravely adhered to the costume for
nearly seven years, under the most trying circumstances. While her
father was in Congress, she wore it at many fashionable dinners and
receptions in Washington. She was bravely sustained, however, by her
husband, Colonel Miller, who never flinched in escorting his wife and
her coadjutors, however inartistic their costumes might be. To tall,
gaunt women with large feet and to those who were short and stout, it
was equally trying. Mrs. Miller was also encouraged by the intense
feeling of her father on the question of woman's dress. To him the whole
revolution in woman's position turned on her dress. The long skirt was
the symbol of her degradation.
The names of those who wore the bloomer costume, besides those already
mentioned, were Paulina Wright Davis, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony,
Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Mrs. William Burleigh, Celia Burleigh,
Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Helen Jarvis, Lydia Jenkins, Amelia Willard,
Dr. Harriet N. Austin, and many patients in sanitariums, whose names I
cannot recall. Looking back to this experiment, I am not surprised at
the hostility of men in general to the dress, as it made it very
uncomfortable for them to go anywhere with those who wore it. People
would stare, many men and women make rude remarks, boys followed in
crowds, with jeers and laughter, so that gentlemen in attendance would
feel it their duty to show fight, unless they had sufficient
self-control to pursue the even tenor of their way, as the ladies
themselves did, without taking the slightest notice of the commotion
they created. But Colonel Miller went through the ordeal with coolness
and dogged determination, to the vexation of his acquaintances, who
thought one of his duties as a husband was to prescribe his wife's
costume.
Though we did not realize the success we hoped for by making the dress
popular, yet the effort was not lost. We were well aware that the dress
was not artistic, and though we made many changes, our own good taste
was never satisfied until we threw aside the loose trousers and adopted
buttoned leggins. After giving up the experiment, we found that the
costume in which Diana the Huntress is represented, and that worn on the
stage by Ellen Tree in the play of "Ion," would have been more artistic
and convenient. But we, who had made the experiment, were too happy to
move about unnoticed and unknown, to risk, again, the happiness of
ourselves and our friends by any further experiments. I have never
wondered since that the Chinese women allow their daughters' feet to be
encased in iron shoes, nor that the Hindoo widows walk calmly to the
funeral pyre; for great are the penalties of those who dare resist the
behests of the tyrant Custom.
Nevertheless the agitation has been kept up, in a mild form, both in
England and America. Lady Harberton, in 1885, was at the head of an
organized movement in London to introduce the bifurcated skirt; Mrs.
Jenness Miller, in this country, is making an entire revolution in every
garment that belongs to a woman's toilet; and common-sense shoemakers
have vouchsafed to us, at last, a low, square heel to our boots and a
broad sole in which the five toes can spread themselves at pleasure.
Evidently a new day of physical freedom is at last dawning for the most
cribbed and crippled of Eve's unhappy daughters.
It was while living in Seneca Falls, and at one of the most despairing
periods of my young life, that one of the best gifts of the gods came to
me in the form of a good, faithful housekeeper. She was indeed a
treasure, a friend and comforter, a second mother to my children, and
understood all life's duties and gladly bore its burdens. She could fill
any department in domestic life, and for thirty years was the joy of our
household. But for this noble, self-sacrificing woman, much of my public
work would have been quite impossible. If by word or deed I have made
the journey of life easier for any struggling soul, I must in justice
share the meed of praise accorded me with my little Quaker friend Amelia
Willard.
There are two classes of housekeepers--one that will get what they want,
if in the range of human possibilities, and then accept the inevitable
inconveniences with cheerfulness and heroism; the other, from a kind of
chronic inertia and a fear of taking responsibility, accept everything
as they find it, though with gentle, continuous complainings. The latter
are called amiable women. Such a woman was our congressman's wife in
1854, and, as I was the reservoir of all her sorrows, great and small, I
became very weary of her amiable non-resistance. Among other domestic
trials, she had a kitchen stove that smoked and leaked, which could
neither bake nor broil,--a worthless thing,--and too small for any
purpose. Consequently half their viands were spoiled in the cooking, and
the cooks left in disgust, one after another.
In telling me, one day, of these kitchen misadventures, she actually
shed tears, which so roused my sympathies that, with surprise, I
exclaimed: "Why do you not buy a new stove?" To my unassisted common
sense that seemed the most practical thing to do. "Why," she replied, "I
have never purchased a darning needle, to put the case strongly, without
consulting Mr. S., and he does not think a new stove necessary." "What,
pray," said I, "does he know about stoves, sitting in his easy-chair in
Washington? If he had a dull old knife with broken blades, he would soon
get a new one with which to sharpen his pens and pencils, and, if he
attempted to cook a meal--granting he knew how--on your old stove, he
would set it out of doors the next hour. Now my advice to you is to buy
a new one this very day!"
"Bless me!" she said, "that would make him furious; he would blow me
sky-high." "Well," I replied, "suppose he did go into a regular tantrum
and use all the most startling expletives in the vocabulary for fifteen
minutes! What is that compared with a good stove 365 days in the year?
Just put all he could say on one side, and all the advantages you would
enjoy on the other, and you must readily see that his wrath would kick
the beam." As my logic was irresistible, she said, "Well, if you will go
with me, and help select a stove, I think I will take the
responsibility."
Accordingly we went to the hardware store and selected the most
approved, largest-sized stove, with all the best cooking utensils, best
Russian pipe, etc. "Now," said she, "I am in equal need of a good stove
in my sitting room, and I would like the pipes of both stoves to lead
into dumb stoves above, and thus heat two or three rooms upstairs for my
children to play in, as they have no place except the sitting room,
where they must be always with me; but I suppose it is not best to do
too much at one time." "On the contrary," I replied, "as your husband is
wealthy, you had better get all you really need now. Mr. S. will
probably be no more surprised with two stoves than with one, and, as you
expect a hot scene over the matter, the more you get out of it the
better."
So the stoves and pipes were ordered, holes cut through the ceiling, and
all were in working order next day. The cook was delighted over her
splendid stove and shining tins, copper-bottomed tea kettle and boiler,
and warm sleeping room upstairs; the children were delighted with their
large playrooms, and madam jubilant with her added comforts and that
newborn feeling of independence one has in assuming responsibility.
She was expecting Mr. S. home in the holidays, and occasionally weakened
at the prospect of what she feared might be a disagreeable encounter. At
such times she came to consult with me, as to what she would say and do
when the crisis arrived. Having studied the _genus homo_ alike on the
divine heights of exaltation and in the valleys of humiliation, I was
able to make some valuable suggestions.
"Now," said I, "when your husband explodes, as you think he will,
neither say nor do anything; sit and gaze out of the window with that
far-away, sad look women know so well how to affect. If you can summon
tears at pleasure, a few would not be amiss; a gentle shower, not enough
to make the nose and eyes red or to detract from your beauty. Men cannot
resist beauty and tears. Never mar their effect with anything bordering
on sobs and hysteria; such violent manifestations being neither refined
nor artistic. A scene in which one person does the talking must be
limited in time. No ordinary man can keep at white heat fifteen minutes;
if his victim says nothing, he will soon exhaust himself. Remember every
time you speak in the way of defense, you give him a new text on which
to branch out again. If silence is ever golden, it is when a husband is
in a tantrum."
In due time Mr. S. arrived, laden with Christmas presents, and Charlotte
came over to tell me that she had passed through the ordeal. I will give
the scene in her own words as nearly as possible. "My husband came
yesterday, just before dinner, and, as I expected him, I had all things
in order. He seemed very happy to see me and the children, and we had a
gay time looking at our presents and chatting about Washington and all
that had happened since we parted. It made me sad, in the midst of our
happiness, to think how soon the current of his feelings would change,
and I wished in my soul that I had not bought the stoves. But, at last,
dinner was announced, and I knew that the hour had come. He ran upstairs
to give a few touches to his toilet, when lo! the shining stoves and
pipes caught his eyes. He explored the upper apartments and came down
the back stairs, glanced at the kitchen stove, then into the dining
room, and stood confounded, for a moment, before the nickel-plated
'Morning Glory.' Then he exclaimed, 'Heavens and earth! Charlotte, what
have you been doing?' I remembered what you told me and said nothing,
but looked steadily out of the window. I summoned no tears, however, for
I felt more like laughing than crying; he looked so ridiculous flying
round spasmodically, like popcorn on a hot griddle, and talking as if
making a stump speech on the corruptions of the Democrats. The first
time he paused to take breath I said, in my softest tones: 'William,
dinner is waiting; I fear the soup will be cold.' Fortunately he was
hungry, and that great central organ of life and happiness asserted its
claims on his attention, and he took his seat at the table. I broke what
might have been an awkward silence, chatting with the older children
about their school lessons. Fortunately they were late, and did not know
what had happened, so they talked to their father and gradually restored
his equilibrium. We had a very good dinner, and I have not heard a word
about the stoves since. I suppose we shall have another scene when the
bill is presented."
A few years later, Horace Greeley came to Seneca Falls to lecture on
temperance. As he stayed with us, we invited Mr. S., among others, to
dinner. The chief topic at the table was the idiosyncrasies of women.
Mr. Greeley told many amusing things about his wife, of her erratic
movements and sudden decisions to do and dare what seemed most
impracticable. Perhaps, on rising some morning, she would say: "I think
I'll go to Europe by the next steamer, Horace. Will you get tickets
to-day for me, the nurse, and children?" "Well," said Mr. S., "she must
be something like our hostess. Every time her husband goes away she cuts
a door or window. They have only ten doors to lock every night, now."
"Yes," I said, "and your own wife, too, Mrs. S., has the credit of some
high-handed measures when you are in Washington." Then I told the whole
story, amid peals of laughter, just as related above. The dinner table
scene fairly convulsed the Congressman. The thought that he had made
such a fool of himself in the eyes of Charlotte that she could not even
summon a tear in her defense, particularly pleased him. When
sufficiently recovered to speak, he said: "Well, I never could
understand how it was that Charlotte suddenly emerged from her thraldom
and manifested such rare executive ability. Now I see to whom I am
indebted for the most comfortable part of my married life. I am a
thousand times obliged to you; you did just right and so did she, and
she has been a happier woman ever since. She now gets what she needs,
and frets no more, to me, about ten thousand little things. How can a
man know what implements are necessary for the work he never does? Of
all agencies for upsetting the equanimity of family life, none can
surpass an old, broken-down kitchen stove!"
In the winter of 1861, just after the election of Lincoln, the
abolitionists decided to hold a series of conventions in the chief
cities of the North. All their available speakers were pledged for
active service. The Republican party, having absorbed the political
abolitionists within its ranks by its declared hostility to the
extension of slavery, had come into power with overwhelming majorities.
Hence the Garrisonian abolitionists, opposed to all compromises, felt
that this was the opportune moment to rouse the people to the necessity
of holding that party to its declared principles, and pushing it, if
possible, a step or two forward.
I was invited to accompany Miss Anthony and Beriah Green to a few points
in Central New York. But we soon found, by the concerted action of
Republicans all over the country, that anti-slavery conventions would
not be tolerated. Thus Republicans and Democrats made common cause
against the abolitionists. The John Brown raid, the year before, had
intimidated Northern politicians as much as Southern slaveholders, and
the general feeling was that the discussion of the question at the North
should be altogether suppressed.
From Buffalo to Albany our experience was the same, varied only by the
fertile resources of the actors and their surroundings. Thirty years of
education had somewhat changed the character of Northern mobs. They no
longer dragged men through the streets with ropes around their necks,
nor broke up women's prayer meetings; they no longer threw eggs and
brickbats at the apostles of reform, nor dipped them in barrels of tar
and feathers, they simply crowded the halls, and, with laughing,
groaning, clapping, and cheering, effectually interrupted the
proceedings. Such was our experience during the two days we attempted to
hold a convention in St. James' Hall, Buffalo. As we paid for the hall,
the mob enjoyed themselves, at our expense, in more ways than one. Every
session, at the appointed time, we took our places on the platform,
making, at various intervals of silence, renewed efforts to speak. Not
succeeding, we sat and conversed with each other and the many friends
who crowded the platform and anterooms. Thus, among ourselves, we had a
pleasant reception and a discussion of many phases of the question that
brought us together. The mob not only vouchsafed to us the privilege of
talking to our friends without interruption, but delegations of their
own came behind the scenes, from time to time, to discuss with us the
right of free speech and the constitutionality of slavery.
These Buffalo rowdies were headed by ex-Justice Hinson, aided by younger
members of the Fillmore and Seymour families, and the chief of police
and fifty subordinates, who were admitted to the hall free, for the
express purpose of protecting our right of free speech, but who, in
defiance of the mayor's orders, made not the slightest effort in our
defense. At Lockport there was a feeble attempt in the same direction.
At Albion neither hall, church, nor schoolhouse could be obtained, so we
held small meetings in the dining room of the hotel. At Rochester,
Corinthian Hall was packed long before the hour advertised. This was a
delicately appreciative, jocose mob. At this point Aaron Powell joined
us. As he had just risen from a bed of sickness, looking pale and
emaciated, he slowly mounted the platform. The mob at once took in his
look of exhaustion, and, as he seated himself, they gave an audible
simultaneous sigh, as if to say, what a relief it is to be seated! So
completely did the tender manifestation reflect Mr. Powell's apparent
condition that the whole audience burst into a roar of laughter. Here,
too, all attempts to speak were futile. At Port Byron a generous
sprinkling of cayenne pepper on the stove soon cut short all
constitutional arguments and paeans to liberty.
And so it was all the way to Albany. The whole State was aflame with the
mob spirit, and from Boston and various points in other States the same
news reached us. As the legislature was in session, and we were
advertised in Albany, a radical member sarcastically moved "That as Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony were about to move on Albany, the militia be
ordered out for the protection of the city." Happily, Albany could then
boast of a Democratic mayor, a man of courage and conscience, who said
the right of free speech should never be trodden under foot where he had
the right to prevent it. And grandly did that one determined man
maintain order in his jurisdiction. Through all the sessions of the
convention Mayor Thatcher sat on the platform, his police stationed in
different parts of the hall and outside the building, to disperse the
crowd as fast as it collected. If a man or boy hissed or made the
slightest interruption, he was immediately ejected. And not only did the
mayor preserve order in the meetings, but, with a company of armed
police, he escorted us, every time, to and from the Delevan House. The
last night Gerrit Smith addressed the mob from the steps of the hotel,
after which they gave him three cheers and dispersed in good order.
When proposing for the Mayor a vote of thanks, at the close of the
convention, Mr. Smith expressed his fears that it had been a severe
ordeal for him to listen to these prolonged anti-slavery discussions. He
smiled, and said: "I have really been deeply interested and instructed.
I rather congratulate myself that a convention of this character has, at
last, come in the line of my business; otherwise I should have probably
remained in ignorance of many important facts and opinions I now
understand and appreciate."
While all this was going on publicly, an equally trying experience was
progressing, day by day, behind the scenes. Miss Anthony had been
instrumental in helping a much abused mother, with her child, to escape
from a husband who had immured her in an insane asylum. The wife
belonged to one of the first families of New York, her brother being a
United States senator, and the husband, also, a man of position; a large
circle of friends and acquaintances was interested in the result. Though
she was incarcerated in an insane asylum for eighteen months, yet
members of her own family again and again testified that she was not
insane. Miss Anthony, knowing that she was not, and believing fully that
the unhappy mother was the victim of a conspiracy, would not reveal her
hiding place.
Knowing the confidence Miss Anthony felt in the wisdom of Mr. Garrison
and Mr. Phillips, they were implored to use their influence with her to
give up the fugitives. Letters and telegrams, persuasions, arguments,
and warnings from Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips, and the Senator on the one
side, and from Lydia Mott, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, and Abby Hopper
Gibbons, on the other, poured in upon her, day after day; but Miss
Anthony remained immovable, although she knew that she was defying and
violating the law and might be arrested any moment on the platform. We
had known so many aggravated cases of this kind that, in daily counsel,
we resolved that this woman should not be recaptured if it were possible
to prevent it. To us it looked as imperative a duty to shield a sane
mother, who had been torn from a family of little children and doomed to
the companionship of lunatics, and to aid her in fleeing to a place of
safety, as to help a fugitive from slavery to Canada. In both cases an
unjust law was violated; in both cases the supposed owners of the
victims were defied; hence, in point of law and morals, the act was the
same in both cases. The result proved the wisdom of Miss Anthony's
decision, as all with whom Mrs. P. came in contact for years afterward,
expressed the opinion that she was, and always had been, perfectly sane.
Could the dark secrets of insane asylums be brought to light we should
be shocked to know the great number of rebellious wives, sisters, and
daughters who are thus sacrificed to false customs and barbarous laws
made by men for women.
CHAPTER XIV.
VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
The widespread discussion we are having, just now, on the subject of
marriage and divorce, reminds me of an equally exciting one in 1860. A
very liberal bill, introduced into the Indiana legislature by Robert
Dale Owen, and which passed by a large majority, roused much public
thought on the question, and made that State free soil for unhappy wives
and husbands. A similar bill was introduced into the legislature of New
York by Mr. Ramsey, which was defeated by four votes, owing, mainly, to
the intense opposition of Horace Greeley. He and Mr. Owen had a
prolonged discussion, in the New York _Tribune_, in which Mr. Owen got
decidedly the better of the argument.
There had been several aggravated cases of cruelty to wives among the
Dutch aristocracy, so that strong influences in favor of the bill had
been brought to bear on the legislature, but the _Tribune_ thundered
every morning in its editorial column its loudest peals, which
reverberated through the State. So bitter was the opposition to divorce,
for any cause, that but few dared to take part in the discussion. I was
the only woman, for many years, who wrote and spoke on the question.
Articles on divorce, by a number of women, recently published in the
_North American Review_, are a sign of progress, showing that women dare
speak out now more freely on the relations that most deeply concern
them.
My feelings had been stirred to their depths very early in life by the
sufferings of a dear friend of mine, at whose wedding I was one of the
bridesmaids. In listening to the facts in her case, my mind was fully
made up as to the wisdom of a liberal divorce law. We read Milton's
essays on divorce, together, and were thoroughly convinced as to the
right and duty not only of separation, but of absolute divorce. While
the New York bill was pending, I was requested, by Lewis Benedict, one
of the committee who had the bill in charge, to address the legislature.
I gladly accepted, feeling that here was an opportunity not only to
support my friend in the step she had taken, but to make the path clear
for other unhappy wives who might desire to follow her example. I had no
thought of the persecution I was drawing down on myself for thus
attacking so venerable an institution. I was always courageous in saying
what I saw to be true, for the simple reason that I never dreamed of
opposition. What seemed to me to be right I thought must be equally
plain to all other rational beings. Hence I had no dread of
denunciation. I was only surprised when I encountered it, and no number
of experiences have, as yet, taught me to fear public opinion. What I
said on divorce thirty-seven years ago seems quite in line with what
many say now. The trouble was not in what I said, but that I said it too
soon, and before the people were ready to hear it. It may be, however,
that I helped them to get ready; who knows?
As we were holding a woman suffrage convention in Albany, at the time
appointed for the hearing, Ernestine L. Rose and Lucretia Mott briefly
added their views on the question. Although Mrs. Mott had urged Mrs.
Rose and myself to be as moderate as possible in our demands, she quite
unconsciously made the most radical utterance of all, in saying that
marriage was a question beyond the realm of legislation, that must be
left to the parties themselves. We rallied Lucretia on her radicalism,
and some of the journals criticised us severely; but the following
letter shows that she had no thought of receding from her position:
"Roadside, near Philadelphia,
"4th Mo., 30th, '61.
"My Dear Lydia Mott:
"I have wished, ever since parting with thee and our other dear
friends in Albany, to send thee a line, and have only waited in the
hope of contributing a little 'substantial aid' toward your neat
and valuable 'depository.' The twenty dollars inclosed is from our
Female Anti-slavery Society.
"I see the annual meeting, in New York, is not to be held this
spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both
anniversaries. But we now think the woman's rights meeting had
better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton
to this effect.
"I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have
since met with the following, from a speech of Lord Brougham's,
which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately Hall
of Representatives:
"'Before women can have any justice by the laws of England, there
must be a total reconstruction of the whole marriage system; for
any attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in
establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only
for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but
common law, accumulations and modifications of original Gothic and
Roman heathenism, which no amount of filtration through
ecclesiastical courts could change into Christian laws. They are
declared unworthy a Christian people by great jurists; still they
remain unchanged.'
"So Elizabeth Stanton will see that I have authority for going to
the root of the evil.
"Thine,
"LUCRETIA MOTT."
Those of us who met in Albany talked the matter over in regard to a free
discussion of the divorce question at the coming convention in New York.
It was the opinion of those present that, as the laws on marriage and
divorce were very unequal for man and woman, this was a legitimate
subject for discussion on our platform; accordingly I presented a series
of resolutions, at the annual convention, in New York city, to which I
spoke for over an hour. I was followed by Antoinette L, Brown, who also
presented a series of resolutions in opposition to mine. She was, in
turn, answered by Ernestine L. Rose. Wendell Phillips then arose, and,
in an impressive manner pronounced the whole discussion irrelevant to
our platform, and moved that neither the speeches nor resolutions go on
the records of the convention. As I greatly admired Wendell Phillips,
and appreciated his good opinion, I was surprised and humiliated to find
myself under the ban of his disapprobation. My face was scarlet, and I
trembled with mingled feelings of doubt and fear--doubt as to the
wisdom of my position and fear lest the convention should repudiate the
whole discussion. My emotion was so apparent that Rev. Samuel
Longfellow, a brother of the poet, who sat beside me, whispered in my
ear, "Nevertheless you are right, and the convention will sustain you."
Mr. Phillips said that as marriage concerned man and woman alike, and
the laws bore equally on them, women had no special ground for
complaint, although, in my speech, I had quoted many laws to show the
reverse. Mr. Garrison and Rev. Antoinette L. Brown were alike opposed to
Mr. Phillips' motion, and claimed that marriage and divorce were
legitimate subjects for discussion on our platform. Miss Anthony closed
the debate. She said: "I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion that
these resolutions shall not appear on the records of the convention. I
am very sure that it would be contrary to all parliamentary usage to say
that, when the speeches which enforced and advocated the resolutions are
reported and published in the proceedings, the resolutions shall not be
placed there. And as to the point that this question does not belong to
this platform--from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a
one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it man gains
all; woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him; meek
submission and ready obedience alone befit her. Woman has never been
consulted; her wish has never been taken into consideration as regards
the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment, and
religion,--from the time of Moses down to the present day,--woman has
never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be disposed
of at the will and pleasure of man. And at this very hour, by our
statute books, by our (so-called) enlightened Christian civilization,
she has no voice whatever in saying what shall be the basis of the
relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all.
"And then, again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is
perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we complain
grow out of the inequality of the marriage laws, that rob the wife of
the right to herself and her children; that make her the slave of the
man she marries. I hope, therefore, the resolutions will be allowed to
go out to the public; that there may be a fair report of the ideas which
have actually been presented here; that they may not be left to the
mercy of the secular press, I trust the convention will not vote to
forbid the publication of those resolutions with the proceedings."
Rev. William Hoisington (the blind preacher) followed Miss Anthony, and
said: "Publish all that you have done here, and let the public know it."
The question was then put, on the motion of Mr. Phillips, and it was
lost.
As Mr. Greeley, in commenting on the convention, took the same ground
with Mr. Phillips, that the laws on marriage and divorce were equal for
man and woman, I answered them in the following letter to the New York
_Tribune_.
"_To the Editor of the New York Tribune_:
"Sir: At our recent National Woman's Rights Convention many were
surprised to hear Wendell Phillips object to the question of
marriage and divorce as irrelevant to our platform. He said: 'We
had no right to discuss here any laws or customs but those where
inequality existed for the sexes; that the laws on marriage and
divorce rested equally on man and woman; that he suffers, as much
as she possibly could, the wrongs and abuses of an ill-assorted
marriage.'
"Now it must strike every careful thinker that an immense
difference rests in the fact that man has made the laws cunningly
and selfishly for his own purpose. From Coke down to Kent, who can
cite one clause of the marriage contract where woman has the
advantage? When man suffers from false legislation he has his
remedy in his own hands. Shall woman be denied the right of protest
against laws in which she had no voice; laws which outrage the
holiest affections of her nature; laws which transcend the limits
of human legislation, in a convention called for the express
purpose of considering her wrongs? He might as well object to a
protest against the injustice of hanging a woman, because capital
punishment bears equally on man and woman.
"The contract of marriage is by no means equal. The law permits the
girl to marry at twelve years of age, while it requires several
years more of experience on the part of the boy. In entering this
compact, the man gives up nothing that he before possessed, he is a
man still; while the legal existence of the woman is suspended
during marriage, and, henceforth, she is known but in and through
the husband. She is nameless, purseless, childless--though a woman,
an heiress, and a mother.
"Blackstone says: 'The husband and wife are one, and that one is
the husband.' Chancellor Kent, in his 'Commentaries' says: 'The
legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the
principle of the common law, by which the husband and wife are
regarded as one person, and her legal existence and authority lost
or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial union.'
"The wife is regarded by all legal authorities as a _feme covert_,
placed wholly _sub potestate viri_. Her moral responsibility, even,
is merged in her husband. The law takes it for granted that the
wife lives in fear of her husband; that his command is her highest
law; hence a wife is not punishable for the theft committed in the
presence of her husband. An unmarried woman can make contracts, sue
and be sued, enjoy the rights of property, to her inheritance--to
her wages--to her person--to her children; but, in marriage, she is
robbed by law of all and every natural and civil right. Kent
further says: 'The disability of the wife to contract, so as to
bind herself, arises not from want of discretion, but because she
has entered into an indissoluble connection by which she is placed
under the power and protection of her husband.' She is possessed of
certain rights until she is married; then all are suspended, to
revive, again, the moment the breath goes out of the husband's
body. (See 'Cowen's Treatise,' vol. 2, p. 709.)
"If the contract be equal, whence come the terms 'marital power,'
'marital rights,' 'obedience and restraint,' 'dominion and
control,' 'power and protection,' etc., etc.? Many cases are
stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over the
wife, sustained by the courts. (See 'Bishop on Divorce,' p. 489.)
"The laws on divorce are quite as unequal as those on marriage;
yea, far more so. The advantages seem to be all on one side and the
penalties on the other. In case of divorce, if the husband be not
the guilty party, the wife goes out of the partnership penniless.
(Kent, vol. 2, p. 33; 'Bishop on Divorce,' p. 492.)
"In New York, and some other States, the wife of the guilty husband
can now sue for a divorce in her own name, and the costs come out
of the husband's estate; but, in the majority of the States, she is
still compelled to sue in the name of another, as she has no means
for paying costs, even though she may have brought her thousands
into the partnership. 'The allowance to the innocent wife of _ad
interim_ alimony and money to sustain the suit, is not regarded as
a strict right in her, but of sound discretion in the court.'
('Bishop on Divorce,' p. 581.)
"'Many jurists,' says Kent, 'are of opinion that the adultery of
the husband ought not to be noticed or made subject to the same
animadversions as that of the wife, because it is not evidence of
such entire depravity nor equally injurious in its effects upon the
morals, good order, and happiness of the domestic life.
Montesquieu, Pothier, and Dr. Taylor all insist that the cases of
husband and wife ought to be distinguished, and that the violation
of the marriage vow, on the part of the wife, is the most
mischievous, and the prosecution ought to be confined to the
offense on her part. ("Esprit des Lois," tom. 3, 186; "Traite du
Contrat de Mariage," No. 516; "Elements of Civil Law," p. 254).'
"Say you, 'These are but the opinions of men'? On what else, I ask,
are the hundreds of women depending, who, this hour, demand in our
courts a release from burdensome contracts? Are not these delicate
matters left wholly to the discretion of courts? Are not young
women from the first families dragged into our courts,--into
assemblies of men exclusively,--the judges all men, the jurors all
men? No true woman there to shield them, by her presence, from
gross and impertinent questionings, to pity their misfortunes, or
to protest against their wrongs?
"The administration of justice depends far more on the opinions of
eminent jurists than on law alone, for law is powerless when at
variance with public sentiment.
"Do not the above citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the
very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea
of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue--her sole
protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing, at this
hour, but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she
must demand her right to person, children, property, wages, life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss all the
laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its essential
essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution of marriage be
human or divine, whether regarded as indissoluble by ecclesiastical
courts or dissoluble by civil courts, woman, finding herself
equally degraded in each and every phase of it, always the victim
of the institution, it is her right and her duty to sift the
relation and the compact through and through, until she finds out
the true cause of her false position. How can we go before the
legislatures of our respective States and demand new laws, or no
laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation
is?
"We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred
rights of the individual. We assert that man cannot hold property
in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts with the
self-evident truth of the assertion.
"Again, I ask, is it possible to discuss all the laws of a
relation, and not touch the relation itself?
"Yours respectfully,
"Elizabeth Cady Stanton."
The discussion on the question of marriage and divorce occupied one
entire session of the convention, and called down on us severe
criticisms from the metropolitan and State press. So alarming were the
comments on what had been said that I began to feel that I had
inadvertently taken out the underpinning from the social system. Enemies
were unsparing in their denunciations, and friends ridiculed the whole
proceeding. I was constantly called on for a definition of marriage and
asked to describe home life as it would be when men changed their wives
every Christmas. Letters and newspapers poured in upon me, asking all
manner of absurd questions, until I often wept with vexation. So many
things, that I had neither thought nor said, were attributed to me that,
at times, I really doubted my own identity.
However, in the progress of events the excitement died away, the earth
seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage,
children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic
altars, and family life, to all appearances, was as stable as usual.
Public attention was again roused to this subject by the
McFarland-Richardson trial, in which the former shot the latter, being
jealous of his attentions to his wife. McFarland was a brutal,
improvident husband, who had completely alienated his wife's
affections, while Mr. Richardson, who had long been a cherished
acquaintance of the family, befriended the wife in the darkest days of
her misery. She was a very refined, attractive woman, and a large circle
of warm friends stood by her through the fierce ordeal of her husband's
trial.
Though McFarland did not deny that he killed Richardson, yet he was
acquitted on the plea of insanity, and was, at the same time, made the
legal guardian of his child, a boy, then, twelve years of age, and
walked out of the court with him, hand in hand. What a travesty on
justice and common sense that, while a man is declared too insane to be
held responsible for taking the life of another, he might still be
capable of directing the life and education of a child! And what an
insult to that intelligent mother, who had devoted twelve years of her
life to his care, while his worthless father had not provided for them
the necessaries of life!
She married Mr. Richardson on his deathbed. The ceremony was performed
by Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. O.B. Frothingham, while such men as
Horace Greeley and Joshua Leavitt witnessed the solemn service. Though
no shadow had ever dimmed Mrs. Richardson's fair fame, yet she was
rudely treated in the court and robbed of her child, though by far the
most fitting parent to be intrusted with his care.
As the indignation among women was general and at white heat with regard
to her treatment, Miss Anthony suggested to me, one day, that it would
be a golden opportunity to give women a lesson on their helplessness
under the law--wholly in the power of man as to their domestic
relations, as well as to their civil and political rights. Accordingly
we decided to hold some meetings, for women alone, to protest against
the decision of this trial, the general conduct of the case, the tone of
the press, and the laws that made it possible to rob a mother of her
child.
Many ladies readily enlisted in the movement. I was invited to make the
speech on the occasion, and Miss Anthony arranged for two great
meetings, one in Apollo Hall, New York city, and one in the Academy of
Music, in Brooklyn. The result was all that we could desire. Miss
Anthony, with wonderful executive ability, made all the arrangements,
taking on her own shoulders the whole financial responsibility.
My latest thought on this question I gave in _The Arena_ of April, 1894,
from which I quote the following:
"There is a demand just now for an amendment to the United States
Constitution that shall make the laws of marriage and divorce the
same in all the States of the Union. As the suggestion comes
uniformly from those who consider the present divorce laws too
liberal, we may infer that the proposed national law is to place
the whole question on a narrower basis, rendering null and void the
laws that have been passed in a broader spirit, according to the
needs and experiences, in certain sections, of the sovereign
people. And here let us bear in mind that the widest possible law
would not make divorce obligatory on anyone, while a restricted
law, on the contrary, would compel many, marrying, perhaps, under
more liberal laws, to remain in uncongenial relations.
"As we are still in the experimental stage on this question, we are
not qualified to make a perfect law that would work satisfactorily
over so vast an area as our boundaries now embrace. I see no
evidence in what has been published on this question, of late, by
statesmen, ecclesiastics, lawyers, and judges, that any of them
have thought sufficiently on the subject to prepare a well-digested
code, or a comprehensive amendment to the national Constitution.
Some view it as a civil contract, though not governed by the laws
of other contracts; some view it as a religious ordinance--a
sacrament; some think it a relation to be regulated by the State,
others by the Church, and still others think it should be left
wholly to the individual. With this wide divergence of opinion
among our leading minds, it is quite evident that we are not
prepared for a national law.
"Moreover, as woman is the most important factor in the marriage
relation, her enfranchisement is the primal step in deciding the
basis of family life. Before public opinion on this question
crystallizes into an amendment to the national Constitution, the
wife and mother must have a voice in the governing power and must
be heard, on this great problem, in the halls of legislation.
"There are many advantages in leaving all these questions, as now,
to the States. Local self-government more readily permits of
experiments on mooted questions, which are the outcome of the needs
and convictions of the community. The smaller the area over which
legislation extends, the more pliable are the laws. By leaving the
States free to experiment in their local affairs, we can judge of
the working of different laws under varying circumstances, and thus
learn their comparative merits. The progress education has achieved
in America is due to the fact that we have left our system of
public instruction in the hands of local authorities. How
different would be the solution of the great educational question
of manual labor in the schools, if the matter had to be settled at
Washington!
"The whole nation might find itself pledged to a scheme that a few
years would prove wholly impracticable. Not only is the town
meeting, as Emerson says, 'the cradle of American liberties,' but
it is the nursery of Yankee experiment and wisdom. England, with
its clumsy national code of education, making one inflexible
standard of scholarship for the bright children of the
manufacturing districts and the dull brains of the agricultural
counties, should teach us a lesson as to the wisdom of keeping
apart state and national government.
"Before we can decide the just grounds for divorce, we must get a
clear idea of what constitutes marriage. In a true relation the
chief object is the loving companionship of man and woman, their
capacity for mutual help and happiness and for the development of
all that is noblest in each other. The second object is the
building up a home and family, a place of rest, peace, security, in
which child-life can bud and blossom like flowers in the sunshine.
"The first step toward making the ideal the real, is to educate our
sons and daughters into the most exalted ideas of the sacredness of
married life and the responsibilities of parenthood. I would have
them give, at least, as much thought to the creation of an immortal
being as the artist gives to his landscape or statue. Watch him in
his hours of solitude, communing with great Nature for days and
weeks in all her changing moods, and when at last his dream of
beauty is realized and takes a clearly defined form, behold how
patiently he works through long months and years on sky and lake,
on tree and flower; and when complete, it represents to him more
love and life, more hope and ambition, than the living child at his
side, to whose conception and antenatal development not one soulful
thought was ever given. To this impressible period of human life,
few parents give any thought; yet here we must begin to cultivate
virtues that can alone redeem the world.
"The contradictory views in which woman is represented are as
pitiful as varied. While the Magnificat to the Virgin is chanted in
all our cathedrals round the globe on each returning Sabbath day,
and her motherhood extolled by her worshipers, maternity for the
rest of womankind is referred to as a weakness, a disability, a
curse, an evidence of woman's divinely ordained subjection. Yet
surely the real woman should have some points of resemblance in
character and position with the ideal one, whom poets, novelists,
and artists portray.
"It is folly to talk of the sacredness of marriage and maternity,
while the wife is practically regarded as an inferior, a subject, a
slave. Having decided that companionship and conscientious
parenthood are the only true grounds for marriage, if the relation
brings out the worst characteristics of each party, or if the home
atmosphere is unwholesome for children, is not the very _raison
d'etre_ of the union wanting, and the marriage practically
annulled? It cannot be called a holy relation,--no, not a desirable
one,--when love and mutual respect are wanting. And let us bear in
mind one other important fact: the lack of sympathy and content in
the parents indicates radical physical unsuitability, which
results in badly organized offspring. If, then, the real object of
marriage is defeated, it is for the interest of the State, as well
as the individual concerned, to see that all such pernicious unions
be legally dissolved. Inasmuch, then, as incompatibility of temper
defeats the two great objects of marriage, it should be the primal
cause for divorce.
"The true standpoint from which to view this question is individual
sovereignty, individual happiness. It is often said that the
interests of society are paramount, and first to be considered.
This was the Roman idea, the Pagan idea, that the individual was
made for the State. The central idea of barbarism has ever been the
family, the tribe, the nation--never the individual. But the great
doctrine of Christianity is the right of individual conscience and
judgment. The reason it took such a hold on the hearts of the
people was because it taught that the individual was primary; the
State, the Church, society, the family, secondary. However, a
comprehensive view of any question of human interest, shows that
the highest good and happiness of the individual and society lie in
the same direction.
"The question of divorce, like marriage, should be settled, as to
its most sacred relations, by the parties themselves; neither the
State nor the Church having any right to intermeddle therein. As to
property and children, it must be viewed and regulated as a civil
contract. Then the union should be dissolved with at least as much
deliberation and publicity as it was formed. There might be some
ceremony and witnesses to add to the dignity and solemnity of the
occasion. Like the Quaker marriage, which the parties conduct
themselves, so, in this case, without any statement of their
disagreements, the parties might simply declare that, after living
together for several years, they found themselves unsuited to each
other, and incapable of making a happy home.
"If divorce were made respectable, and recognized by society as a
duty, as well as a right, reasonable men and women could arrange
all the preliminaries, often, even, the division of property and
guardianship of children, quite as satisfactorily as it could be
done in the courts. Where the mother is capable of training the
children, a sensible father would leave them to her care rather
than place them in the hands of a stranger.
"But, where divorce is not respectable, men who have no paternal
feeling will often hold the child, not so much for its good or his
own affection, as to punish the wife for disgracing him. The love
of children is not strong in most men, and they feel but little
responsibility in regard to them. See how readily they turn off
young sons to shift for themselves, and, unless the law compelled
them to support their illegitimate children, they would never give
them a second thought. But on the mother-soul rest forever the care
and responsibility of human life. Her love for the child born out
of wedlock is often intensified by the infinite pity she feels
through its disgrace. Even among the lower animals we find the
female ever brooding over the young and helpless.
"Limiting the causes of divorce to physical defects or
delinquencies; making the proceedings public; prying into all the
personal affairs of unhappy men and women; regarding the step as
quasi criminal; punishing the guilty party in the suit; all this
will not strengthen frail human nature, will not insure happy
homes, will not banish scandals and purge society of prostitution.
"No, no; the enemy of marriage, of the State, of society is not
liberal divorce laws, but the unhealthy atmosphere that exists in
the home itself. A legislative act cannot make a unit of a divided
family."
CHAPTER XV.
WOMEN AS PATRIOTS.
On April 15, 1861, the President of the United States called out
seventy-five thousand militia, and summoned Congress to meet July 4,
when four hundred thousand men were called for, and four hundred
millions of dollars were voted to suppress the Rebellion.
These startling events roused the entire people, and turned the current
of their thoughts in new directions. While the nation's life hung in the
balance, and the dread artillery of war drowned, alike, the voices of
commerce, politics, religion, and reform, all hearts were filled with
anxious forebodings, all hands were busy in solemn preparations for the
awful tragedies to come.
At this eventful hour the patriotism of woman shone forth as fervently
and spontaneously as did that of man; and her self-sacrifice and
devotion were displayed in as many varied fields of action. While he
buckled on his knapsack and marched forth to conquer the enemy, she
planned the campaigns which brought the nation victory; fought in the
ranks, when she could do so without detection; inspired the sanitary
commission; gathered needed supplies for the grand army; provided nurses
for the hospitals; comforted the sick; smoothed the pillows of the
dying; inscribed the last messages of lave to those far away; and marked
the resting places where the brave men fell. The labor women
accomplished, the hardships they endured, the time and strength they
sacrificed in the War that summoned three million men to arms, can never
be fully appreciated.
Indeed, we may safely say that there is scarcely a loyal woman in the
North who did not do something in aid of the cause; who did not
contribute time, labor, and money to the comfort of our soldiers and the
success of our arms. The story of the War will never be fully written if
the achievements of women are left untold. They do not figure in the
official reports; they are not gazetted for gallant deeds; the names of
thousands are unknown beyond the neighborhood where they lived, or the
hospitals where they loved to labor; yet there is no feature in our War
more creditable to us as a nation, none from its positive newness so
well worthy of record.
While the mass of women never philosophize on the principles that
underlie national existence, there were those in our late War who
understood the political significance of the struggle; the
"irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery, between National
and State rights. They saw that to provide lint, bandages, and supplies
for the army, while the War was not conducted on a wise policy, was to
labor in vain; and while many organizations, active, vigilant, and
self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the material wants of
the army, these few formed themselves into a National Loyal League, to
teach sound principles of government and to impress on the nation's
conscience that freedom for the slaves was the only way to victory.
Accustomed, as most women had been to works of charity and to the relief
of outward suffering, it was difficult to rouse their enthusiasm for an
idea, to persuade them to labor for a principle. They clamored for
practical work, something for their hands to do; for fairs and sewing
societies to raise money for soldier's families, for tableaux, readings,
theatricals--anything but conventions to discuss principles and to
circulate petitions for emancipation. They could not see that the best
service they could render the army was to suppress the Rebellion, and
that the most effective way to accomplish that was to transform the
slaves into soldiers. This Woman's Loyal League voiced the solemn
lessons of the War: Liberty to all; national protection for every
citizen under our flag; universal suffrage, and universal amnesty.
After consultation with Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, Governor
Andrews, and Robert Dale Owen, Miss Anthony and I decided to call a
meeting of women in Cooper Institute and form a Woman's Loyal League, to
advocate the immediate emancipation and enfranchisement of the Southern
slaves, as the most speedy way of ending the War, so we issued, in tract
form, and extensively circulated the following call:
"In this crisis of our country's destiny, it is the duty of every
citizen to consider the peculiar blessings of a republican form of
government, and decide what sacrifices of wealth and life are
demanded for its defense and preservation. The policy of the War,
our whole future life, depend on a clearly defined idea of the end
proposed and the immense advantages to be secured to ourselves and
all mankind by its accomplishment. No mere party or sectional cry,
no technicalities of constitutional or military law, no mottoes of
craft or policy are big enough to touch the great heart of a nation
in the midst of revolution. A grand idea--such as freedom or
justice--is needful to kindle and sustain the fires of a high
enthusiasm.
"At this hour, the best word and work of every man and woman are
imperatively demanded. To man, by common consent, are assigned the
forum, camp, and field. What is woman's legitimate work and how she
may best accomplish it, is worthy our earnest counsel one with
another. We have heard many complaints of the lack of enthusiasm,
among Northern women; but when a mother lays her son on the altar
of her country, she asks an object equal to the sacrifice. In
nursing the sick and wounded, knitting socks, scraping lint, and
making jellies the bravest and best may weary if the thoughts mount
not in faith to something beyond and above it all. Work is worship
only when a noble purpose fills the soul. Woman is equally
interested and responsible with man in the final settlement of this
problem of self-government; therefore let none stand idle
spectators now. When every hour is big with destiny, and each delay
but complicates our difficulties, it is high time for the daughters
of the Revolution, in solemn council, to unseal the last will and
testaments of the fathers, lay hold of their birthright of freedom,
and keep it a sacred trust for all coming generations.
"To this end we ask the Loyal Women of the Nation to meet in the
Church of the Puritans (Dr. Cheever's), New York, on Thursday, the
14th of May next.
"Let the women of every State be largely represented in person or
by letter.
"On behalf of the Woman's Central Committee,
"Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
"Susan B. Anthony."
Among other resolutions adopted at the meeting were the following:
"_Resolved_, There never can be a true peace in this Republic until the
civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all
women are practically established.
"_Resolved_, That the women of the Revolution were not wanting in
heroism and self-sacrifice, and we, their daughters, are ready, in this
War, to pledge our time, our means, our talents, and our lives, if need
be, to secure the final and complete consecration of America to
freedom."
It was agreed that the practical work to be done to secure freedom for
the slaves was to circulate petitions through all the Northern States.
For months these petitions were circulated diligently everywhere, as the
signatures show--some signed on fence posts, plows, the anvil, the
shoemaker's bench--by women of fashion and those in the industries,
alike in the parlor and the kitchen; by statesmen, professors in
colleges, editors, bishops; by sailors, and soldiers, and the
hard-handed children of toil, building railroads and bridges, and
digging canals, and in mines in the bowels of the earth. Petitions,
signed by three hundred thousand persons, can now be seen in the
national archives in the Capitol at Washington. Three of my sons spent
weeks in our office in Cooper Institute, rolling up the petitions from
each State separately, and inscribing on the outside the number of names
of men and women contained therein. We sent appeals to the President the
House of Representatives, and the Senate, from time to time, urging
emancipation and the passage of the proposed Thirteenth, Fourteenth,
and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution. During these
eventful months we received many letters from Senator Sumner, saying,
"Send on the petitions as fast as received; they give me opportunities
for speech."
Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the Freedman's Commission, was most
enthusiastic in the work of the Loyal League, and came to our rooms
frequently to suggest new modes of agitation and to give us an inkling
of what was going on behind the scenes in Washington. Those who had been
specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement suspended their
conventions during the war, and gave their time and thought wholly to
the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political significance of the
war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as the sure, quick way of
cutting the Gordian knot of the Rebellion. To this end they organized a
national league, and rolled up a mammoth petition, urging Congress so to
amend the Constitution as to prohibit the existence of slavery in the
United States. From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York
city, they sent out the appeals to the President, Congress, and the
people at large; tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of
Congress, were scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings
were held every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely
discussed, and approved or condemned.
That this League did a timely educational work is manifested by the
letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in
most of the Northern States, fully indorsing its action and principles.
The clearness to thinking women of the cause of the War; the true
policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining the principles
of freedom, are worthy of consideration. With this League abolitionists
and Republicans heartily co-operated. A course of lectures was delivered
for its benefit in Cooper Institute, by such men as Horace Greeley,
George William Curtis, William D. Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E.P. Whipple,
Frederick Douglass, Theodore D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Bellows.
Many letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its
measures, and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of
emancipation petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press,
too, was highly complimentary. The New York Tribune said: "The women of
the Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their
efforts to one subject, the most important which any society can aim at
in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never has been
done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a petition."
The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and
prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the
women of the League, and yet these were the same women who, when
demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for
themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent,"
"fanatical," and "impracticable." During the six years they held their
own claims in abeyance to those of the slaves of the South, and labored
to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the
Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and
clear-sighted." But when the slaves were emancipated, and these women
asked that they should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens
of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues
vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is: so long
as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her
own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights
and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal
appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.
Liberty, victorious over slavery on the battlefield, had now more
powerful enemies to encounter at Washington. The slaves set free, the
master conquered, the South desolate; the two races standing face to
face, sharing alike the sad results of war, turned with appealing looks
to the general government, as if to say, "How stand we now?" "What
next?" Questions our statesmen, beset with dangers, with fears for the
nation's life, of party divisions, of personal defeat, were wholly
unprepared to answer. The reconstruction of the South involved the
reconsideration of the fundamental principles of our Government and the
natural rights of man. The nation's heart was thrilled with prolonged
debates in Congress and State legislatures, in the pulpits and public
journals, and at every fireside on these vital questions, which took
final shape in the three historic amendments to the Constitution.
The first point, his emancipation, settled, the political status of the
negro was next in order; and to this end various propositions were
submitted to Congress. But to demand his enfranchisement on the broad
principle of natural rights was hedged about with difficulties, as the
logical result of such action must be the enfranchisement of all
ostracized classes; not only the white women of the entire country, but
the slave women of the South. Though our senators and representatives
had an honest aversion to any proscriptive legislation against loyal
women, in view of their varied and self-sacrificing work during the War,
yet the only way they could open the constitutional door just wide
enough to let the black man pass in was to introduce the word "male"
into the national Constitution. After the generous devotion of such
women as Anna Carroll and Anna Dickinson in sustaining the policy of the
Republicans, both in peace and war, they felt it would come with a bad
grace from that party to place new barriers in woman's path to freedom.
But how could the amendment be written without the word "male," was the
question.
Robert Dale Owen being at Washington, and behind the scenes at the time,
sent copies of the various bills to the officers of the Loyal League, in
New York, and related to us some of the amusing discussions. One of the
committee proposed "persons" instead of "males." "That will never do,"
said another, "it would enfranchise wenches." "Suffrage for black men
will be all the strain the Republican party can stand," said another.
Charles Sumner said, years afterward, that he wrote over nineteen pages
of foolscap to get rid of the word "male" and yet keep "negro suffrage"
as a party measure intact; but it could not be done.
Miss Anthony and I were the first to see the full significance of the
word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, and we at once sounded the
alarm, and sent out petitions for a constitutional amendment to
"prohibit the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the
ground of sex." Miss Anthony, who had spent the year in Kansas, started
for New York the moment she saw the proposition before Congress to put
the word "male" into the national Constitution, and made haste to rouse
the women in the East to the fact that the time had come to begin
vigorous work again for woman's enfranchisement.
Leaving Rochester, October 11, she called on Martha Wright at Auburn;
Phebe Jones and Lydia Mott at Albany; Mmes. Rose, Gibbons, Davis, at New
York city; Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell in New Jersey;
Stephen and Abby Foster at Worcester; Mmes. Severance, Dall, Nowell, Dr.
Harriet K. Hunt, Dr. M.E. Zackesewska, and Messrs. Phillips and Garrison
in Boston, urging them to join in sending protests to Washington against
the pending legislation. Mr. Phillips at once consented to devote five
hundred dollars from the "Jackson Fund" to commence the work. Miss
Anthony and I spent all our Christmas holidays in writing letters and
addressing appeals and petitions to every part of the country, and,
before the close of the session of 1865-66, petitions with ten thousand
signatures were poured into Congress.
One of my letters was as follows:
"_To the Editor of the Standard_:
"Sir: Mr. Broomall of Pennsylvania, Mr. Schenck of Ohio, Mr.
Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania, have each
a resolution before Congress to amend the Constitution.
"Article First, Section Second, reads thus: 'Representatives and
direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which
may be included within this Union, according to their respective
numbers.'
"Mr. Broomall proposes to amend by saying, 'male electors'; Mr.
Schenck,'male citizens'; Mr. Jenckes, 'male citizens'; Mr. Stevens,
'male voters,' as, in process of time, women may be made 'legal
voters' in the several States, and would then meet that requirement
of the Constitution. But those urged by the other gentlemen,
neither time, effort, nor State Constitutions could enable us to
meet, unless, by a liberal interpretation of the amendment, a coat
of mail to be worn at the polls might be judged all-sufficient. Mr.
Jenckes and Mr. Schenck, in their bills, have the grace not to say
a word about taxes, remembering, perhaps, that 'taxation without
representation is tyranny.' But Mr. Broomall, though unwilling that
we should share in the honors of government, would fain secure us a
place in its burdens; for, while he apportions representatives to
"male electors" only, he admits "all the inhabitants" into the
rights, privileges, and immunities of taxation. Magnanimous M.C.!
"I would call the attention of the women of the nation to the fact
that, under the Federal Constitution, as it now exists, there is
not one word that limits the right of suffrage to any privileged
class. This attempt to turn the wheels of civilization backward, on
the part of Republicans claiming to be the liberal party, should
rouse every woman in the nation to a prompt exercise of the only
right she has in the Government, the right of petition. To this end
a committee in New York have sent out thousands of petitions, which
should be circulated in every district and sent to its
representative at Washington as soon as possible.
"Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
"New York, January 2, 1866."
CHAPTER XVI.
PIONEER LIFE IN KANSAS--OUR NEWSPAPER, "THE REVOLUTION."
In 1867 the proposition to extend the suffrage to women and to colored
men was submitted to the people of the State of Kansas, and, among other
Eastern speakers, I was invited to make a campaign through the State. As
the fall elections were pending, there was great excitement everywhere.
Suffrage for colored men was a Republican measure, which the press and
politicians of that party advocated with enthusiasm.
As woman suffrage was not a party question, we hoped that all parties
would favor the measure; that we might, at last, have one green spot on
earth where women could enjoy full liberty as citizens of the United
States. Accordingly, in July, Miss Anthony and I started, with high
hopes of a most successful trip, and, after an uneventful journey of one
thousand five hundred miles, we reached the sacred soil where John Brown
and his sons had helped to fight the battles that made Kansas a free
State.
Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, and Olympia Brown had preceded us and opened
the campaign with large meetings in all the chief cities. Miss Anthony
and I did the same. Then it was decided that, as we were to go to the
very borders of the State, where there were no railroads, we must take
carriages, and economize our forces by taking different routes. I was
escorted by ex-Governor Charles Robinson. We had a low, easy carriage,
drawn by two mules, in which we stored about a bushel of tracts, two
valises, a pail for watering the mules, a basket of apples, crackers,
and other such refreshments as we could purchase on the way. Some things
were suspended underneath the carriage, some packed on behind, and some
under the seat and at our feet. It required great skill to compress the
necessary baggage into the allotted space. As we went to the very verge
of civilization, wherever two dozen voters could be assembled, we had a
taste of pioneer life. We spoke in log cabins, in depots, unfinished
schoolhouses, churches, hotels, barns, and in the open air.
I spoke in a large mill one night. A solitary tallow candle shone over
my head like a halo of glory; a few lanterns around the outskirts of the
audience made the darkness perceptible; but all I could see of my
audience was the whites of their eyes in the dim distance. People came
from twenty miles around to these meetings, held either in the morning,
afternoon, or evening, as was most convenient.
As the regular State election was to take place in the coming November,
the interest increased from week to week, until the excitement of the
people knew no bounds. There were speakers for and against every
proposition before the people. This involved frequent debates on all the
general principles of government, and thus a great educational work was
accomplished, which is one of the advantages of our frequent elections.
The friends of woman suffrage were doomed to disappointment. Those in
the East, on whom they relied for influence through the liberal
newspapers, were silent, and we learned, afterward, that they used what
influence they had to keep the abolitionists and Republicans of the
State silent, as they feared the discussion of the woman question would
jeopardize the enfranchisement of the black man. However, we worked
untiringly and hopefully, not seeing through the game of the politicians
until nearly the end of the canvass, when we saw that our only chance
was in getting the Democratic vote. Accordingly, George Francis Train,
then a most effective and popular speaker, was invited into the State to
see what could be done to win the Democracy. He soon turned the tide,
strengthened the weak-kneed Republicans and abolitionists, and secured a
large Democratic vote.
For three months we labored diligently, day after day, enduring all
manner of discomforts in traveling, eating, and sleeping. As there were
no roads or guide-posts, we often lost our way. In going through canons
and fording streams it was often so dark that the Governor was obliged
to walk ahead to find the way, taking off his coat so that I could see
his white shirt and slowly drive after him. Though seemingly calm and
cool, I had a great dread of these night adventures, as I was in
constant fear of being upset on some hill and rolled into the water. The
Governor often complimented me on my courage, when I was fully aware of
being tempest-tossed with anxiety. I am naturally very timid, but, being
silent under strong emotions of either pleasure or pain, I am credited
with being courageous in the hour of danger.
For days, sometimes, we could find nothing at a public table that we
could eat. Then passing through a little settlement we could buy dried
herring, crackers, gum arabic, and slippery elm; the latter, we were
told, was very nutritious. We frequently sat down to a table with bacon
floating in grease, coffee without milk, sweetened with sorghum, and
bread or hot biscuit, green with soda, while vegetables and fruit were
seldom seen. Our nights were miserable, owing to the general opinion
among pioneers that a certain species of insect must necessarily
perambulate the beds in a young civilization. One night, after traveling
over prairies all day, eating nothing but what our larder provided, we
saw a light in a cottage in the distance which seemed to beckon to us.
Arriving, we asked the usual question,--if we could get a night's
lodging,--to which the response was inevitably a hearty, hospitable
"Yes." One survey of the premises showed me what to look for in the way
of midnight companionship, so I said to the Governor, "I will resign in
your favor the comforts provided for me to-night, and sleep in the
carriage, as you do so often." I persisted against all the earnest
persuasions of our host, and in due time I was ensconced for the night,
and all about the house was silent.
I had just fallen into a gentle slumber, when a chorus of pronounced
grunts and a spasmodic shaking of the carriage revealed to me the fact
that I was surrounded by those long-nosed black pigs, so celebrated for
their courage and pertinacity. They had discovered that the iron steps
of the carriage made most satisfactory scratching posts, and each one
was struggling for his turn. This scratching suggested fleas. Alas!
thought I, before morning I shall be devoured. I was mortally tired and
sleepy, but I reached for the whip and plied it lazily from side to
side; but I soon found nothing but a constant and most vigorous
application of the whip could hold them at bay one moment. I had heard
that this type of pig was very combative when thwarted in its desires,
and they seemed in such sore need of relief that I thought there was
danger of their jumping into the carriage and attacking me. This thought
was more terrifying than that of the fleas, so I decided to go to sleep
and let them alone to scratch at their pleasure. I had a sad night of
it, and never tried the carriage again, though I had many equally
miserable experiences within four walls.
After one of these border meetings we stopped another night with a
family of two bachelor brothers and two spinster sisters. The home
consisted of one large room, not yet lathed and plastered. The furniture
included a cooking stove, two double beds in remote corners, a table, a
bureau, a washstand, and six wooden chairs. As it was late, there was no
fire in the stove and no suggestion of supper, so the Governor and I ate
apples and chewed slippery elm before retiring to dream of comfortable
beds and well-spread tables in the near future.
The brothers resigned their bed to me just as it was. I had noticed that
there was no ceremonious changing of bed linen under such circumstances,
so I had learned to nip all fastidious notions of individual cleanliness
in the bud, and to accept the inevitable. When the time arrived for
retiring, the Governor and the brothers went out to make astronomical
observations or smoke, as the case might be, while the sisters and I
made our evening toilet, and disposed ourselves in the allotted corners.
That done, the stalwart sons of Adam made their beds with skins and
blankets on the floor. When all was still and darkness reigned, I
reviewed the situation with a heavy heart, seeing that I was bound to
remain a prisoner in the corner all night, come what might. I had just
congratulated myself on my power of adaptability to circumstances, when
I suddenly started with an emphatic "What is that?" A voice from the
corner asked, "Is your bed comfortable?" "Oh, yes," I replied, "but I
thought I felt a mouse run over my head." "Well," said the voice from
the corner, "I should not wonder. I have heard such squeaking from that
corner during the past week that I told sister there must be a mouse
nest in that bed." A confession she probably would not have made unless
half asleep. This announcement was greeted with suppressed laughter from
the floor. But it was no laughing matter to me. Alas! what a
prospect--to have mice running over one all night. But there was no
escape. The sisters did not offer to make any explorations, and, in my
fatigue costume, I could not light a candle and make any on my own
account. The house did not afford an armchair in which I could sit up. I
could not lie on the floor, and the other bed was occupied. Fortunately,
I was very tired and soon fell asleep. What the mice did the remainder
of the night I never knew, so deep were my slumbers. But, as my features
were intact, and my facial expression as benign as usual next morning, I
inferred that their gambols had been most innocently and decorously
conducted. These are samples of many similar experiences which we
encountered during the three months of those eventful travels.
Heretofore my idea had been that pioneer life was a period of romantic
freedom. When the long, white-covered wagons, bound for the far West,
passed by, I thought of the novelty of a six-months' journey through
the bright spring and summer days in a house on wheels, meals under
shady trees and beside babbling brooks, sleeping in the open air, and
finding a home, at last, where land was cheap, the soil rich and deep,
and where the grains, vegetables, fruit, and flowers grew bountifully
with but little toil. But a few months of pioneer life permanently
darkened my rosy ideal of the white-covered wagon, the charming picnics
by the way, and the paradise at last. I found many of these adventurers
in unfinished houses and racked with malaria; in one case I saw a family
of eight, all ill with chills and fever. The house was half a mile from
the spring water on which they depended and from which those best able,
from day to day, carried the needed elixir to others suffering with the
usual thirst. Their narrations of all the trials of the long journey
were indeed heartrending.
In one case a family of twelve left their comfortable farm in Illinois,
much against the earnest protests of the mother; she having ten
children, the youngest a baby then in her arms. All their earthly
possessions were stored in three wagons, and the farm which the mother
owned was sold before they commenced their long and perilous journey.
There was no reason for going except that the husband had the Western
fever. They were doing well in Illinois, on a large farm within two
miles of a village, but he had visions of a bonanza near the setting
sun. Accordingly they started. At the end of one month the baby died. A
piece of wood from the cradle was all they had to mark its lonely
resting place. With sad hearts they went on, and, in a few weeks, with
grief for her child, her old home, her kindred and friends, the mother
also died. She, too, was left alone on the far-off prairies, and the sad
pageant moved on. Another child soon shared the same fate, and then a
span of horses died, and one wagon, with all the things they could most
easily spare, was abandoned. Arrived at their destination none of the
golden dreams was realized. The expensive journey, the struggles in
starting under new circumstances, and the loss of the mother's thrift
and management, made the father so discouraged and reckless that much of
his property was wasted, and his earthly career was soon ended. Through
the heroic energy and good management of the eldest daughter, the little
patrimony, in time, was doubled, and the children well brought up and
educated in the rudiments of learning, so that all became respectable
members of society. Her advice to all young people is, if you are
comfortably established in the East, stay there. There is no royal road
to wealth and ease, even in the Western States!
In spite of the discomforts we suffered in the Kansas campaign, I was
glad of the experience. It gave me added self-respect to know that I
could endure such hardships and fatigue with a great degree of
cheerfulness. The Governor and I often laughed heartily, as we patiently
chewed our gum arabic and slippery elm, to think on what a gentle
stimulus we were accomplishing such wonderful feats as orators and
travelers. It was fortunate our intense enthusiasm for the subject gave
us all the necessary inspiration, as the supplies we gathered by the way
were by no means sufficiently invigorating for prolonged propagandism.
I enjoyed these daily drives over the vast prairies, listening to the
Governor's descriptions of the early days when the "bushwhackers and
jayhawkers" made their raids on the inhabitants of the young free State.
The courage and endurance of the women, surrounded by dangers and
discomforts, surpassed all description. I count it a great privilege to
have made the acquaintance of so many noble women and men who had passed
through such scenes and conquered such difficulties. They seemed to live
in an atmosphere altogether beyond their surroundings. Many educated
families from New England, disappointed in not finding the much talked
of bonanzas, were living in log cabins, in solitary places, miles from
any neighbors. But I found Emerson, Parker, Holmes, Hawthorne, Whittier,
and Lowell on their bookshelves to gladden their leisure hours.
Miss Anthony and I often comforted ourselves mid adverse winds with
memories of the short time we spent under Mother Bickerdyke's hospitable
roof at Salina. There we had clean, comfortable beds, delicious viands,
and everything was exquisitely neat. She entertained us with her
reminiscences of the War. With great self-denial she had served her
country in camp and hospital, and was with Sherman's army in that
wonderful march to the sea, and here we found her on the outpost of
civilization, determined to start what Kansas most needed--a good hotel.
But alas! it was too good for that latitude and proved a financial
failure. It was, to us, an oasis in the desert, where we would gladly
have lingered if the opposition would have come to us for conversion.
But, as we had to carry the gospel of woman's equality into the highways
and hedges, we left dear Mother Bickerdyke with profound regret. The
seed sown in Kansas in 1867 is now bearing its legitimate fruits. There
was not a county in the State where meetings were not held or tracts
scattered with a generous hand. If the friends of our cause in the East
had been true and had done for woman what they did for the colored man,
I believe both propositions would have been carried; but with a narrow
policy, playing off one against the other, both were defeated. A policy
of injustice always bears its own legitimate fruit in failure.
However, women learned one important lesson--namely, that it is
impossible for the best of men to understand women's feelings or the
humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our
question during the War, and labor for the emancipation of the slave, we
did so, and gave five years to his emancipation and enfranchisement. To
this proposition my friend, Susan B. Anthony, never consented, but was
compelled to yield because no one stood with her. I was convinced, at
the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was
a blunder, and, ever since, I have taken my beloved Susan's judgment
against the world. I have always found that, when we see eye to eye, we
are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong. After we
discuss any point together and fully agree, our faith in our united
judgment is immovable and no amount of ridicule and opposition has the
slightest influence, come from what quarter it may.
Together we withstood the Republicans and abolitionists, when, a second
time, they made us the most solemn promises of earnest labor for our
enfranchisement, when the slaves were safe beyond a peradventure. They
never redeemed their promise made during the War, hence, when they
urged us to silence in the Kansas campaign, we would not for a moment
entertain the proposition. The women generally awoke to their duty to
themselves. They had been deceived once and could not be again. If the
leaders in the Republican and abolition camps could deceive us, whom
could we trust?
Again we were urged to be silent on our rights, when the proposition to
take the word "white" out of the New York Constitution was submitted to
a vote of the people of the State, or, rather, to one-half the people,
as women had no voice in the matter. Again we said "No, no, gentlemen!
if the 'white' comes out of the Constitution, let the 'male' come out
also. Women have stood with the negro, thus far, on equal ground as
ostracized classes, outside the political paradise; and now, when the
door is open, it is but fair that we both should enter and enjoy all the
fruits of citizenship. Heretofore ranked with idiots, lunatics, and
criminals in the Constitution, the negro has been the only respectable
compeer we had; so pray do not separate us now for another twenty years,
ere the constitutional door will again be opened."
We were persistently urged to give all our efforts to get the word
"white" out, and thus secure the enfranchisement of the colored man, as
that, they said, would prepare the way for us to follow. Several editors
threatened that, unless we did so, their papers should henceforth do
their best to defeat every measure we proposed. But we were deaf alike
to persuasions and threats, thinking it wiser to labor for women,
constituting, as they did, half the people of the State, rather than for
a small number of colored men; who, viewing all things from the same
standpoint as white men, would be an added power against us.
The question settled in Kansas, we returned, with George Francis Train,
to New York. He offered to pay all the expenses of the journey and
meetings in all the chief cities on the way, and see that we were fully
and well reported in their respective journals. After prolonged
consultation Miss Anthony and I thought best to accept the offer and we
did so. Most of our friends thought it a grave blunder, but the result
proved otherwise. Mr. Train was then in his prime--a large, fine-looking
man, a gentleman in dress and manner, neither smoking, chewing,
drinking, nor gormandizing. He was an effective speaker and actor, as
one of his speeches, which he illustrated, imitating the poor wife at
the washtub and the drunken husband reeling in, fully showed. He gave
his audience charcoal sketches of everyday life rather than argument. He
always pleased popular audiences, and even the most fastidious were
amused with his caricatures. As the newspapers gave several columns to
our meetings at every point through all the States, the agitation was
widespread and of great value. To be sure our friends, on all sides,
fell off, and those especially who wished us to be silent on the
question of woman's rights, declared "the cause too sacred to be
advocated by such a charlatan as George Francis Train." We thought
otherwise, as the accession of Mr. Train increased the agitation
twofold. If these fastidious ladies and gentlemen had come out to Kansas
and occupied the ground and provided "the sinews of war," there would
have been no field for Mr. Train's labors, and we should have accepted
their services. But, as the ground was unoccupied, he had, at least,
the right of a reform "squatter" to cultivate the cardinal virtues and
reap a moral harvest wherever he could.
Reaching New York, Mr. Train made it possible for us to establish a
newspaper, which gave another impetus to our movement. The _Revolution_,
published by Susan B. Anthony and edited by Parker Pillsbury and myself,
lived two years and a half and was then consolidated with the New York
_Christian Enquirer_, edited by the Rev. Henry Bellows, D.D. I regard
the brief period in which I edited the _Revolution_ as one of the
happiest of my life, and I may add the most useful. In looking over the
editorials I find but one that I sincerely regret, and that was a retort
on Mr. Garrison, written under great provocation, but not by me, which
circumstances, at the time, forbade me to disown. Considering the
pressure brought to bear on Miss Anthony and myself, I feel now that our
patience and forbearance with our enemies in their malignant attacks on
our good, name, which we never answered, were indeed marvelous.
We said at all times and on all other subjects just what we thought, and
advertised nothing that we did not believe in. No advertisements of
quack remedies appeared in our columns. One of our clerks once published
a bread powder advertisement, which I did not see until the paper
appeared; so, in the next number, I said, editorially, what I thought of
it. I was alone in the office, one day, when a man blustered in. "Who,"
said he, "runs this concern?" "You will find the names of the editors
and publishers," I replied, "on the editorial page." "Are you one of
them?" "I am," I replied. "Well, do you know that I agreed to pay
twenty dollars to have that bread powder advertised for one month, and
then you condemn it editorially?" "I have nothing to do with the
advertising; Miss Anthony pays me to say what I think." "Have you any
more thoughts to publish on that bread powder?" "Oh, yes," I replied, "I
have not exhausted the subject yet." "Then," said he, "I will have the
advertisement taken out. What is there to pay for the one insertion?"
"Oh, nothing," I replied, "as the editorial probably did you more injury
than the advertisement did you good." On leaving, with prophetic vision,
he said, "I prophesy a short life for this paper; the business world is
based on quackery, and you cannot live without it." With melancholy
certainty, I replied, "I fear you are right."
CHAPTER XVII.
LYCEUMS AND LECTURERS.
The Lyceum Bureau was, at one time, a great feature in American life.
The three leading bureaus were in Boston, New York, and Chicago. The
managers, map in hand, would lay out trips, more or less extensive
according to the capacity or will of the speakers, and then, with a
dozen or more victims in hand, make arrangements with the committees in
various towns and cities to set them all in motion. As the managers of
the bureaus had ten per cent. of what the speakers made, it was to their
interest to keep the time well filled. Hence the engagements were made
without the slightest reference to the comfort of the travelers. With
our immense distances, it was often necessary to travel night and day,
sometimes changing cars at midnight, and perhaps arriving at the
destination half an hour or less before going on the platform, and
starting again on the journey immediately upon leaving it. The route was
always carefully written out, giving the time the trains started from
and arrived at various points; but as cross trains often failed to
connect, one traveled, guidebook in hand, in a constant fever of
anxiety. As, in the early days, the fees were from one to two hundred
dollars a night, the speakers themselves were desirous of accomplishing
as much as possible.
In 1869 I gave my name, for the first time, to the New York Bureau, and
on November 14 began the long, weary pilgrimages, from Maine to Texas,
that lasted twelve years; speaking steadily for eight months--from
October to June--every season. That was the heyday of the lecturing
period, when a long list of bright men and women were constantly on the
wing. Anna Dickinson, Olive Logan, Kate Field,--later, Mrs. Livermore
and Mrs. Howe, Alcott, Phillips, Douglass, Tilton, Curtis, Beecher, and,
several years later, General Kilpatrick, with Henry Vincent, Bradlaugh,
and Matthew Arnold from England; these and many others were stars of the
lecture platform.
Some of us occasionally managed to spend Sunday together, at a good
hotel in some city, to rest and feast and talk over our joys and
sorrows, the long journeys, the hard fare in the country hotels, the
rainy nights when committees felt blue and tried to cut down our fees;
the being compelled by inconsiderate people to talk on the train; the
overheated, badly ventilated cars; the halls, sometimes too warm,
sometimes too cold; babies crying in our audiences; the rain pattering
on the roof overhead or leaking on the platform--these were common
experiences. In the West, women with babies uniformly occupied the front
seats so that the little ones, not understanding what you said, might be
amused with your gestures and changing facial expression. All these
things, so trying, at the time, to concentrated and enthusiastic
speaking, afterward served as subjects of amusing conversation. We
unanimously complained of the tea and coffee. Mrs. Livermore had the
wisdom to carry a spirit lamp with her own tea and coffee, and thus
supplied herself with the needed stimulants for her oratorical
efforts. The hardships of these lyceum trips can never be appreciated
except by those who have endured them. With accidents to cars and
bridges, with floods and snow blockades, the pitfalls in one of these
campaigns were without number.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER.] [Illustration]
On one occasion, when engaged to speak at Maquoketa, Iowa, I arrived at
Lyons about noon, to find the road was blocked with snow, and no chance
of the cars running for days. "Well," said I to the landlord, "I must be
at Maquoketa at eight o'clock to-night; have you a sleigh, a span of
fleet horses, and a skillful driver? If so, I will go across the
country." "Oh, yes, madam!" he replied, "I have all you ask; but you
could not stand a six-hours' drive in this piercing wind." Having lived
in a region of snow, with the thermometer down to twenty degrees below
zero, I had no fears of winds and drifts, so I said, "Get the sleigh
ready and I will try it." Accordingly I telegraphed the committee that I
would be there, and started. I was well bundled up in a fur cloak and
hood, a hot oak plank at my feet, and a thick veil over my head and
face. As the landlord gave the finishing touch, by throwing a large
buffalo robe over all and tying the two tails together at the back of my
head and thus effectually preventing me putting my hand to my nose, he
said, "There, if you can only sit perfectly still, you will come out all
right at Maquoketa; that is, if you get there, which I very much doubt."
It was a long, hard drive against the wind and through drifts, but I
scarcely moved a finger, and, as the clock struck eight, we drove into
the town. The hall was warm, and the church bell having announced my
arrival, a large audience was assembled. As I learned that all the roads
in Northern Iowa were blocked, I made the entire circuit, from point to
point, in a sleigh, traveling forty and fifty miles a day.
At the Sherman House, in Chicago, three weeks later, I met Mr. Bradlaugh
and General Kilpatrick, who were advertised on the same route ahead of
me. "Well," said I, "where have you gentlemen been?" "Waiting here for
the roads to be opened. We have lost three weeks' engagements," they
replied. As the General was lecturing on his experiences in Sherman's
march to the sea, I chaffed him on not being able, in an emergency, to
march across the State of Iowa. They were much astonished and somewhat
ashamed, when I told them of my long, solitary drives over the prairies
from day to day. It was the testimony of all the bureaus that the women
could endure more fatigue and were more conscientious than the men in
filling their appointments.
The pleasant feature of these trips was the great educational work
accomplished for the people through their listening to lectures on all
the vital questions of the hour. Wherever any of us chanced to be on
Sunday, we preached in some church; and wherever I had a spare
afternoon, I talked to women alone, on marriage, maternity, and the laws
of life and health. We made many most charming acquaintances, too,
scattered all over our Western World, and saw how comfortable and happy
sensible people could be, living in most straitened circumstances, with
none of the luxuries of life. If most housekeepers could get rid of
one-half their clothes and furniture and put their bric-a-brac in the
town museum, life would be simplified and they would begin to know what
leisure means. When I see so many of our American women struggling to be
artists, who cannot make a good loaf of bread nor a palatable cup of
coffee, I think of what Theodore Parker said when art was a craze in
Boston. "The fine arts do not interest me so much as the coarse arts
which feed, clothe, house, and comfort a people. I would rather be a
great man like Franklin than a Michael Angelo--nay, if I had a son, I
should rather see him a mechanic, like the late George Stephenson, in
England, than a great painter like Rubens, who only copied beauty."
One day I found at the office of the _Revolution_ an invitation to meet
Mrs. Moulton in the Academy of Music, where she was to try her voice for
the coming concert for the benefit of the Woman's Medical College. And
what a voice for power, pathos, pliability! I never heard the like.
Seated beside her mother, Mrs. W.H. Greenough, I enjoyed alike the
mother's anxious pride and the daughter's triumph. I felt, as I
listened, the truth of what Vieuxtemps said the first time he heard her,
"That is the traditional voice for which the ages have waited and
longed." When, on one occasion, Mrs. Moulton sang a song of Mozart's to
Auber's accompaniment, someone present asked, "What could be added to
make this more complete?" Auber looked up to heaven, and, with a sweet
smile, said, "Nothing but that Mozart should have been here to listen."
Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown
of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an
intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature,
oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can.
Hungering, that day, for gifted women, I called on Alice and Phebe Cary
and Mary Clemmer Ames, and together we gave the proud white male such a
serving up as did our souls good and could not hurt him, intrenched, as
he is, behind creeds, codes, customs, and constitutions, with vizor and
breastplate of self-complacency and conceit. In criticising Jessie
Boucherett's essay on "Superfluous Women," in which she advises men in
England to emigrate in order to leave room and occupation for women, the
_Tribune_ said: "The idea of a home without a man in it!" In visiting
the Carys one always felt that there was a home--a very charming one,
too--without a man in it.
Once when Harriet Beecher Stowe was at Dr. Taylor's, I had the
opportunity to make her acquaintance. In her sanctum, surrounded by
books and papers, she was just finishing her second paper on the Byron
family, and her sister Catherine was preparing papers on her educational
work, preparatory to a coming meeting of the ladies of the school board.
The women of the Beecher family, though most of them wives and mothers,
all had a definite life-work outside the family circle, and other
objects of intense interest beside husbands, babies, cook stoves, and
social conversations. Catherine said she was opposed to woman suffrage,
and if she thought there was the least danger of our getting it, she
would write and talk against it vehemently. But, as the nation was safe
against such a calamity, she was willing to let the talk go on, because
the agitation helped her work. "It is rather paradoxical," I said to
her, "that the pressing of a false principle can help a true one; but
when you get the women all thoroughly educated, they will step off to
the polls and vote in spite of you."
One night on the train from New York to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, I
found abundant time to think over the personal peculiarities of the many
noble women who adorn this nineteenth century, and, as I recalled them,
one by one, in America, England, France, and Germany, and all that they
are doing and saying, I wandered that any man could be so blind as not
to see that woman has already taken her place as the peer of man. While
the lords of creation have been debating her sphere and drawing their
chalk marks here and there, woman has quietly stepped outside the barren
fields where she was compelled to graze for centuries, and is now in
green pastures and beside still waters, a power in the world of thought.
These pleasant cogitations were cut short by my learning that I had
taken the wrong train, and must change at Harrisburg at two o'clock in
the morning. How soon the reflection that I must leave my comfortable
berth at such an unchristian hour changed the whole hue of glorious
womanhood and every other earthly blessing! However, I lived through the
trial and arrived at Williamsport as the day dawned. I had a good
audience at the opera house that evening, and was introduced to many
agreeable people, who declared themselves converted to woman suffrage by
my ministrations. Among the many new jewels in my crown, I added, that
night, Judge Bently.
In November, 1869, I passed one night in Philadelphia, with Miss
Anthony, at Anna Dickinson's home--a neat, three-story brick house in
Locust Street. This haven of rest, where the world-famous little woman
came, ever and anon, to recruit her overtaxed energies, was very
tastefully furnished, adorned with engravings, books, and statuary. Her
mother, sister, and brother made up the household--a pleasing,
cultivated trio. The brother was a handsome youth of good judgment, and
given to sage remarks; the sister, witty, intuitive, and incisive in
speech; the mother, dressed in rich Quaker costume, and though nearly
seventy, still possessed of great personal beauty. She was intelligent,
dignified, refined, and, in manner and appearance, reminded one of
Angelina Grimke as she looked in her younger days. Everything about the
house and its appointments indicated that it was the abode of genius and
cultivation, and, although Anna was absent, the hospitalities were
gracefully dispensed by her family. Napoleon and Shakespeare seemed to
be Anna's patron saints, looking down, on all sides, from the wall. The
mother amused us with the sore trials her little orator had inflicted on
the members of the household by her vagaries in the world of fame.
On the way to Kennett Square, a young gentleman pointed out to us the
home of Benjamin West, who distinguished himself, to the disgust of
broadbrims generally, as a landscape painter. In commencing his career,
it is said he made use of the tail of a cat in lieu of a brush. Of
course Benjamin's first attempts were on the sly, and he could not ask
paterfamilias for money to buy a brush without encountering the good
man's scorn. Whether, in the hour of his need and fresh enthusiasm, poor
puss was led to the sacrificial altar, or whether he found her reposing
by the roadside, having paid the debt of Nature, our informant could not
say; enough that, in time, he owned a brush and immortalized himself by
his skill in its use. Such erratic ones as Whittier, West, and Anna
Dickinson go to prove that even the prim, proper, perfect Quakers are
subject to like infirmities with the rest of the human family.
I had long heard of the "Progressive Friends" in the region round
Longwood; had read the many bulls they issued from their "yearly
meetings" on every question, on war, capital punishment, temperance,
slavery, woman's rights; had learned that they were turning the cold
shoulder on the dress, habits, and opinions of their Fathers; listening
to the ministrations of such worldlings as William Lloyd Garrison,
Theodore Tilton, and Oliver Johnson, in a new meeting house, all painted
and varnished, with cushions, easy seats, carpets, stoves, a musical
instrument--shade of George Fox, forgive--and three brackets with vases
on the "high seat," and, more than all that, men and women were
indiscriminately seated throughout the house.
All this Miss Anthony and I beheld with our own eyes, and, in company
with Sarah Pugh and Chandler Darlington, did sit together in the high
seat and talk in the congregation of the people. There, too, we met
Hannah Darlington and Dinah Mendenhall,--names long known in every good
work,--and, for the space of one day, did enjoy the blissful serenity of
that earthly paradise. The women of Kennett Square were celebrated not
only for their model housekeeping but also for their rare cultivation on
all subjects of general interest.
In November I again started on one of my Western trips, but, alas! on
the very day the trains were changed, and so I could not make
connections to meet my engagements at Saginaw and Marshall, and just
saved myself at Toledo by going directly from the cars before the
audience, with the dust of twenty-four hours' travel on my garments.
Not being able to reach Saginaw, I went straight to Ann Arbor, and spent
three days most pleasantly in visiting old friends, making new ones, and
surveying the town, with its grand University. I was invited to
Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Mr. Seaman, a highly cultivated
Democratic editor, author of "Progress of Nations." A choice number of
guests gathered round his hospitable board on that occasion, over which
his wife presided with dignity and grace. Woman suffrage was the target
for the combined wit and satire of the company, and, after four hours of
uninterrupted sharpshooting, pyrotechnics, and laughter, we dispersed to
our several abodes, fairly exhausted with the excess of enjoyment.
One gentleman had the moral hardihood to assert that men had more
endurance than women, whereupon a lady remarked that she would like to
see the thirteen hundred young men in the University laced up in
steel-ribbed corsets, with hoops, heavy skirts, trains, high heels,
panniers, chignons, and dozens of hairpins sticking in their scalps,
cooped up in the house year after year, with no exhilarating exercise,
no hopes, aims, nor ambitions in life, and know if they could stand it
as well as the girls. "Nothing," said she, "but the fact that women,
like cats, have nine lives, enables them to survive the present _regime_
to which custom dooms the sex."
While in Ann Arbor I gave my lecture on "Our Girls" in the new Methodist
church--a large building, well lighted, and filled with a brilliant
audience. The students, in large numbers, were there, and strengthened
the threads of my discourse with frequent and generous applause;
especially when I urged on the Regents of the University the duty of
opening its doors to the daughters of the State. There were several
splendid girls in Michigan, at that time, preparing themselves for
admission to the law department. As Judge Cooley, one of the professors,
was a very liberal man, as well as a sound lawyer, and strongly in favor
of opening the college to girls, I had no doubt the women of Michigan
would soon distinguish themselves at the bar. Some said the chief
difficulty in the way of the girls of that day being admitted to the
University was the want of room. That could have been easily obviated by
telling the young men from abroad to betake themselves to the colleges
in their respective States, that Michigan might educate her daughters.
As the women owned a good share of the property of the State, and had
been heavily taxed to build and endow that institution, it was but fair
that they should share in its advantages.
The Michigan University, with its extensive grounds, commodious
buildings, medical and law schools, professors' residences, and the
finest laboratory in the country, was an institution of which the State
was justly proud, and, as the tuition was free, it was worth the trouble
of a long, hard siege by the girls of Michigan to gain admittance there.
I advised them to organize their forces at once, get their minute guns,
battering rams, monitors, projectiles, bombshells, cannon, torpedoes,
and crackers ready, and keep up a brisk cannonading until the grave and
reverend seigniors opened the door, and shouted, "Hold, enough!"
The ladies of Ann Arbor had a fine library of their own, where their
clubs met once a week. They had just formed a suffrage association. My
visit ended with a pleasant reception, at which I was introduced to the
chaplain, several professors, and many ladies and gentlemen ready to
accept the situation. Judge Cooley gave me a glowing account of the laws
of Michigan--how easy it was for wives to get possession of all the
property, and then sunder the marriage tie and leave the poor husband to
the charity of the cold world, with their helpless children about him. I
heard of a rich lady, there, who made a will, giving her husband a
handsome annuity as long as he remained her widower. It was evident that
the poor "white male," sooner or later, was doomed to try for himself
the virtue of the laws he had made for women. I hope, for the sake of
the race, he will not bear oppression with the stupid fortitude we have
for six thousand years.
At Flint I was entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Jenny. Mr. Jenny was a
Democratic editor who believed in progress, and in making smooth paths
for women in this great wilderness of life. His wife was a remarkable
woman. She inaugurated the Ladies' Libraries in Michigan. In Flint they
had a fine brick building and nearly two thousand volumes of choice
books, owned by the association, and money always in the treasury. Here,
too, I had a fine audience and gave my lecture entitled "Open the Door."
At Coldwater, in spite of its name, I found a warm, appreciative
audience. The president of the lyceum was a sensible young man who,
after graduating at Ann Arbor, decided, instead of starving at the law,
to work with his hands and brains at the same time. When all men go to
their legitimate business of creating wealth, developing the resources
of the country, and leave its mere exchange to the weaker sex, we shall
not have so many superfluous women in the world with nothing to do. It
is evident the time has come to hunt man into his appropriate sphere.
Coming from Chicago, I met Governor Fairchild and Senator Williams of
Wisconsin. It was delightful to find them thoroughly grounded in the
faith of woman suffrage. They had been devout readers of the
_Revolution_ ever since Miss Anthony induced them to subscribe, the
winter before, at Madison. Of course a new glow of intelligence
irradiated their fine faces (for they were remarkably handsome men) and
there was a new point to all their words. Senator Williams, like myself,
was on a lecturing tour. "Man" was his theme, for which I was devoutly
thankful; for, if there are any of God's creatures that need lecturing,
it is this one that is forever advising us. I thought of all men, from
Father Gregory down to Horace Bushnell, who had wearied their brains to
describe woman's sphere, and how signally they had failed.
Throughout my lyceum journeys I was of great use to the traveling
public, in keeping the ventilators in the cars open, and the dampers in
fiery stoves shut up, especially in sleeping cars at night. How many
times a day I thought what the sainted Horace Mann tried to impress on
his stupid countrymen, that, inasmuch as the air is forty miles deep
around the globe, it is a useless piece of economy to breathe any number
of cubic feet over more than seven times! The babies, too, need to be
thankful that I was in a position to witness their wrongs. Many, through
my intercessions, received their first drink of water, and were
emancipated from woolen hoods, veils, tight strings under their chins,
and endless swaddling bands. It is a startling assertion, but true,
that I have met few women who know how to take care of a baby. And this
fact led me, on one trip, to lecture to my fair countrywomen on
"Marriage and Maternity," hoping to aid in the inauguration of a new era
of happy, healthy babies.
After twenty-four hours in the express I found myself in a pleasant room
in the International Hotel at La Crosse, looking out on the Great Mother
of Waters, on whose cold bosom the ice and the steamers were struggling
for mastery. Beyond stretched the snow-clad bluffs, sternly looking down
on the Mississippi, as if to say, "'Thus far shalt thou come and no
farther'--though sluggish, you are aggressive, ever pushing where you
should not; but all attempts in this direction are alike vain; since
creation's dawn, we have defied you, and here we stand, to-day, calm,
majestic, immovable. Coquette as you will in other latitudes, with
flowery banks and youthful piers in the busy marts of trade, and
undermine them, one and all, with your deceitful wooings, but bow in
reverence as you gaze on us. We have no eyes for your beauty; no ears
for your endless song; our heads are in the clouds, our hearts commune
with gods; you have no part in the eternal problems of the ages that
fill our thoughts, yours the humble duty to wash our feet, and then pass
on, remembering to keep in your appropriate sphere, within the barks
that wise geographers have seen fit to mark."
As I listened to these complacent hills and watched the poor Mississippi
weeping as she swept along, to lose her sorrows in ocean's depths, I
thought how like the attitude of man to woman. Let these proud hills
remember that they, too, slumbered for centuries in deep valleys down,
down, when, perchance, the sparkling Mississippi rolled above their
heads, and but for some generous outburst, some upheaval of old Mother
Earth, wishing that her rock-ribbed sons, as well as graceful daughters,
might enjoy the light, the sunshine and the shower--but for this soul of
love in matter as well as mind--these bluffs and the sons of Adam, too,
might not boast the altitude they glory in to-day. Those who have ears
to hear discern low, rumbling noises that foretell convulsions in our
social world that may, perchance, in the next upheaval, bring woman to
the surface; up, up, from gloomy ocean depths, dark caverns, and damper
valleys. The struggling daughters of earth are soon to walk in the
sunlight of a higher civilization.
Escorted by Mr. Woodward, a member of the bar, I devoted a day to the
lions of La Crosse. First we explored the courthouse, a large, new brick
building, from whose dome we had a grand view of the surrounding
country. The courtroom where justice is administered was large, clean,
airy--the bench carpeted and adorned with a large, green, stuffed chair,
in which I sat down, and, in imagination, summoned up advocates, jurors,
prisoners, and people, and wondered how I should feel pronouncing
sentence of death on a fellow-being, or, like Portia, wisely checkmating
the Shylocks of our times. Here I met Judge Hugh Cameron, formerly of
Johnstown. He invited us into his sanctum, where we had a pleasant chat
about our native hills, Scotch affiliations, the bench and bar of New
York, and the Wisconsin laws for women. The Judge, having maintained a
happy bachelor state, looked placidly on the aggressive movements of
the sex, as his domestic felicity would be no way affected, whether
woman was voted up or down.
We next surveyed the Pomeroy building, which contained a large,
tastefully finished hall and printing establishment, where the La Crosse
_Democrat_ was formerly published. As I saw the perfection, order, and
good taste, in all arrangements throughout, and listened to Mr. Huron's
description of the life and leading characteristics of its chief, it
seemed impossible to reconcile the tone of the _Democrat_ with the moral
status of its editor. I never saw a more complete business
establishment, and the editorial sanctum looked as if it might be the
abiding place of the Muses. Mirrors, pictures, statuary, books, music,
rare curiosities, and fine specimens of birds and minerals were
everywhere. Over the editor's table was a beautiful painting of his
youthful daughter, whose flaxen hair, blue eyes, and angelic face should
have inspired a father to nobler, purer, utterances than he was wont, at
that time, to give to the world.
But Pomeroy's good deeds will live long after his profane words are
forgotten. Throughout the establishment cards, set up in conspicuous
places, said, "Smoking here is positively forbidden." Drinking, too, was
forbidden to all his employes. The moment a man was discovered using
intoxicating drinks, he was dismissed. In the upper story of the
building was a large, pleasant room, handsomely carpeted and furnished,
where the employes, in their leisure hours, could talk, write, read, or
amuse themselves in any rational way.
Mr. Pomeroy was humane and generous with his employes, honorable in his
business relations, and boundless in his charities to the poor. His
charity, business honor, and public spirit were highly spoken of by
those who knew him best. That a journal does not always reflect the
editor is as much the fault of society as of the man. So long as the
public will pay for gross personalities, obscenity, and slang, decent
journals will be outbidden in the market. The fact that the La Crosse
_Democrat_ found a ready sale in all parts of the country showed that
Mr. Pomeroy fairly reflected the popular taste. While multitudes turned
up the whites of their eyes and denounced him in public, they bought his
paper and read it in private.
I left La Crosse in a steamer, just as the rising sun lighted the
hilltops and gilded the Mississippi. It was a lovely morning, and, in
company with a young girl of sixteen, who had traveled alone from some
remote part of Canada, bound for a northern village in Wisconsin, I
promenaded the deck most of the way to Winona, a pleased listener to the
incidents of my young companion's experiences. She said that, when
crossing Lake Huron, she was the only woman on board, but the men were
so kind and civil that she soon forgot she was alone. I found many
girls, traveling long distances, who had never been five miles from home
before, with a self-reliance that was remarkable. They all spoke in the
most flattering manner of the civility of our American men in looking
after their baggage and advising them as to the best routes.
As you approach St. Paul, at Fort Snelling, where the Mississippi and
Minnesota join forces, the country grows bold and beautiful. The town
itself, then boasting about thirty thousand inhabitants, is finely
situated, with substantial stone residences. It was in one of these
charming homes I found a harbor of rest during my stay in the city. Mrs.
Stuart, whose hospitalities I enjoyed, was a woman of rare common sense
and sound health. Her husband, Dr. Jacob H. Stuart, was one of the very
first surgeons to volunteer in the late war. In the panic at Bull Run,
instead of running, as everybody else did, he stayed with the wounded,
and was taken prisoner while taking a bullet from the head of a rebel.
When exchanged, Beauregard gave him his sword for his devotion to the
dying and wounded.
I had the pleasure of seeing several of the leading gentlemen and ladies
of St. Paul at the Orphans' Fair, where we all adjourned, after my
lecture, to discuss woman's rights, over a bounteous supper. Here I met
William L. Banning, the originator of the Lake Superior and Mississippi
Railroad. He besieged Congress and capitalists for a dozen years to
build this road, but was laughed at and put off with sneers and
contempt, until, at last, Jay Cooke became so weary of his continual
coming that he said: "I will build the road to get rid of you."
Whittier seems to have had a prophetic vision of the peopling of this
region. When speaking of the Yankee, he says:
"He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks,
With eager eyes of gain.
"I hear the mattock in the mine,
The ax-stroke in the dell,
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuits' chapel bell!
"I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea."
The opening of these new outlets and mines of wealth was wholly due to
the forecast and perseverance of Mr. Banning. The first engine that went
over a part of the road had been christened at St. Paul, with becoming
ceremonies; the officiating priestess being a beautiful maiden. A cask
of water from the Pacific was sent by Mr. Banning's brother from
California, and a small keg was brought from Lake Superior for the
occasion. A glass was placed in the hands of Miss Ella B. Banning,
daughter of the president, who then christened the engine, saying: "With
the waters of the Pacific Ocean in my right hand, and the waters of Lake
Superior in my left, invoking the Genius of Progress to bring together,
with iron band, two great commercial systems of the globe, I dedicate
this engine to the use of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad,
and name it William L. Banning."
From St. Paul to Dubuque, as the boats had ceased running, a circuitous
route and a night of discomfort were inevitable. Leaving the main road
to Chicago at Clinton Junction, I had the pleasure of waiting at a small
country inn until midnight for a freight train. This was indeed dreary,
but, having Mrs. Child's sketches of Mmes. De Stael and Roland at hand,
I read of Napoleon's persecutions of the one and Robespierre's of the
other, until, by comparison, my condition was tolerable, and the little
meagerly furnished room, with its dull fire and dim lamp, seemed a
paradise compared with years of exile from one's native land or the
prison cell and guillotine. How small our ordinary, petty trials seem
in contrast with the mountains of sorrow that have been piled up on the
great souls of the past! Absorbed in communion with them twelve o'clock
soon came, and with it the train.
A burly son of Adam escorted me to the passenger car filled with German
immigrants, with tin cups, babies, bags, and bundles innumerable. The
ventilators were all closed, the stoves hot, and the air was like that
of the Black Hole of Calcutta. So, after depositing my cloak and bag in
an empty seat, I quietly propped both doors open with a stick of wood,
shut up the stoves, and opened all the ventilators with the poker. But
the celestial breeze, so grateful to me, had the most unhappy effect on
the slumbering exiles. Paterfamilias swore outright; the companion of
his earthly pilgrimage said, "We must be going north," and, as the heavy
veil of carbonic acid gas was lifted from infant faces, and the pure
oxygen filled their lungs and roused them to new life, they set up one
simultaneous shout of joy and gratitude, which their parents mistook for
agony. Altogether there was a general stir. As I had quietly slipped
into my seat and laid my head down to sleep, I remained unobserved--the
innocent cause of the general purification and vexation.
We reached Freeport at three o'clock in the morning. As the depot for
Dubuque was nearly half a mile on the other side of the town, I said to
a solitary old man who stood shivering there to receive us, "How can I
get to the other station?" "Walk, madam." "But I do not know the way."
"There is no one to go with you." "How is my trunk going?" said I. "I
have a donkey and cart to take that." "Then," said I, "you, the donkey,
the trunk, and I will go together." So I stepped into the cart, sat down
on the trunk, and the old man laughed heartily as we jogged along
through the mud of that solitary town in the pale morning starlight.
Just as the day was dawning, Dubuque, with its rough hills and bold
scenery, loomed up. Soon, under the roof of Myron Beach, one of the
distinguished lawyers of the West, with a good breakfast and sound nap,
my night's sorrows were forgotten.
I was sorry to find that Mrs. Beach, though a native of New York, and
born on the very spot where the first woman's rights convention was held
in this country, was not sound on the question of woman suffrage. She
seemed to have an idea that voting and housekeeping could not be
compounded; but I suggested that, if the nation could only enjoy a
little of the admirable system with which she and other women
administered their domestic affairs, Uncle Sam's interests would be
better secured. This is just what the nation needs to-day, and women
must wake up to the consideration that they, too, have duties as well as
rights in the State. A splendid audience greeted me in the Opera House,
and I gave "Our Girls," bringing many male sinners to repentance, and
stirring up some lethargic _femmes coverts_ to a state of rebellion
against the existing order of things.
From Dubuque I went to Dixon, a large town, where I met a number of
pleasant people, but I have one cause of complaint against the telegraph
operator, whose negligence to send a dispatch to Mt. Vernon, written and
paid for, came near causing me a solitary night on the prairie,
unsheltered and unknown. Hearing that the express train went out Sunday
afternoon, I decided to go, so as to have all day at Mt. Vernon before
speaking; but on getting my trunk checked, the baggageman said the train
did not stop there. "Well," said I, "check the trunk to the nearest
point at which it does stop," resolving that I would persuade the
conductor to stop one minute, anyway. Accordingly, when the conductor
came round, I presented my case as persuasively and eloquently as
possible, telling him that I had telegraphed friends to meet me, etc.,
etc. He kindly consented to do so and had my trunk re-checked. On
arriving, as there was no light, no sound, and the depot was half a mile
from the town, the conductor urged me to go to Cedar Rapids and come
back the next morning, as it was Sunday night and the depot might not be
opened, and I might be compelled to stay there on the platform all night
in the cold.
But, as I had telegraphed, I told him I thought someone would be there,
and I would take the risk. So off went the train, leaving me solitary
and alone. I could see the lights in the distant town and the dark
outlines of two great mills near by, which suggested dams and races. I
heard, too, the distant barking of dogs, and I thought there might be
wolves, too; but no human sound. The platform was high and I could see
no way down, and I should not have dared to go down if I had. So I
walked all round the house, knocked at every door and window, called
"John!" "James!" "Patrick!" but no response. Dressed in all their best,
they had, no doubt, gone to visit Sally, and I knew they would stay
late. The night wind was cold. What could I do? The prospect of spending
the night there filled me with dismay. At last I thought I would try my
vocal powers; so I hallooed as loud as I could, in every note of the
gamut, until I was hoarse. At last I heard a distant sound, a loud
halloo, which I returned, and so we kept it up until the voice grew
near, and, when I heard a man's heavy footsteps close at hand, I was
relieved. He proved to be the telegraph operator, who had been a brave
soldier in the late war. He said that no message had come from Dixon. He
escorted me to the hotel, where some members of the Lyceum Committee
came in and had a hearty laugh at my adventure, especially that, in my
distress, I should have called on James and John and Patrick, instead of
Jane, Ann, and Bridget. They seemed to argue that that was an admission,
on my part, of man's superiority, but I suggested that, as my sex had
not yet been exalted to the dignity |
