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Title: Women in American history
Author: Grace Humphrey
Release date: May 9, 2025 [eBook #76056]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1919
Credits: Jamie Brydone-Jack and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN IN AMERICAN HISTORY ***
WOMEN IN
AMERICAN HISTORY
_By_
GRACE HUMPHREY
AUTHOR OF
Illinois--The Story of the
Prairie State
[Illustration]
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1919
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I POCAHONTAS 1
II ANNE HUTCHINSON 18
III BETSY ROSS 30
IV MARY LINDLEY MURRAY 40
V MOLLY PITCHER 47
VI MARTHA WASHINGTON 55
VII JEMIMA JOHNSON 72
VIII SACAJAWEA 80
IX DOLLY MADISON 101
X LUCRETIA MOTT 115
XI HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 132
XII JULIA WARD HOWE 154
XIII MARY A. LIVERMORE 164
XIV BARBARA FRITCHIE 179
XV CLARA BARTON 189
EPILOGUE 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY 211
INDEX 219
WOMEN IN
AMERICAN HISTORY
CHAPTER I
POCAHONTAS
1595-1617
One cold stormy day, more than three hundred years ago, a group of
Indians was sitting around the fire in a “long house” on the James
River in Virginia. Warriors and young braves, squaws and maidens, were
listening to stories, while the children played about boisterously.
Some of them were wrestling, some racing with dogs, and others turning
somersaults in the long narrow passageway.
Suddenly the deerskin curtains parted and in dashed an Indian runner.
He spied the chief at the far end of the room near the fire and started
toward him; but one of the children, a little girl named Mataoka, who
was turning hand-springs, collided with him and knocked him down. A
little girl she was, ten or eleven years old, with swarthy skin, black
eyes and long straight hair, like all the other Indian girls; but she
was distinguished among the group, for she was the daughter of the
chief.
“Child,” said her father, “in your rough play you have knocked down
your brother, the runner who has come with some message. That is not
play for a girl. Why will you be such a little tomboy?”
At this all the Indians present took up the word _tomboy_ and repeated
it in the guttural Algonquin speech--_pocahuntas_, _pocahuntas_. And
that nickname stayed with her all her life long.
“I have news,” said the runner, when he could get his breath. “I have
great news,” and he paused dramatically. “The white captain is caught!”
What an excitement this created in the long house! Warriors and squaws
crowded around the tired runner, eager to have the details of his
story--how two hundred Indians, with the chief’s brother at their head,
had watched from behind the trees as the white captain, with an Indian
guide, left his two men in the boat and went ashore; how stealthily
they lay in wait to attack him, in the heart of the deep woods; how
they shot their arrows thick and fast, when the right moment came, till
they saw the white captain seize the Indian and use him as a shield,
while he slowly made his way back toward the boat; how the Indians
were afraid they would lose their prey after all, but fortune favored
them when the white man stumbled into a bog and was held fast by the
slippery ground and the icy water; and how, after he was nearly dead
with the cold and had thrown away his arms, they took him prisoner.
At first, said the runner, the braves wanted to kill him, but later
thought it would be a better plan to lead him to the village where the
whole tribe could rejoice in this triumph.
All this Pocahontas, the little daughter of the great chief Powhatan,
heard, and was deeply interested. For the plucky captain had saved his
life by a device that was almost an Indian trick. So you may be sure
she was there, the next day, when the noted prisoner was brought in.
She was very proud of her father, who ruled over a league of nearly
forty tribes, numbering some eight thousand people, as she looked
up at him, sitting in state on a raised platform, dressed in raccoon
skins, with all the tails left on, and wearing his splendid crown of
red feathers. Proud, too, she was to be his favorite daughter.
At the council Mataoka listened while the Indians told how the
prisoner had shot at their men, one of whom had since died. She was
heavy-hearted when she learned the verdict, “Then he too must die--that
is the Indian custom!” She watched while some young braves brought in
two great stones and placed them in front of Powhatan. She saw them
seize the prisoner, drag him before her father, force him down until
his head was on the stones, and then tie his hands and feet. And all
the time her heart went out to him, so fair, so friendly, so fine a man
he was!
Meanwhile John Smith, the white captain, not understanding what the
Indians were saying, could only guess at his fate. He had often been
near to death, in his adventurous life, and he thought now of some of
his narrow escapes--of his fighting days in the Low Countries, in the
Holy Land against the Turks, and that wonderful day when he met the
three Turkish champions in single combat, came out victorious, and was
given a coat of arms. He thought of the times he had been robbed and
shipwrecked, captured by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery. Yes,
he had been close to death before. Would some providence save him this
time?
No, there were only forbidding looks on the swarthy faces around him,
glances of hatred, contempt, of triumph. Smith, from his position on
the ground, saw the chief motion to the executioners, who brought in
their great war clubs. Now they swung them up over their shoulders
and stood ready for the word of command. Powhatan had opened his lips
to speak when suddenly there was a commotion in the group as a little
figure darted past the platform, slipped through deterring hands, and
flung herself on the helpless prisoner.
No girl’s game now was the little tomboy playing, as she took John
Smith’s head in her arms and with her own body shielded him from death.
The executioners stopped, uncertain what to do, for they were fond
of the chief’s daughter and would not harm a hair of her head. With
flashing eyes she waved them back and pleaded with the stern Powhatan
to spare the white captain’s life.
At once there was a scene of the wildest commotion. There were shouts
and threats and many cries of “Kill! Kill!” for the Indians feared the
power of these newcomers and longed to drive them from the land. But
the little Pocahontas was a chief’s daughter and stood for her rights.
Let them grant this enemy his life and adopt him into their tribe; for
what harm had he done them? They ought to be friends. And she had her
way. Powhatan raised his hand and when the clamor ceased, he spoke to
the warriors who set the plucky paleface free.
Mataoka smiled upon him and gave him many a look of wondering
curiosity. Smith presented her with some trifling gifts and asked her
name. Now it was the Indian custom never to tell a name to a stranger,
lest it give him some magic harmful influence, so Powhatan replied that
his daughter’s name was Pocahontas.
This story is questioned by some historians because Smith did not
include it in his first published account of the Virginia colony, nor
yet in the second, though he did praise the Indian girl. In a letter he
sent to the English queen, years later, bespeaking for her the royal
favor, he tells how Pocahontas saved his life and the colony as well.
True or not, Pocahontas and Smith became warm friends and the
kind-hearted little Indian girl was loyal and faithful to the
settlement at Jamestown, and saved the colony more than once.
Frequently she would go with her brothers, or some of her Indian
attendants, carrying corn or venison to the people who were in danger
of starving--you remember how improvident those first colonists were,
and how badly their affairs were managed? Once she hid a messenger whom
the savages planned to kill; she saved the life of a captured English
boy; three times she stole cautiously into Jamestown and warned her new
friends of threatened attacks; and she told Smith himself of a trap
laid to surprise him, while his party waited for promised provisions.
“Great cheer (corn) will be sent you by and by,” she whispered, “but
my father Powhatan and all the power he can make will come afterward,
if the braves that bring the corn do not kill you when you are at
supper. Hurry away! No, no,” she added, refusing a compass he offered
her, “I can no take. Indians see it. Powhatan kill me. If know I tell
you, I am but dead.”
As quietly as she had come through the forest she slipped away, while
the Englishmen, ready for the attack, returned in safety to Jamestown.
In the autumn of 1609, tired of the endless quarreling and dissension
in the colony, and sorely wounded by an explosion of gunpowder, Smith
went back to England. Then Pocahontas made no more visits to Jamestown.
Finally word came that Smith was dead and the little Indian girl
grieved deeply. After this all friendship between the red men and the
whites ceased. The settlers were often greedy and selfish, frequently
breaking their promises to the Indians who soon came to distrust, then
to fear and at last to hate them.
A British soldier, Captain Argall, half pirate and half trader, thought
of a fine plan to persuade Powhatan, who was trying to starve the
British out, to keep the peace. This was to get Pocahontas into their
power, and the old chief would do anything to ransom her. Now the maid
was visiting old Chief Japazaws and his wife on the Potomac River. And
so Captain Argall won them to his scheme by promising them a wonderful
copper kettle if they succeeded, and threatening them if they failed.
The squaw was to bring Pocahontas aboard his ship, lying at anchor in
the Potomac.
As they walked along the river bank the old woman said she had seen the
English ships three times before, with their great sails like white
wings, but she had never been aboard, and oh! how much she wanted to
go! Wouldn’t her husband take her?
“No, no,” he said sternly.
And when she continued to beg, he threatened to beat her--all part
of the plan! Pocahontas with her tender heart was moved to pity and
offered to go with her, if Japazaws would consent, which he did but
only on condition that he accompany them. So the three of them paddled
out to the ship, where they were well entertained and invited to a
merry supper; after which the Indians with the precious kettle went
ashore while Pocahontas was kept a prisoner.
A message was sent to Powhatan that his delight and his darling,
Pocahontas, was a captive there at Jamestown and would only be released
if he sent back all the Englishmen he held, all the tools and guns and
swords he had taken or stolen, and a large amount of corn as a ransom.
The maid had a long wait, for the chief made no reply for three months,
torn between affection for his daughter and desire for the weapons; and
then he sent back only seven Englishmen and a few guns. So the crafty
Argall continued to hold her prisoner.
Perhaps she liked the little town better than the smoky long house of
her tribe, for she was treated with the greatest friendliness. From
the very first she had been warm and cordial to the strangers. Now, an
innocent, interesting prisoner, she was honored and petted. Pocahontas
had grown to be a woman and had learned the ways of English people.
One of the settlers, Master John Rolfe, who is described in the old
records as “an honest and discreet gentleman of good behaviour,” fell
in love with her, for she was gentle and generous, pretty and graceful,
altogether captivating--and she loved him in return.
Rolfe consulted Governor Dale about this marriage and gained his
approval. Powhatan also consented and sent his brother to give the
bride away, and his two sons and several chiefs of the tribe to be
present at the wedding.
In the little church at Jamestown, Pocahontas was baptized and
christened Rebecca. And early in April, 1614, she and John Rolfe were
married there. The whole colony went to the ceremony, for everybody
was interested in the little hostage, and hoped great things from this
union--peace with the tribes of red men, and plenty of trade--with
Pocahontas as the bond to cement their friendship. They must all have
rejoiced when a year later her little son was born, and felt saddened
when the family moved out to Bermuda Hundred, a new plantation on the
James River where Rolfe raised the first tobacco in Virginia.
Here her husband and Governor Dale and the local minister devoted
themselves to teaching her English and the Christian religion. She
was eager to learn, for she liked civilized life, though the English
customs were in great contrast to the Indian ways. In a short time
Pocahontas became so well educated that she had no desire to return to
her father. Then she had the greatest affection for her husband, and
she dearly loved her son.
When they had been married two years they started to England--Governor
Dale, Pocahontas and Rolfe, the baby Thomas, and an old Indian named
Tomocomo, whom Powhatan sent as a special guard for his daughter. If
life in the colony seemed strange to the forest maid, what must this
voyage have been? The great extent of the sea, the many ships, were a
marvel to her. At Plymouth the governor of the town came to the wharf
to bid her welcome to England. Her journey to London was almost a royal
progress.
Everywhere she was received with great honor, as a foreign princess.
She was entertained at banquets and receptions. She went to the
theaters. She was present at _Twelfth Night_ when Ben Jonson’s masque
was played; with Lady Delaware she was presented to the king and queen,
who welcomed her with pomp and ceremony. She carried herself as though
she were the daughter of a king, and among all the ladies of the court
none was a greater favorite, for her dark beauty and gentle modest ways
won all hearts.
The greatest excitement followed the travelers. Everybody was curious
to see Pocahontas. Bishops and great lords and ladies drove in their
coaches to call upon her. And in compliment to this princess from the
new world many inns and taverns were called “La Belle Sauvage,” a name
you will still find on old swinging signs in London Town.
The shrewd old chief, Tomocomo, with his tawny skin and shining black
hair, dressed in his war feathers and Indian robes, attracted almost
as much attention. Powhatan had told him to count the men he saw in
England, that the tribe might know the strength of their friends--or
enemies? He had given Tomocomo a bundle of sticks whereon he should
make a notch for each man he saw. Long before the party reached London
every stick was notched closely, and with an Indian grunt of disgust
which meant “My arithmetic fails me!” Tomocomo gave it up and threw
away his sticks.
John Smith had again been adventuring and exploring but now, returning
to England, he heard every one talking of Pocahontas. Remembering old
times and all he owed his little friend, he at once went to visit her.
When Smith appeared she was greatly moved and for a long time could not
speak. At last she said, “They told me you were dead!”
She reproached him for calling her the formal “Lady Rebecca” and asked
why he didn’t call her his child, as he used to do?
“But,” said Smith, “the king has commanded that you be treated as a
princess!”
Pocahontas, as before, had her way, and the two good friends sat down
for a long talk of the old days in Virginia, and all that had happened
since their separation.
Though she was so petted in England Pocahontas did not really belong
there. More and more her thoughts turned toward home. She wearied of
crowded London and longed for the forest again. Every day she would
stand by the window, looking toward the west where Virginia and her
early life lay. She thought much of the old days, of the changes
that had come to her and to her people, with the appearance of the
fair-haired stranger and his Englishmen. Rolfe grew alarmed at her
evident home-sickness, and feared she would fall ill with longing. But
they must wait till the ship at Gravesend took on her supplies for the
long trip to America, and was loaded with the many cases being sent to
Virginia.
At last, word came that all was ready and sailors were sent to take
them aboard. But though she had set her face to the west, Pocahontas
was not to return to America. A sudden weakness overcame her, gently
she fell asleep, and at twenty-two in a foreign land, she died and was
buried in the little church at Gravesend.
Her son Thomas was educated in England by his uncle, a London
merchant. But when he was grown he returned to Virginia, and among
his descendants were many families of that state, proud to claim as
their ancestor the tomboy Pocahontas. One of them was William Henry
Harrison, president of the United States; another John Randolph, of
Roanoke, a man famous in his day, for many years a member of Congress
in House and Senate. When he rose to speak there, his flashing black
eyes and jet-black hair, his brown parchment-like face seamed with a
thousand small wrinkles, his lean figure, with long arms and long bony
forefinger, his bursts of brilliant oratory, would remind people of
his forebears, and they would say, “Yes, Randolph boasts of the blood
of Pocahontas in his veins.” Years later, in our own century, another
descendant, Edith Bolling Wilson, became mistress of the White House,
the first lady in the land.
Pocahontas is the first woman who made history in our country. Her
story is full of romance, of adventure, of gentleness and daring
courage. Far more she did than save Smith’s life; for it was through
her friendship with the English that the colony was supplied with food.
It was her marriage that made possible, as long as Powhatan lived,
peace between the two peoples. It was she, said John Smith, who saved
Virginia from famine, confusion and death.
CHAPTER II
ANNE HUTCHINSON
1590-1643
Anne Marbury was an English girl who lived in Lincolnshire, near the
town of Boston. Her father was a Puritan minister, preaching there and
in London. In Lincolnshire Anne passed her girlhood, doubtless hearing
a great deal of theological controversy and religious discussion,
for this was the time of the Puritan revolt in England, and of great
religious excitement. Naturally intelligent and earnest, her mental
powers were aroused and quickened.
At an early age she married William Hutchinson, “a very honest and
peaceable man of good estate.” And in 1634 with her husband and
children she journeyed to America--the outcome of the Reverend John
Cotton’s leaving England because of his persecution by the bishops.
Anne Hutchinson had been one of his most ardent disciples in the church
at old Boston, and was now to sit under him in the new Boston.
It was a pleasant voyage of seven weeks, in the good ship _Griffen_.
There were over a hundred passengers, among them two ministers, so you
may be sure there were sermons and prayers and religious discussions
all during the crossing. Indeed Mistress Anne Hutchinson was so
outspoken in her doctrines that, when they landed, one of these
ministers reported her to the governor as holding dangerous beliefs.
Though her husband was accepted at once, the colony leaders took a
week’s time to look into her liberal views, and then examined her
rigorously before admitting her to membership in the church.
For Massachusetts, you remember, was settled by Puritans who had met
persecution in England, and had braved the dangers of the long voyage
and the greater dangers of hunger and illness in a new land, in order
to worship God in their own way. In accomplishing this they became as
intolerant as those from whom they had fled. Indeed there was a far
closer relation of church and state in Massachusetts than in England.
The only liberty the fathers allowed was the liberty to believe just as
they believed. They were right, others were wrong, and on this theory
they regulated everything, both religious and civil.
Until their own house could be built, Mistress Anne Hutchinson and
some of the children lived at the Reverend Cotton’s; and for the three
years the family remained in Boston, their home was across the street
from John Winthrop’s. Almost immediately this house became the social
center of the town and Anne Hutchinson had a leading place among the
three hundred inhabitants and the fast friendship of the brilliant
young Englishman, Sir Harry Vane, then serving a term as governor of
the colony. The women loved her for her goodness of heart, her cheerful
neighborliness, her great skill in nursing. Both men and women welcomed
her intellectual and magnetic personality. She had a vigorous mind,
a dauntless courage, a natural gift for leadership; she was capable,
energetic, amiable.
And there was another reason why the women liked her. The colonists had
two church services on Sunday, with sermons sometimes three hours long;
Thursday lectures, and a Saturday night meeting. There was also during
the week religious discussion for the men. Mrs. Hutchinson started
meetings for women--a new departure, for never before had women met
for independent thought and action. At first this won high approval.
The women--forty, sixty, sometimes eighty of them, even a hundred, for
they came from near-by towns as well as from Boston homes--were soon
holding regular meetings to review the sermons of the Sunday before,
with Mistress Anne’s comment and interpretation.
“All the faithful embraced her conference,” a contemporary record
describes the gatherings, “and blessed God for her fruitful discourses.”
But from a review of the sermons to discussion and criticism of them
and the ministers as well was a short step. It soon began to be said
that Anne Hutchinson cast reproaches on those who preached “a covenant
by works” instead of the “covenant by grace” in which she fervently
believed. Such freedom of speech could not be tolerated by the good
Puritans, and a theological dispute arose which threatened the very
life of the colony. There were two parties, grace and works. Politics
became a matter of Hutchinson opinions, for political lines and
religious lines coincided exactly. Indeed there was no separation of
church and state; the leaders of one controlled the policy of the other.
From the beginning of the colony the preachers had had an unlimited
influence. Now they complained that “more resort to Mrs. Hutchinson
for council about matters of conscience than to any minister in the
country.” Moreover this grace and works difficulty was carried into
every phase of life. Some people turned their backs contemptuously and
walked out of meeting when a preacher not under a covenant of grace
entered the pulpit. Others interrupted the services with questions of
controversy. Indeed it was carried so far that when the Pequot Indians
became aggressive and dangerous and it was necessary to send troops
against them, the Boston soldiers refused to be mustered into service,
because the chaplain, drawn by lot, preached a covenant of works, and
they disagreed with his Sunday sermon! The whole town of Boston, the
whole colony of Massachusetts, church and state, were set in commotion
and turmoil. This theological quarrel was a stumbling block in the way
of all progress.
The ministers so freely criticized were embittered and determined
to call Mistress Hutchinson and her doctrines to account. So they
summoned a synod, all the clergymen and magistrates of Massachusetts,
who met in Cambridge for full three weeks, discussing some eighty-two
opinions which they condemned--some as dangerous, some blasphemous,
some erroneous, and all unsafe. The women’s meetings were forbidden as
“disorderly and without rule.”
Forbidden to speak in public Anne Hutchinson continued to hold meetings
in her own house. Roger Williams, who was shortly to feel the full
displeasure of the Puritan leaders, said that in view of her usefulness
as a nurse and a neighbor, she ought to be allowed to speak when she
chose and to say what she wished, “because if it be a lie, it will die
of itself; and if it be truth, we ought to know it.”
The authorities in Massachusetts were in constant dread of losing their
charter, which was especially endangered by reports of disorderly
proceedings. And certainly nothing had provoked so much disorder
and sedition as the course taken by Mistress Anne. Both politically
and religiously they felt it a duty to suppress her party. So in
October, 1637, she was brought to trial before the General Court of
Massachusetts, sitting in the meeting-house in Cambridge.
“Mrs. Hutchinson,” said Winthrop, presiding, “you are called here as
one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the
churches here.... You have maintained a meeting and an assembly in
your house that hath been condemned by the general assembly as a thing
not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God nor fitting for your
sex, and notwithstanding that was cried down you have continued the
same. Therefore we have thought good to send for you to understand how
things are, that if you be in an erroneous way we may reduce you that
so you may become a profitable member here among us, otherwise if you
be obstinate in your course that then the court may take such course
that you may trouble us no further.”
This trial was at once a civil, judicial and ecclesiastical process,
lasting through two long weary days. Extremely tiring and exhausting
must have been the examination, for the deputy-governor complained
that they would all be sick from fasting! The forty-three men who
tried her were like an English court of High Commission, almost like
the Inquisition. For Anne Hutchinson had no lawyer. They even kept her
standing until she almost fell from fatigue, before they allowed her to
answer seated.
Governor and deputy, magistrates and judges were arrayed against her.
They examined and cross-examined her. They badgered and insulted and
sneered at her. They browbeat and silenced her witnesses, in absolute
disregard of fair play. Only one man of them all defended her, saying
with spirit, “There is no law of God that she has broken, nor any law
of the country, and she deserves no censure.”
They found it no easy thing to make her trap herself. Their fine
theological distinctions were familiar ground to her. She had a ready
grasp of scriptural authority, and wonderful skill in using her
intellectual power to prove her spiritual position. With the ability
and clearness of a trained advocate she conducted her case, showing
tact and judgment and self-reliance, and always with the demeanor of
a lady. What Winthrop described as her “nimble wit and voluble tongue”
never deserted her, though she was hard pressed by the keenest minds of
the colony.
When they failed to prove her women’s meetings opposed to the Bible,
they fell back on the argument of their authority and said, “We are
your judges, and not you ours, and we must compel you to it.”
When she answered to some of their questions, “That’s matter of
conscience, sir,” stern Governor Winthrop replied, “Your conscience you
must keep, or it must be kept for you.”
It was the deputy-governor who summed the whole matter up:
“About three years ago we were all in peace. Mrs. Hutchinson from that
time she came hath made a disturbance.... She hath vented divers of
her strange opinions and hath made parties.... She in particular hath
disparaged all our ministers.... Why this is not to be suffered, and
therefore being driven to the foundation and it being found that Mrs.
Hutchinson ... hath been the cause of what is fallen out, why we must
take away the foundation and the building will fall.”
The result of the trial might have been announced before it opened.
Read how the court record finishes:
“Governor Winthrop: The Court hath already declared itself satisfied
concerning the things you hear, and concerning the troublesomeness
of her spirit, and the danger of her course amongst us, which is not
to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of the Court that Mrs.
Hutchinson, for these things that appear before us, is unfit for our
society, and if it be the mind of the Court that she shall be banished
out of our liberties, and imprisoned till she be sent away, let them
hold up their hands.”
All but three held up their hands.
“Governor Winthrop: Mrs. Hutchinson, you hear the sentence of the
Court. It is that you are banished from out our jurisdiction as being
a woman not fit for our society, and you are to be imprisoned till the
Court send you away.
“Mrs. Hutchinson: I desire to know wherefore I am banished.
“Governor Winthrop: Say no more. The Court knows wherefore, and is
satisfied.”
Semi-imprisonment Mistress Anne had all that winter, in the house of a
man in Roxbury whose brother was one of her most bitter enemies. She
was sent up to Boston to be admonished by the elders of the church; and
when she refused to sign an absolute retraction of her opinions, and
would not promise to hold any more meetings, she was excommunicated.
The sentence of banishment was carried out in March of 1638. To the
sorrow of many of the colonists, William Hutchinson went with his wife.
He refused their invitations to remain, saying, “For I am more dearly
tied to my wife than to the church.... And I do think her a saint and
servant of God.” With husband and children and seventy friends Mistress
Anne went to Rhode Island where Roger Williams offered the party a
friendly refuge. From the Indians they bought an island, for ten coats,
twenty hoes, and forty fathoms of white wampum; and lived there until
1642 when William Hutchinson died.
Hearing a rumor that Massachusetts was trying to extend her control
over Rhode Island, the settlers left for a new site in the Dutch colony
to the west. A year later a friendly Indian one morning visited Anne
Hutchinson’s house. Seeing that the family was defenseless he returned
that night with others of his tribe, killed the sixteen members of the
household and set fire to the buildings.
When Governor Winthrop heard of this massacre he declared that
“the bare arm of God displayed itself in her death.” Ministers in
Massachusetts announced it a divine judgment supporting their verdict.
One of them wrote, “God’s hand is more apparently seen herein to
pick out this woful woman to make her and those belonging to her an
unheard-of heavy example above others.” But Mistress Anne’s friends
charged the guilt of her murder upon the colony and declared it was the
judgment of the Lord on Massachusetts.
An able woman, clever, brilliant, possibly indiscreet in her criticism
of the ministers, Anne Hutchinson’s life was a strange mixture of
consecration and conflict, of kindliness and contention, with a tragic
end. She was fighting the first battle in a long series to be fought
out in America--for religious toleration and for freedom of thought and
speech, for liberty of conscience, for a true democracy in religion.
CHAPTER III
BETSY ROSS
1752-1836
In 1752 the eighth child was born in the Quaker family of Griscom in
Philadelphia, and was named Elizabeth. Nine other children came after
her, so with a total of sixteen brothers and sisters you may be sure
she never had much opportunity to be lonely. Perhaps the large number
of children is the explanation for her being apprenticed at Webster’s,
the leading upholstery establishment in the city. There Elizabeth
became acquainted with John Ross, one of her fellow-apprentices; their
friendship grew to love, and when she was twenty-one they were married.
Now John Ross was the son of an Episcopal clergyman and because of that
fact Elizabeth was “disowned” by the Friends for her marriage.
Soon afterward they left Webster’s and opened a little upholstery shop
of their own, in a two-story house on Arch Street--a quaint little
house that was old then, for it was built of bricks that came over
to America as ballast in one of William Penn’s vessels. It is still
standing, in a good state of preservation, and very little changed from
the old days, with its wide doors, big cupboards, narrow stairs and
tiny window-panes. The front room was the shop, where Elizabeth and
John waited on customers; and next to this was the back parlor.
Now Elizabeth Ross was not only an energetic and trained upholsterer,
she was also the most skilful needlewoman in Philadelphia, and had
a great reputation for embroidering and darning. There was a story
current of a young lady visiting in the city, who wanted an elaborately
embroidered frock mended. She was directed to take it to Mistress Betsy
Ross. And the owner said, when it was finished, that the darning was
the handsomest part of the gown! Considerable artistic skill had Betsy,
too, for she could draw free-hand, very rapidly and accurately, the
complicated designs used in those days for quilting. Withal she was a
thoroughly efficient housekeeper.
The happiness of the Ross family was not to last long. The spirit of
liberty was awakening among the colonists, the spirit of resistance
to the demands of the mother country. In common with many patriotic
women, Betsy Ross saw her husband march away for military service. With
several other young men he was guarding cannon balls and artillery
stores on one of the city wharves along the Delaware River, when
he received a serious injury, from the effects of which he died in
January, 1776, after long and anxious nursing on the part of his young
wife. He was buried in the Christ Church burying-ground; and in that
historic old Philadelphia church you can still see the Ross pew, marked
with the Stars and Stripes.
There was Betsy Ross, a widow at twenty-four. She determined to
maintain herself independently, if possible, and to continue alone the
upholstery business they had developed together. About five months
after her husband’s death, some time between the twenty-second of May
and the fifth of June, she was one day working in the shop when three
gentlemen called.
The first was General Washington, in Philadelphia for a few days to
consult the Continental Congress. Mistress Ross had frequently seen
him, for the story is that he had visited her shop more than once, to
have her embroider the ruffles for his shirts, an important branch of
fine hand-sewing in those days. With him was Robert Morris, to go down
in history as the treasurer and financier of the Revolution; and her
husband’s uncle, Colonel George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence.
These gentlemen had come to consult her. She knew, of course, how the
various banners carried by troops from the different colonies, as
well as by different regiments, had caused confusion and might mean
danger. It was time to do away with the pine tree flag, the beaver
flag, the rattlesnake flag, the hope flag, the silver crescent flag,
the anchor flag, the liberty tree flag, and all the rest of them, and
have a single standard for the American army. Betsy Ross had heard,
too, of the Cambridge flag, often called the grand union flag, which
Washington had raised the New Year’s day before, a flag half English,
half American, with thirteen red and white stripes, and the crosses of
St. George and St. Andrew. But since the first of the year events had
moved rapidly and the desire for separation from England had become
steadily stronger. A new flag was needed, to show the growing spirit of
Americanism--which was soon to crystallize on the fourth of July.
All this Betsy Ross knew, as a good patriot would. And she could not
have been greatly surprised when General Washington said they had come
to consult her about a national flag.
“Can you make a flag?” he asked.
Modestly and with some diffidence she replied, “I don’t know, sir, but
I can try.”
Then in the little back parlor Washington showed her a rough sketch he
had made--a square flag with thirteen stripes of red and white, and
thirteen stars in the blue canton. He asked her opinion of the design.
With unerring accuracy of eye she saw at once what was needed to make
the flag more beautiful, more attractive. She suggested that the
proportions be changed, so that the length would be a third more than
the width; that the thirteen stars should not be scattered irregularly
over the canton, but grouped to form some design, say a circle or a
star, or placed in parallel rows; and lastly that a five-pointed star
was more symmetrical than-one with six points.
“But,” asked Washington, “isn’t it more difficult to make?”
In answer practical Betsy Ross took up a piece of paper, folded it
over, and with one clip of her scissors cleverly made a perfect star
with five even points.
That was sufficient, and the general drew up his chair to her table
and made another pencil sketch, embodying her three suggestions. The
second sketch was copied and colored by a Philadelphia artist, William
Barrett, a painter of some note, who returned it to Mistress Ross.
Meantime not knowing just how to make a flag, for it must be sewed in a
particular way, she went to a shipping merchant, an old Scotchman who
was a friend of Robert Morris, to borrow a ship’s flag as a guide.
And in this way Betsy Ross made the first Stars and Stripes. To try the
effect, the new flag was run up to the peak of one of the vessels in
the Delaware River, the story goes, a ship commanded by Paul Jones; and
the result was so pleasing that on the same day the flag was carried
into Congress and approved. At the same time the Congress passed a
resolution putting Paul Jones in command of the _Ranger_.
“The flag and I were born the same day and hour,” Jones used to say.
“We are twins, we can not be parted in life or death. So long as we can
float, we shall float together. If we must sink we shall go down as
one.”
It was not until June 14, 1777, that the Continental Congress passed
a resolution formally adopting this flag as the national standard, a
resolution reported to have been introduced by John Adams. Another and
unexplained delay followed, for not until September was this resolution
publicly promulgated.
The fact that Betsy Ross was not named in the _Congressional Record_
has been considered by some sufficient evidence that the whole story
is a myth. But there is no Congressional record whatever about the
Cambridge flag, which was used for almost a year. Is it surprising then
that its modification was not put on record promptly? There was no
newspaper notice of the resolution of June fourteenth, the basis of
our modern flag day. And in all the letters and diaries and writings
of the time, there is found no mention of this flag resolution. Betsy
Ross had made the flag months earlier, and all that time it had been
gradually coming into use. Does not that explain the apparent lack of
interest? This story she told, over and over and over, to her daughters
and grandchildren, and in later years they wrote the account down, just
as they had heard it from her, and as you have read it here.
We know too from other records that before the flag was officially
adopted by Congress, Elizabeth Ross was engaged in flagmaking. For
in May of 1777 the state navy board of Pennsylvania passed an order
to pay her the sum of fourteen pounds, twelve shillings and two
pence, for making ships’ colors for the fleet in the Delaware River.
And immediately after the resolution did pass, she was authorized
to proceed at once to manufacture a large number of flags for the
Continental Congress.
For more than fifty years Betsy Ross continued to make government
flags, with her daughters and nieces, and later her grandchildren,
helping her. She continued to sew red and white stripes together and
put five-pointed stars on the blue canton, even after her second
marriage to a sea captain, while he went back and forth to Europe
on his dangerous business, and during his imprisonment in England,
where he died. When his friend, who had been a fellow-prisoner, was
finally released and returned to Philadelphia to deliver to Betsy Ross
her husband’s little property, she married this messenger and kept
on making flags. Except for a brief residence with her daughter, she
continued to live in the quaint little house on Arch Street where the
flag was born. Shortly before her death she became completely blind;
but her busy fingers must keep on stitching, and with her little
grandsons to sort the colors for her, she sewed happily on carpet rags.
When Mistress Ross retired from the business of making flags her
daughter Clarissa took over this work and carried it on until 1857.
Flags of many kinds they made--for army and navy, for arsenals and
the merchant marine; flags with thirteen stars in a circle, like a
round-robin to show that one state should have no precedence over the
others; flags with stars in parallel rows of four, five and four; flags
with fifteen stripes and stars; flags bearing the arms of Pennsylvania,
painted on the silk by William Barrett.
It was George Washington, more than any other, who seems to have been
most interested in the question of a national flag. But it was to the
skilled needlewoman that he took his first rough design, to have her
opinion of its worth. It is to Betsy Ross that much of the beauty of
our flag is due. A true patriot of Revolutionary times, her humble life
is an incentive to others, showing that there is more than one way to
serve the nation--even if one is known only as a maker of ruffles.
CHAPTER IV
MARY LINDLEY MURRAY
1720-1782
Except for one day’s events the story of Mrs. Murray is quickly told.
A famous Quaker belle in Philadelphia was the beautiful Mary Lindley.
After her marriage to Robert Murray, a merchant, she lived near
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and in North Carolina, until in 1753 they
moved to New York City, where Murray and Sansom soon became one of the
great merchandising firms of the time. There were a dozen children in
the Murray household, one son being Lindley Murray, the grammarian.
Hoping the milder climate would benefit her husband’s health, Mrs.
Murray took her family to England where they lived for eleven years,
returning to America during the first year of the Revolution.
Always a belle, she is described as a lady of great dignity and
stateliness of manner, mild and amiable, quick at repartee. She and
her daughters were ardent patriots, but Mr. Murray, the rich merchant
and landowner, was not unnaturally a Tory, loyal to the Crown. Shortly
before peace was made with England, after the success at Yorktown had
crowned Washington’s efforts for America, Mrs. Murray died.
But on the fifteenth of September, 1776, Mary Lindley Murray gave aid
to Washington, her contribution to the War for Independence being
woman’s wit and beauty. That September was a difficult month for the
patriots. At the end of August had come the British victory at the
battle of Long Island, and Washington’s skilful retreat to Manhattan.
As usual Howe was dilatory in following and not until sixteen days
later did he cross with his troops.
The fifteenth of September was a hot day. From their country house on
a hill near the center of Manhattan Island the Murrays looked down on
the new breastworks thrown up at Kip’s Bay. They knew the Americans
were scattered--the main force at the north on Harlem Heights, and
Putnam’s men far to the south. Then up the East River sailed five
British men-of-war and anchored opposite the Murray house, in the bay.
Before the handful of militiamen had time to wonder why the ships had
come, out swarmed a number of dories. To the Murrays, watching from
the hill half a mile away, the river seemed suddenly dyed scarlet, for
under cover of the warships’ guns eighty-four boats landed the British
soldiers, while up the bank clambered four thousand Redcoats, driving
the Americans before them. At the first fire, the Continentals fled
from their trenches back to higher ground, fled in head-long retreat.
Four miles to the north Washington heard the booming of cannon
and galloped down to the scene of action. To his astonishment and
consternation his men were flying in all directions. Riding excitedly
into the midst of the runaways he shouted, “Take to the wall! Take to
the cornfield!” His attempt to rally them was vain. Chagrined he would
have ridden straight into danger, had not an aide seized his horse’s
bridle and turned the general back toward safety. In great confusion
and disorder the post at the bay was deserted. And there were Putnam’s
divisions to the south, separated from the main army, caught in a trap
if the British threw their men across the island.
Now this was exactly General Howe’s plan, but he failed to count Mrs.
Murray into his scheme. From the bay he marched west for a half-mile
until he came to the Murray house. Set in a wide lawn, with extensive
gardens on either side, “Belmont” was considered one of the loveliest
spots on the island. Its fair mistress had heard the firing, had seen
the disorderly retreat and realized what the Americans needed most of
all was time. She would make it for them!
She posted a maid in the cupola of the great square mansion, with
orders to report to her by signals how Putnam was progressing. It was
a season of extreme drought, and the dense clouds of dust made it
easy to follow his march. At the proper time Mrs. Murray sent a negro
servant with a cordial invitation to General Howe and his staff to dine
with her. This genial Quaker lady was not unknown to the Britishers,
for they had met her in England. Here was an opportunity to renew the
acquaintance of peaceful days, but duty first, for a general.
“I do thank you, madam,” was Howe’s courteous reply, “but I must first
catch that rascally Yankee, Putnam.”
“Did thee not hear he had gone?” was her quick rejoinder. “It is too
late to catch him. Pursuit is hopeless. Thee had better come in and
dine.”
If Putnam was really out of reach there was no need for haste, and
the day was sweltering. So across the broad veranda and into the cool
attractive house went Howe, with Clinton and Cornwallis and Governor
Tryon, and others of his staff. Outside, in the hot September sun, his
men rested and prepared and ate their midday meal. Within, Mrs. Murray
and her beautiful daughters proved charming hostesses, with a warm
welcome for their English guests. The good merchant, who was known to
be heartily loyal to the king, was not at home that day, but his rare
old Madeira was served with dainty cakes after the dinner.
So witty and delightful was the talk, so keenly did the others enjoy
Tryon’s raillery of their hostess about her patriot friends and how
the ragged Continentals had run that morning, that not one of them
noticed the rapid flight of time. And you may be sure that Mistress
Murray prolonged their stay, bearing the teasing with rare good humor
and making herself thoroughly agreeable, for every moment gained would
count.
Meanwhile, half a mile to the west, Putnam was hurrying northward,
his march greatly hampered by his cannon, his camp impedimenta, and
the refugee women and children. Terribly they suffered from the heat.
Alexander Hamilton gallantly led one company. A young major, Aaron
Burr, acted as guide, for he knew every foot of the ground; riding
back and forth he showed the patriots bypaths and lanes through the
thickets, until ahead they saw Washington’s tents on the heights of
Harlem, and knew they were safe. Through Mrs. Murray’s hospitality the
British had lost their chance to take four thousand prisoners. Her own
wit and her husband’s wine had saved the day.
Behind the Harlem entrenchments the patriots were ready for Howe’s
attack the following morning, and a spirited encounter that was in
the buckwheat field. But the British failed to capture the heights
and so force Washington off the island. Counted only by the number of
men engaged, this was really not a great battle, but it was a great
victory for the Americans who had lost heart after their defeat on
Long Island and their forced evacuation of New York. It restored their
confidence and put new hope into their hearts. It clinched Washington’s
determination and made possible the brilliant exploits at Trenton and
Princeton.
In Revolutionary journals kept by American and British soldiers you
will find Howe’s delay at the Murray home given as the reason for
Putnam’s escape. And it was a common saying among the Americans that
the beautiful Quaker lady had saved “Old Put,” the wolf-killer, and his
four thousand men. For patriotism and courage do not exist only behind
a bayonet. One can be heroic in any way that conquers circumstances.
CHAPTER V
MOLLY PITCHER
1754-1832
Mary Ludwig, the daughter of a German settler, was born on a small farm
between Princeton and Trenton in New Jersey. Her father was a dairyman
and Molly, like other children of her parentage, was brought up to work
hard. A typical German peasant girl, heavy-set, strong and sturdy, she
toiled in the fields, she milked the cows, and drove them to pasture.
The story is that she could swing a three-bushel sack of wheat to her
shoulder and carry it to the upstairs room of the granary; and this
strength and endurance stood her in good stead years later, for after
the battle of Princeton she picked up a wounded soldier, carried him
two miles to a farmhouse, and there nursed him back to health.
A Mrs. Irvine from Carlisle, visiting in Trenton, wished to take a
young girl home with her to help in the housework. She saw buxom Molly
Ludwig, liked her honest face and wholesome, energetic appearance, and
on her return took the German girl with her. For some years Molly lived
with Doctor and Mrs. Irvine, and proved to be a valuable assistant in
their home. She did not like sewing, but she was expert at scrubbing
and scouring and washing--any kind of violent exercise!
Near the Irvines’ house was a little barber shop kept by an Irishman,
John Hays. Whenever Molly was scrubbing the front steps or scouring
the door-knocker, the young barber was sure to be watching from his
window. When the girl was about sixteen years old, this courting ended
in marriage.
Then suddenly Carlisle heard the news of Lexington, nothing but war
was talked of. Doctor Irvine, who had served in the French and Indian
campaigns, was colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment. Hays went as gunner
in the artillery, and when his time was out reenlisted under Colonel
Irvine.
“I’m proud to be a soldier’s wife,” was Molly’s answer when he told
her he must go. “I’ll stand by you!” But neither of them guessed that
this would literally come true. No slacker, she waved him a cheerful
good-by, and went on with her household duties for Mrs. Irvine. But
when a few months later Hays sent her word to go back to her father’s,
as the troops were encamped near by and he could see her occasionally,
she too said, “I must go,” and rode off behind the messenger. At home
again Molly donned her rough farm garments, helping with the cattle,
working in the fields as before. And frequently John Hays paid a flying
visit to the little farm, and Molly occasionally went to visit him in
camp.
During the Revolution it was not unusual for wives to accompany their
soldier husbands, not to fight, but to wash and mend and cook, to care
for the sick and wounded. Once while Molly was cooking for the men,
she had a large kettle over the fire which she wanted to remove, so
she called to a passing soldier to help her. His prompt compliance and
kindness of manner made her ask his name, and she was so astonished
that she almost dropped the kettle when she heard his reply, “I am
General Washington.”
Hays and Doctor Irvine were both soldiers. Molly’s heart was with them
and with the country, fighting for independence. All she needed was
the opportunity to show of what mettle she was made. This came at the
battle of Monmouth Court House.
After the winter’s drilling at Valley Forge, Washington followed
closely behind Clinton, who was marching across New Jersey from
Philadelphia. The British had an enormous amount of baggage and their
line was twenty miles long. The Americans waited for the chance to
attack. Cornwallis brought his men into line of action opposite Lee,
who ordered a retreat. Washington’s angry rebuke to Lee, plus the
splendid work of Mad Anthony Wayne and Lafayette and Knox and Greene,
saved the day for the patriot army. Lee’s record was stained by this
traitorous action. The outstanding hero of the day was Molly Hays.
It was a very hot June Sunday. The blazing sun beat down on both
armies with scorching, record-breaking heat. Men and horses were
well-nigh overcome. The Americans, however, had the advantage, for
they were dressed for summer weather and had left their packs by the
meeting-house at Freehold. The British had heavy woolen uniforms and
full knapsacks. The Hessians carried in addition to all this the load
of decorations which Frederick the Great thought necessary for his
soldiers.
The air was sultry. Not a leaf stirred on the maple trees. Men dropped
fainting to the earth, from sunstroke. Yet the American guns were fired
vigorously, sending their sh’ot across the swamp into the British
ranks, and until night the battle went on. Sometimes under shelter,
sometimes under fire, Molly Hays went back and forth to the spring,
carrying water for the suffering men, and for wetting the sponges to
swab out the cannon. And the weary thirsty soldiers, welcoming the
sight of her with the sparkling water, would call out gratefully, “Here
comes Molly with her pitcher!” a call soon shortened to “Molly Pitcher!”
On one of her trips from the well Molly saw her husband fall suddenly.
Accounts differ as to whether he was wounded, or had a sunstroke
working in the blistering heat near the cannon. General Knox, in
charge of the battery, had no competent man to put in Hays’ place and
was about to withdraw the gun, when Molly sprang forward, seized the
rammer and fired. A moment was sufficient to show that she could fill
her husband’s position, that she had the strength and nerve for his
task. The men cheered as she loaded and fired shot after shot, with
the skill of a veteran gunner. Her hair disheveled, her eyes blazing,
her hot face begrimed with powder and smoke and dust, barefooted like
many of the soldiers, she kept on with her perilous work. That night
the British stole silently away, leaving their dead and wounded, with
Washington in possession of the field. This victory was the last battle
of importance in the North, the beginning of a brighter period for the
Americans.
The story of Molly Pitcher’s brave act spread through the camp. General
Greene thanked her, “in the name of the army.” The next morning in her
dusty, torn, powder-stained dress, she was presented to Washington.
With such honor as he would have shown to one of his gallant men,
he spoke a few words of sympathy and praise, gave her a sergeant’s
commission, and later placed her name on the list of half-pay officers
for life.
An old Revolutionary rhyme tells the story:
“Moll Pitcher she stood by her gun
And rammed the charges home, sir;
And thus on Monmouth’s bloody field
A sergeant did become, sir.”
Hays was the proudest man in the army, at Washington’s praise of his
wife, when he heard the soldiers cheer her to the echo. Lafayette asked
if his men “might have the pleasure of giving Madame a trifle,” and
invited Molly to review his troops. Between two long lines of French
officers she passed, and at the end her hat was filled with gold crowns.
Until the close of the Revolution, Molly Hays, or Molly Pitcher, as
she was always called, remained with the army; and following her
husband’s death, shortly after the war ended, she lived for many
years at the Carlisle barracks, cooking and washing for the soldiers.
In 1794 she saw General Washington again, for when he was traveling
through Pennsylvania, he stopped near Carlisle, and Molly Pitcher made
a pilgrimage on foot to see him. When her story was recalled to the
general he greeted her most cordially.
In 1822 the legislature of Pennsylvania, without a dissenting voice,
voted her the sum of forty dollars, and an annuity of that amount
during her lifetime. When she died ten years later, she was buried with
military honors, a company of soldiers firing a salute. On the Fourth
of July, 1876, there was unveiled at her grave a white marble monument
inscribed to “Molly Pitcher, the heroine of Monmouth.” And each year
on the thirtieth of May, along with the score of Revolutionary graves
in the churchyard, hers is decorated with flowers by the people of
Carlisle.
In the little park at Freehold a monument was erected to commemorate
the victory of Monmouth Court House, and on one of its five panels
Molly Pitcher is shown, barefooted, ramming home the charge, her
husband lying exhausted at her feet. She was a real heroine, when the
need came, a true and courageous soldier.
CHAPTER VI
MARTHA WASHINGTON
1732-1802
On a great Virginia plantation in the year 1732 Martha Dandridge was
born. Her father was a prominent landowner and his daughter had the
usual education of the time--not much schooling in comparison with
to-day, but she learned to play the spinet, to dance gracefully, and
to sew with all the mysteries of elaborate stitches. A well-behaved,
pretty child she was who at fifteen made her début in Williamsburg,
the capital of Virginia, which then afforded the gayest social life in
America. Dressed in a stiff bodice and flowered petticoat, Martha was
the belle of the ball, and of many succeeding ones as well, for at once
she became a great favorite.
When she was barely eighteen she married Daniel Parke Custis, a
wealthy landowner, who was more than twenty years her senior. They
lived near Williamsburg at his country home, the “White House.” Seven
years later he died, leaving her with two young children and a great
fortune--thousands of pounds and thousands of acres of Virginia land.
In May, 1758, Mrs. Custis was visiting at Major Chamberlayne’s, when
her host brought an unexpected guest--none other than young Colonel
George Washington, already a military hero and commander of the
Virginia troops. He was en route to Williamsburg to report to the
governor on the needs of his regiments, and when Major Chamberlayne
pressed him to stop, he had at first refused, but yielded when told
that the prettiest and richest widow in all Virginia was there.
He would stay for dinner then, but must go on at once, and gave orders
accordingly to his servant, Bishop, bequeathed to him by General
Braddock. But when dinner was over and the horses were brought round
no Washington appeared, though Bishop had never known his master to be
late before. In the drawing-room the young colonel and the young widow
were talking, oblivious to everything else, while the impatient steeds
pawed the drive restlessly. Till the day was done and twilight at hand
Washington loitered.
“No guest can leave my house after sunset,” said the major, and
insisted that he must stay the night. Late the next morning Bishop
and his master rode away to Williamsburg. The little widow in the
white dimity frock, with the cluster of May-blossoms at her belt, and
the little white cap half covering her soft, wavy brown hair, had
completely captivated the soldier. His business in the town completed,
he rode on to the “White House.”
“Is your mistress at home?” he asked the negro who met him at the ferry.
“Yes, sah,” was the reply, and the man added, his white teeth flashing
in a broad smile, “I reckon you’s the man what’s ’spected!”
Evidently he was, for when, on the following day, Washington left for
camp and the western campaign against Fort Duquesne, the two were
engaged.
In January, 1759, when they had met just four times, Mrs. Custis and
George Washington were married. A brilliant scene the wedding was.
The guests included wealthy planters and their wives and daughters,
all very grand in their satins and brocades, English officers in army
and navy uniforms, the governor of Virginia, in scarlet embroidered
with gold, with a bag wig. The groom wore a blue suit, the coat lined
with scarlet silk and trimmed with silver, an embroidered white satin
waistcoat, with knee and shoe buckles of gold; while in contrast to
his six feet two was the little bride in a petticoat of white quilted
satin, with an overdress of white corded silk interwoven with silver
threads, high-heeled satin shoes with diamond buckles, point lace
ruffles and pearls. At the door, attracting almost as much attention as
the wedding party, stood Bishop in his red coat, holding his master’s
chestnut horse.
With her three bridesmaids Mrs. Washington drove to her home in a coach
and six, while her husband and a group of his friends rode beside them.
Thus began their forty years of married life.
After a few months in Williamsburg, to settle the business of the
Custis estate and to attend the meetings of the House of Burgesses, of
which Washington had been elected a member during his campaign against
the French, he took his bride to Mount Vernon, his eight-thousand acre
plantation on the Potomac River. Here they planned to live quietly, he
busy with his fields and flocks, she with the large household, and both
enjoying the growth of the Custis children. In a white apron and cap,
with a bunch of keys jingling at her side, Mrs. Washington supervised
the busy kitchen and slave quarters, looked after the strict training
and the lessons of the children, and was a charming hostess to their
guests.
But public affairs changed and with them this quiet happy life. The
stamp act and oppressive taxes stirred the colonies. Like many patriot
women, Martha Washington ceased using tea at her table, ceased to buy
English cloth and other goods of English manufacture. No less than
sixteen spinning-wheels were kept busy at Mount Vernon, and on the
looms homespun was woven for the family’s clothing and for the large
number of slaves.
Rapidly events moved to a crisis. The first Continental Congress was
called, and Washington elected as one of Virginia’s three delegates.
When the party started north Mrs. Washington saw them off with these
words of wifely appreciation, “I hope you will all stand firm. I know
George will. God be with you, gentlemen.”
And this was not idle talk on her part, for she foresaw plainly the
consequences. At the many discussions and debates which had occurred at
their home, for and against English policy, she had said little, but
had listened intelligently. She summed it up in writing to a friend:
“Dark days and darker nights, domestic happiness suspended, social
enjoyments abandoned, property put in jeopardy--but what are all these
evils when compared with the fate of which the Port Bill may be only a
threat? My mind is made up, my heart is in the cause.”
The second Congress met the following May and Washington was
unanimously chosen commander-in-chief of the army. He wrote this news
to his wife at Mount Vernon, adding that he hoped to return in the
autumn. Instead he then invited her to come to him in Cambridge, but
carefully pointed out the difficulties of the journey. Unhesitating,
undismayed, a true soldier’s wife, she set out for the long trip to
the North, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to
leave the ease and security of her southern home and spend the winter
in a New England camp on the outskirts of a city held by the enemy.
The coach with its four horses, and postillions in white and scarlet
livery, attracted great attention. In the country people rushed to
doors and windows to get a sight of her. In the towns she was met by
escorts of Continental soldiers, the ringing of bells, and enthusiastic
cheering. With a mingled feeling of pride and wonder this little woman,
who had never been out of Virginia, realized what it was to be the wife
of General Washington.
This was a real farewell to the quiet plantation and the beginning
of her public life. Except for the year when Trenton and Princeton
and active winter campaigning made it too dangerous for women to be
present, it was Martha Washington’s custom to join her husband when
the army went into winter quarters, and to march back home when work
opened with the spring. Thus she heard the first and last gun of every
campaign, and described herself as a perambulator for those eight years.
Because she was the wife of the general, it did not follow that she
could live in luxury. In Cambridge to be sure headquarters were in
the Craigie House, later the home of the poet Longfellow; and here
Mrs. Washington had some social life, with the wives of the Harvard
professors. But in other places lodgings were often very, very
uncomfortable, “a squeezed-up room or two.” At Valley Forge a log
cabin was built--near a Quaker farmhouse where the Washingtons had
two rooms--to serve as a kitchen and dining-room; but when this same
plan was proposed for the headquarters at Morristown, no lumber was
available! At Newburgh their inconvenient dining-room had one window
and seven doors, and the sitting-room was so small that when Washington
entertained a French officer, the guest had to sit on a camp bed.
Martha Washington’s presence lessened the general’s cares and broke
the monotony of the long anxious winters. She was always a delightful
hostess and even with camp limitations her hospitality and genial
manner reminded her guests of Virginia. Nearly every day some of the
young officers and their wives were invited to dinner, the General and
Mrs. Washington sitting side by side, while Alexander Hamilton carved.
Martha Washington was always a simple, dignified woman, as a group of
Morristown ladies who went to call upon her testified. Having heard
that the general’s wife was a very grand lady, they wore their best
bibs and bands, and most elegant silks and ruffles. Mrs. Washington, in
a plain homespun dress and a “specked” (checked) apron, received them
very graciously, a half knit stocking in her left hand, the ball of
yarn in her pocket. After the usual compliments were over, she resumed
her knitting.
“And there we were,” described one of the women afterward, “without a
stitch of work, and sitting in state, but General Washington’s lady was
knitting socks!”
She showed them two dresses of cotton and silk, woven at Mount Vernon,
the stripes made from ravelings of brown silk stockings and old
crimson damask chair covers. She took pains to tell them that the
livery of her coachmen was all homespun, save for the scarlet cuffs,
made of English material imported long before the war.
After that visit, work for the soldiers, rather than fine feminine
clothes, became the fashion in Morristown.
At another New Jersey headquarters Washington was staying at a private
house, whose mistress one day saw a coach drive up to the door, with
ten dragoons as the escort. Out stepped a plain little woman dressed
in brown homespun, wearing a hood; over her bosom was folded a large
white kerchief. She must be a maid, thought the hostess, until she saw
General Washington greeting her, and inquiring about the children, and
his favorite horses at Mount Vernon. The general’s wife, dressed like
that!
Everywhere the soldiers loved Lady Washington, as they called her.
During the sad winter at Valley Forge, when the army was in desperate
straits, suffering greatly from lack of food and blankets and clothing,
and the consequent constant sickness, she went to share the soldiers’
privations and make a spot of cheer in their dreary lives. She arrived
in a rough farm sleigh, hired from the innkeeper at the forks of the
Brandywine, where the deep snow had forced her to abandon her coach.
Stanch patriot that she was, she made light of inconveniences and
discomforts and hardships; and never was a woman busier than Martha
Washington, all that dismal winter. In a cloak and hood, with her
basket on her arm, she went in the deep snow from hut to hut, carrying
delicacies for the sick and consolation for the dying, and by her
sympathy and generosity stimulating the loyalty and courage of the
men. “God bless Lady Washington!” was frequently heard, when her kind,
motherly face appeared.
Day after day she assembled in her two rooms the wives of the
officers, to knit and patch, and make new garments whenever materials
could be secured. No more embroidering and spinet playing, and other
light accomplishments! The work these women did at Valley Forge was
far-reaching in its effects. News of it spread to Philadelphia, where
the British were having a gay winter, and the patriotic ladies there
commenced making shirts for the soldiers, and ultimately contributed
nearly three thousand garments. Small in amount, perhaps, in comparison
with such service to-day; but Martha Washington was a pioneer,
anticipating the work of the Sanitary Commission and the American Red
Cross.
Officers, soldiers and women, all were steadied by her serenity and
unwavering faith. And when the middle of March brought better times,
she led in the camp gaiety. The news of the French alliance was
celebrated with a grand review. The soldiers cheered for the king of
France, for the thirteen states, for their general; then there came
shouts of “Long live Lady Washington!” and a thousand hats were tossed
into the air in the excitement.
Yorktown and victory, and the end of the war in sight, but Washington
must remain on duty until peace was actually signed. Martha Washington
was present, sitting in the gallery of the old capitol at Annapolis,
when he resigned his commission; and together they drove to Mount
Vernon, arriving on Christmas Eve. Standing at the door of his cottage
to welcome them was old Bishop, dressed in the scarlet regimentals he
had worn at Braddock’s defeat. All the servants and slaves assembled,
and such a Christmas celebration as Mount Vernon had!
More than all else the Washingtons longed for quiet days on their
plantation, to enjoy the rest they so much needed. But there
were guests innumerable, so that Mount Vernon was described as
a well-resorted tavern. When he had been home almost two years,
Washington wrote in his diary,
“Dined with only Mrs. Washington, which I believe is the first
instance of it since my retirement from public life.”
This furlough, as the general used to speak of it, was not destined
to continue overlong. The federation of the states proved too weak a
government, and Washington must go to Philadelphia for months, to sit
as president of the Constitutional Convention. Then after the people
had ratified the Constitution, there came one day riding up the broad
drive at Mount Vernon the aged secretary of Congress, with a letter
notifying George Washington that he had been elected president of the
United States.
“I little thought when the war was finished,” wrote Martha Washington,
“that any circumstances could possibly have happened which would call
the General into public life again. I had anticipated that we should
have been left to grow old in solitude and tranquillity together. That
was the first and dearest wish of my heart.... Yet I can not blame him
for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice
of his country.”
Alone to New York for the inauguration went George Washington, wearing
a homespun suit woven at Mount Vernon. When his wife, likewise dressed
in homespun, followed a few weeks later, her welcome all along the
journey was second only to his. She entered many a town between two
long columns of Revolutionary soldiers; and at New York City she was
rowed across the bay by thirteen oarsmen dressed in white, while the
guns fired thirteen rounds and crowds cheered her.
As the president’s wife, Martha Washington was hostess for the nation,
entertaining distinguished citizens and foreigners, cabinet officers
and congressmen, presiding at the state dinners and giving public
receptions every Friday, where plum cake, tea and coffee were served.
The guests were always dismissed before nine, with her grave, frank
little formula, “For the general always retires at nine, and I usually
precede him.” The need over, she laid aside her homespun and dressed in
silk, satin, velvet and lace, as became the wife of the president.
People criticized Mrs. Washington for the ceremony in force at her
levees, saying they were too much like those of royalty. Guests were
shocked because they had to stand, while the truth was, the rooms
would not have contained a third enough chairs. Presided over by the
Washingtons, the executive mansion combined with the most ardent
patriotism a dignity and elegant moderation that would have honored
any European court. They saved the social life of a new country from
both the crudeness and bald simplicity of extreme republicanism, and
from the luxury and excesses often marking sudden elevation to power
and place. And in all these social functions Mrs. Washington never
joined in any political discussion. Though the letters between her and
her husband were filled with talk of public affairs, she was never
once heard to utter any opinion on important questions of state; and
in this, as in many details of her life, she is a worthy model for any
American woman whose husband is in public service.
The year in New York was followed by similar years in Philadelphia,
after the capital was moved there. The second term of the presidency
over and a third term refused, the Washingtons gladly returned to
Virginia; their joy being evidenced in this letter:
“I can not tell you how much I enjoy home, after having been deprived
of one so long, for our dwelling in New York and Philadelphia was
not home, only sojourning. The General and I feel like children just
released from school or from a hard taskmaster, and we believe that
nothing can tempt us to leave the sacred roof tree again, except on
private business or pleasure. I am fairly settled down to the pleasant
duties of an old-fashioned Virginia housekeeper, steady as a clock,
busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket.”
Happily they lived at Mount Vernon two years, until the general’s
death. During his brief illness Mrs. Washington never left his room.
“’Tis well,” were his last words.
“Is he dead?” she asked, so gentle had been the change. “’Tis well. All
is over now. I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pass
through.”
She moved up to a little attic room whose windows looked out toward his
grave, and beyond to the waters of the Potomac which he had so loved.
Surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cheerful in
her sorrow and loneliness, she survived him two years, and when she
died, was buried beside him in the simple brick tomb at Mount Vernon.
A woman not wise nor great perhaps in any worldly sense, Martha
Washington had those qualities of heart that make a noble rounded
character. A devoted and loyal wife, a tender mother, an earnest
Christian, she was fitted to be the chosen companion of “the greatest
of our soldiers and the purest of our patriots.” Serene and kindly, in
the familiar white cap and kerchief, she has become the nation’s ideal
of the president’s wife, our country’s first hostess.
CHAPTER VII
JEMIMA JOHNSON
1753-1814
Of Jemima Johnson, pioneer and volunteer, I can tell you very little.
Just this one incident has come down to us, but you are surely right
in thinking that the rest of her life was in harmony with this day’s
heroism.
It happened in Kentucky, when the Revolutionary fighting was almost
ended, but before peace had come to the frontier. Raid after raid on
isolated settlements was made by the Indians, stirred up continually by
the British in Canada. People were murdered and tortured with shocking
barbarity, for once started the red men could not be controlled. Chief
among them were the Wyandottes, a tribe that stood first for military
skill and ferocious valor, and with them was the notorious renegade,
Simon Girty, whose name was a byword and a hissing along the frontier.
Bryan’s Station was a Kentucky settlement of forty cabins connected
by strong palisades, set in a clearing with thick woods all around.
One August day in 1782 messengers arrived, saying that the Indians
were threatening to attack a neighboring fort and asking for aid. The
men at Bryan’s made ready to go and at dawn Captain Craig had finished
his preparations when he discovered a group of savages in full view,
just on the edge of the woods. There were only a few of them, and
being out of rifle range they were exposing themselves carelessly and
indifferently.
“They’re trying to attract our attention,” Craig immediately said to
himself. “Do they think that because they’re few we’ll leave the fort
and pursue them?”
Their actions made him suspicious, for he had been trained in Indian
fighting in the school of Daniel Boone. He ordered the relief party to
wait while he called the principal men of the station to a council.
They agreed that it was only a feint on the part of the savages to
invite an attack, and that the main fight would come from the other
side. They would meet one trick with another and beat the Indians at
their own game.
But the siege would be severe, perhaps long. Nothing could be done
until they had a supply of water--and the spring was not inside the
palisade, as was the frontier custom, but a short distance away, near
the very spot where the red men were hiding in the thick woods. The
night before only the ordinary amount of water had been brought in.
The buckets were empty, and it was a hot August day. Life inside the
stockade, even though there were no battle, would be unendurable.
Captain Craig thought a moment, then called up the women and children,
and told them his plan.
“Will you, you women and you children who are large enough, go down to
the spring, with every bucket you can carry, and bring back water? Our
lives depend upon it. We think the Indians are hidden near the spring,
waiting. Now if you’ll go, just as you do every morning, I think
they’ll not molest you, for that would break up their plan. As far as
we can we’ll cover you with our rifles. You see, don’t you, that this
is our only hope? If we men go to the spring, it would be so unusual
that it would rouse their suspicions at once; and if we were shot
down, there would be no one to save the fort and you. Will you go?”
They were quick to appreciate the situation. Of course Captain Craig
might be all wrong in his theory. The savages might capture the women
and children, right under the eyes of the men in the fort. No one could
tell what they might do. It was a terrible state of affairs. They
knew what capture meant--death by torture. They had not lived on the
frontier for nothing. A shudder of terror went through the group.
Water we must have.
The men can’t go for it.
We women will.
Such were the steps Jemima Johnson’s thoughts took, and instantly she
volunteered. The Spartan daughter of a fearless pioneer, the sister of
others, the wife of another, Jemima Suggett Johnson was also the mother
of five little children, and her husband was away in Virginia. But she
was the first to offer to go.
Quickly she gave her orders: Betsy, who was ten, was to go with her;
Sally, to look after the two little boys as well as watch baby
Richard, in his cradle. Now who would go with her for the water?
Armed with wooden dippers, the wives of the Craig brothers and their
children volunteered. Others quickly offered. Captain Craig opened
the gate and out they marched after Captain Johnson--twelve women and
sixteen children--true helpmates of those sturdy frontiersmen. They
were nearly overcome with terror, yet they laughed and chatted as
they tramped down the hill some sixty yards to the spring. A few of
the younger ones found it hard to hide their agitation, but Jemima
Johnson’s steadiness and cool composed manner reassured them and
completely deceived the savages.
Within a stone’s throw the Indians were concealed, and with eager
covetous eyes watched the women filling their buckets. It took some
time to dip up water for so many, but Captain Johnson had said each
must wait until they were all ready to start back. Then deliberately
they made their way up the hill to the fort, and not a shot was fired,
for the Indians, in the hope of carrying out their original plan, did
not betray their presence.
Some of the children, as they neared the gate, broke into a run and
crowded into the door of the stockade, but only a little of the
precious water was spilled. With sighs of relief the fifty men in the
fort saw their wives and children safe again, and the supply of water
stored away.
Then Captain Craig began to carry out his part of the scheme. Thirteen
of his men were sent to the front of the fort, to engage the Indians
there, with as much noise and confusion as possible. This, he guessed,
was the signal agreed upon for the main body of savages to attack at
the back of the stockade. So at the loopholes there he posted the rest
of his men, with strict orders to make no move, to fire not a gun,
till he gave them word. Hearing the noise at the front of the fort,
the Indians near the spring dashed from cover and up to the back wall,
which they supposed was undefended. They shouted their savage war
cries, expecting an easy victory. Then suddenly the stockade bristled
with rifles, and a steady fire was poured into the Indians massed for
the attack. With cries of terror they fled to the woods; but all day
long the firing continued. Deaths in the fort were very few, but any
Indian who exposed himself was sure to be killed by the unerring shot
of a frontiersman. Two savages climbed a tree, to fire from there, but
were quickly dislodged. They shot burning arrows up into the air, to
fall on the roofs of the buildings, but the plucky children put out
the fires as fast as they were started. Betsy Johnson even tossed one
arrow off baby Richard’s cradle. The women who had brought the water
that made this long defense possible, molded bullets and loaded rifles,
repaired breaches in the palisade, and sometimes took their places at
the loopholes.
At last the Indians decided their efforts could not succeed, so they
killed the cattle, burned the fields of grain, and made the country
look like a desert. Then they stole away in the night.
Thus Bryan’s Station was saved, due in large measure to Jemima Johnson
and her party of women who brought in the water. Years later the baby
Richard commanded the Kentucky regiment whose brilliant charge decided
the battle of the Thames. He, it was believed, killed the Indian chief
Tecumseh. And this same son of Jemima Johnson became vice-president of
the United States.
CHAPTER VIII
SACAJAWEA
1790-1884
During the last years of the eighteenth century, in an Indian village
along the banks of the Snake River, just west of the Bitter Root
Mountains, in what is now the state of Idaho, a little girl was born.
She was named Sacajawea (Sah-cah″-jah-we′ah), which in English means
“Bird-woman.” Of her early life there is little to tell. She doubtless
lived as did the rest of her tribe, grinding corn into meal, providing
the food, always out-of-doors, alert and resourceful.
When she was about nine years old the Shoshones (or Snake Indians, as
they were sometimes called) were attacked suddenly by their hereditary
foe, the Minnetarees of Knife River. They hastily retreated three miles
up-stream and concealed themselves in the woods, but the enemy pursued.
Being too few to contend successfully, the Shoshone men mounted their
horses and fled, while the women and children scattered, but were soon
captured. Sacajawea tried to escape by crossing the river at a shallow
place, but half-way over was taken prisoner.
Eastward the captives were hurried, to a Minnetaree village near the
present city of Bismarck, North Dakota, and here the girl Sacajawea was
sold as a slave to Toussaint Chaboneau, a French half-breed, a wanderer
and interpreter for the Northwest Fur Company. When she was about
fourteen, an age considered womanhood among the Indians, Chaboneau
married her.
In October of that year, 1804, there was much excitement in the
village. Up the river from the south came a great boat, filled with
white men, who, finding a good site for their camp on an island not
far from the Minnetaree wigwams, landed, built a number of log huts
and remained throughout the winter. From all the region roundabout the
inquisitive Indians were continually visiting these white men whose
errand was strange though peaceable. Not to make war, but to travel far
to the west had they come. Among their supplies were many things about
which the savages were curious. The squaws particularly were attracted
by a mill that would grind their maize, enviously comparing its ease
and speed with their slow methods. They longed for many articles in
the white men’s packs, and were glad to barter their corn for blue and
white beads, for rings and for cloth. There was constant trading, and
many, many were the questions asked about the great unknown country to
the north and west.
A Canadian half-breed served the two white leaders of the party as
interpreter. They also talked through Chaboneau, who knew both French
and an Indian dialect, and who one day pointed out Sacajawea to them
saying proudly, “She my slave, I buy her from de Rock Mountain, I make
her my wife.” When they heard who the Bird-woman was, they invited
her and her husband to go with them on their long journey. He could
interpret for some of the tribes, she for the Shoshones, for she had
not forgotten the language of her childhood.
On the eleventh of February Sacajawea’s son Baptiste was born, and
a merry little papoose he proved to be. The travelers started west
on the seventh of April, Chaboneau accompanying them, and Sacajawea
carrying her baby, not quite two months old; every step of that
five-thousand-mile journey she carried him, so that he was the most
traveled papoose in the land.
Taking the Bird-woman with them was an extremely wise measure on the
part of the leaders, Lewis and Clark. Her presence was a sure guarantee
that their intentions were peaceful, for no Indian tribe ever took a
woman in their war parties. For the whole group of men the presence of
this gentle, virtuous, retiring little woman and her baby must have had
a softening, humanizing effect, greater than they were aware. Near the
fire she would sit, making moccasins and crooning a song in her soft
Indian monotone, while the baby toddled about, the two giving a touch
of domesticity to that Oregon winter.
There were many heroes of this journey to the Far West, but only one
heroine--this modest, unselfish, tireless squaw. With the strongest of
the men she canoed and trudged and climbed and starved, always with
the baby strapped on her back. Long dreary months of toil she endured
like a Spartan. Instead of being a drag on their progress she was time
and again the inspiration, the genius of the expedition. And in their
journals both Lewis and Clark gave her frequent credit for her splendid
services and frankly acknowledged in terms of respect and admiration
their indebtedness to her.
One May afternoon when the travelers had been five or six weeks on
their journey and were making good time with a sail hoisted on their
boat, a sudden squall of wind struck them. The boat nearly went over,
for Chaboneau, who was an interpreter and not a helmsman, lost his
head, let go the tiller and called loudly to God for mercy. The water
poured in and the boat was almost capsized before the men could cut the
sail down. Out on the stream floated valuable papers and instruments,
books, medicine, and a great quantity of merchandise. Always plucky
in trouble, Sacajawea, who was in the rear, saved nearly all of these
things, which were worth far more than their intrinsic value, since
to replace them meant a journey of three thousand miles and a year’s
delay. No wonder that Clark added, when speaking of the quick action
of the Bird-woman, “to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution
with any person on board at the time of the accident.”
Soon after this, from the tenth of June to the twenty-fourth, Sacajawea
was very ill. One of the white captains bled her, a process that must
have seemed strange to the Indian girl, but from their journals one
can see that excellent care was taken of her. The party must continue
on its way, so she was moved into the back part of the boat which
was covered over and cool. All one night the Bird-woman complained,
refusing the medicine offered her, while Chaboneau made constant
petition to be allowed to return with his squaw.
The leaders were concerned for Sacajawea for they knew enough of
medicine to see that her case was serious. And they were also concerned
for the expedition’s sake, for she was their sole dependence to
negotiate with the Shoshone Indians on whom they relied for help. Lewis
therefore determined to make camp till she was entirely restored. He
persuaded her to take some laudanum and herbs and two days later wrote
in his diary:
“Indian woman much better to-day. Continued same course of medicine.
She is free from pain, clear of fever, her pulse regular, eats as
heartily as I am willing to permit her of broiled buffalo well
seasoned with pepper and salt and rich soup of the same meat.”
The next day she improved rapidly, sat up for a time and even walked
out. But alas! this brief period of convalescence Sacajawea evidently
thought sufficient, and the following morning she
“walked out and gathered a considerable quantity of white apples
of which she ate so heartily in their raw state, together with a
considerable quantity of dried fish without my knowledge that she
complained very much and her fever returned. I rebuked Chaboneau
severely for suffering her to indulge herself with such food, and gave
her diluted nitre and thirty drops of laudanum.”
The next day, however, she appeared to be in a fair way for recovery,
walking about and fishing, so the party again started westward.
Nine days later, while Clark, Chaboneau and Sacajawea were making a
portage, they noticed a black cloud coming up rapidly in the west.
Hunting about for shelter they found a ravine protected by shelving
rocks. Clark had laid aside his gun and compass, the Bird-woman her
baby’s extra clothes and his cradle, when suddenly rain fell in such a
torrent that it washed down rocks and earth from higher up the gorge. A
landslide followed but just before the heaviest part of it struck them,
the white captain seized his gun in one hand and with the other dragged
Sacajawea, her baby in her arms, up the steep bank. Chaboneau caught at
her and pulled her along, but was too frightened to be of much help.
Down the ravine in a rolling torrent came the rain, with irresistible
force, driving rocks and earth and everything before it. The water rose
waist high and before Clark could reach the higher ground had ruined
his watch. The compass and the cradle and the baby’s clothes were
washed away. By the time they reached the top of the hill the water
was fifteen feet deep in the ravine. Anxious lest little Baptiste take
cold and fearful that Sacajawea should suffer a relapse, Clark hurried
the group to camp with all possible speed and gave the Indian woman a
little spirits to revive her.
Toward the end of July they came to a country which Sacajawea knew. At
first she was guided by instinct, like a homing bird. Then she began
to recognize familiar landmarks, for this was where she had lived as
a little girl. Both as guide and interpreter she was now the leading
individual in the party, and of invaluable service. Often the white
men could not see plainly the buffalo paths and Indian trails, but she
divined them immediately. During her childhood she had traveled this
road often, for it was the great resort of the Shoshones who came there
to gather quamash and to trap the beaver.
Reaching the three forks of the Missouri River she advised that they
follow the southern branch, as that was the route her tribe always took
when crossing into the plains. One of their camps, the Bird-woman said,
was on the very spot where she herself had been taken prisoner.
“She showed no distress at these recollections,” comments the record,
“nor any joy at the prospect of being restored to her country, for
she seems to possess the folly or philosophy of not suffering her
feelings to extend beyond the anxiety of having plenty to eat and a
few trinkets to wear.”
But that Sacajawea had no emotions was clearly a mistaken inference,
for the journal, a few days later, has an interesting story to tell.
Hoping to find an Indian trail that would lead to a tribe which could
supply them guides and horses, they landed, resolved to succeed if it
took a month’s time. It seemed a forlorn search, but at all costs these
two necessities must be had.
With Chaboneau and his wife, Clark was walking along the shore, the
Indians a hundred yards ahead, when Sacajawea began to dance and show
every mark of the most extravagant joy, turning round to the white
captain, pointing to several Indians approaching them, and sucking her
fingers to show that they belonged to her tribe. Suddenly a woman made
her way through the crowd, ran toward her and embraced her with the
most tender affection. Companions in childhood, they had been taken
prisoner at the same time and had shared captivity. Finally the one
had escaped, while the other was left to be sold as a slave to the
half-breed interpreter. A peculiarly touching meeting this was, for
they had scarcely hoped ever to see each other again, and now they were
renewing their friendship.
The two white captains meanwhile had a long conference with the
Shoshone chief. After smoking together, gifts were exchanged. Then
in order to converse more intelligently, Sacajawea was sent for. She
sat down and began to translate, when, looking intently at the Indian
chief, she recognized him as her brother. Jumping up she ran to him,
embraced him, threw her blanket over him and wept. The chief himself
was moved. Sacajawea tried to go on with her work of interpretation,
but seemed overpowered by the situation and was frequently interrupted
by tears.
Cameahwait, the Shoshone chief, agreed to aid the white men, giving
them horses and guides, in which business Sacajawea was of the greatest
help. She had a long talk with her brother, telling him of the great
power of the American government, of the advantages he would receive by
trading with the whites, and completely won the good will of her nation
as she did that of other tribes they met. She persuaded her people to
make the white men’s journey through their country possible.
Now the chief wealth of the Shoshone Indians was in their small wiry
horses, fleet and sure-footed. Fine presents the white chiefs gave in
exchange for pack-horses--an axe, a knife, a handkerchief and a little
paint, all for one horse. As long as the supply of kettles held out,
a kettle and a white pony were considered an even trade. Sometimes
instead of the coveted kettle Clark would give a sword, a hundred
bullets and powder, with some additional small articles. Once three
horses were bargained for with one of the Indians, who left, the proud
possessor of a chief’s coat, handkerchiefs, a shirt, leggings and a few
arrow points. One day after many wares were offered in exchange for
otter skins, Sacajawea gave the precious beads which she wore around
her waist.
The Bird-woman was invaluable also as an interpreter. The captains
would speak in English, which was put into French by one of the men,
Chaboneau then repeated it in the Minnetaree dialect to his wife, who
translated it into the Shoshone tongue which was understood by an
Indian boy in the party, and he in turn told it to the tribe with whom
Lewis and Clark wished to talk. Do you wonder that when possible they
all used sign language, and relied still more on the language of gifts?
The Americans were surprised that Sacajawea showed no desire to remain
with her own people, but her loyalty and devotion to the explorers were
unfailing. Once she learned of threatened treachery on the part of her
tribe, that they planned to break camp and go down the Missouri River
to the buffalo country on the east, taking with them the horses which
had been promised to the white men. This would leave the newcomers
stranded in the mountains, the lack of horses preventing their going
westward. Immediately she told Lewis and Clark, who called the chiefs
together, and after some discussion the plan was changed. By the end of
August, with a replenished larder and fresh horses, the explorers were
ready to start once more on their journey westward.
The road, Sacajawea told the white captains, was over steep and rocky
mountains, in whose fastnesses they would come to the narrow divide
marking the source of the Missouri River. An hour later they would
find a stream running west, that would grow into a large river and flow
on till it came to the great waters far away. But there was no food
along its course, no paths along its rocky banks, no canoes could swim
on its rough current. If they went on they must follow rude Indian
trails where there was no game. For ten days they must cross a sandy
desert. In many places travel would be slow.
Slow progress indeed it was, on this toilsome, dangerous journey.
Some days five miles was the best they could make; other days they
went forward scarcely at all. Food became scarce, and among the men,
as winter weather came on, there was much sickness. Once they had a
six-day storm that drenched everything they had on. And by this time
their supply of dried meat and fish was exhausted.
They followed obscure windings of Indian trails, known only to the
savages. Sometimes they made their way through wild cañons strewn with
stones; sometimes they climbed painfully up a rough slippery height, or
skirted the edge of a precipice. Almost a month was spent in getting
through the mountains. Cold, half-starved, fatigued, ragged, footsore,
they came out on the other side, more like fugitives than conquerors.
What would they have done without Sacajawea? Dauntless and determined,
always cheerful and resourceful, she had in her care the lives and
fortunes of the whole party. It was she who gathered plants unknown
to the white captains and cooked them into a mush. It was she who
varied their monotonous diet by roasting, boiling and drying fennel
roots, and stewing wild onions with their meat. It was she who found
berries and edible seeds when starvation seemed the only outcome. She
searched in the prairie dogs’ holes with a sharp stick and discovered
wild artichokes, as valuable as potatoes, with a delicious flavor. She
taught the white men how to break shank bones of elk, boil them and
extract the grease to make “trapper’s butter.” When Clark was ill she
made bread for him with some flour she had saved for her baby--the only
mouthful he tasted for days.
Late in November they reached the coast and spent the winter, a forlorn
group, at Fort Clatsop. There was much sickness and the strength of
the men began to fail. There was nothing but dried fish for food, and
it rained and rained till their clothes and bedding rotted away.
They had a strange celebration on Christmas day, when the men sang
songs in the morning, and the Bird-woman brought a gift to Clark--two
dozen white weasels’ tails!
In January during a brief interval of sunny weather, they planned to
go to the beach to get oil and blubber from a whale that was reported
stranded there. Sacajawea had heard of the Pacific in the legends of
her tribe, she had heard of whales too, and begged to be allowed to go.
Had she traveled all that long way only to fail to see the great waters
and the great fish? So Clark agreed that she should accompany them.
When they arrived the Indians had already disposed of the whale, the
skeleton, a hundred and five feet long, being all that was left.
Because of sickness and scant stores of food, bitterly disappointed
when no trading ships appeared with fresh supplies, they began the
return trip early in March instead of in April. Progress was so rapid
that the journey which westward had lasted for full eight months, was
made in five, and six weeks of this time was taken up by a detour. The
party divided and Clark, with Chaboneau and Sacajawea as guides, went
to explore the Yellowstone.
In August they were once more at the Minnetaree village where the
Bird-woman had first seen the white captains and their mill for
grinding corn. Here the leaders said good-by to their Indian friend and
guide. Clark offered to take the family to the states, give them land,
horses, cows and hogs to start farming, or a boatload of merchandise
as a stock for trading. But Chaboneau preferred to remain among the
Indians, saying he had no acquaintance in the East and no chance of
making a livelihood. Clark then offered to take the baby, “my little
dancing boy Baptiste,” now eighteen months old, and bring him up as his
own child, but Sacajawea refused.
Chaboneau’s wages, together with the payment for a horse, were five
hundred dollars and thirty-three cents. The records say not a word of
any sum for Sacajawea whose faithfulness and intelligence had made
success possible. She who could divine routes, who had courage when the
men quailed, who could spread as good a table with bones as others with
meat, was unthought of when bounties in land and money were granted.
Writing back to Chaboneau a few days later, Clark did indeed give her
full credit when he said:
“Your woman who accompanied you that long and dangerous and fatiguing
route to the Pacific Ocean and back deserved a greater reward for her
attention and services on that route than we had in our power to give
her at the Mandans.”
Chaboneau’s money probably served to establish his family very
comfortably in the village in Dakota. You can imagine what stories they
told of their adventures during the long winter evenings--of the wild
animals they met, of their escape from the cloudburst at the Great
Falls, of the mysterious, explosive sounds heard in the mountains, of
the portages they made, of shooting the rapids in the Columbia, of
their struggle among the snows of the Bitter Root range, and of the
great salt ocean at the sunset--for they had taken part in the most
remarkable exploration of modern times.
For many years there is no record of Sacajawea. Clark, as
superintendent of Indian affairs, in 1837 appointed Chaboneau
interpreter, with a salary of three hundred dollars. And there is one
official item, an expense account for a boy (possibly Baptiste) in
school at Saint Louis, which was paid to Chaboneau, in 1820. The little
papoose who traveled all that long journey grew up to be a guide, with
his mother’s native instinct and cleverness. He served with Bridger
in southwest Wyoming; he is mentioned with Fremont in 1842 and from
sometime in the sixties he lived on an Indian reservation in Fremont
County, Wyoming.
Sacajawea was there with him after 1871. An old, old woman, she is
described by one of the missionaries, Doctor Irwin, short of stature,
spare of figure, quick in her movements, remarkably straight and
wonderfully active and intelligent considering her great age. She
often told of her journey to the place of “much water for the great
Washington,” as the government was always referred to, and talked of
the “big waters beyond the shining mountains, toward the setting sun.”
And on that reservation she died and was buried.
The journey of the two white captains pushed the frontier from the
Mississippi to the coast. It burst through the Rocky Mountain barrier
and opened the gates to the Pacific slope. It gave the nation a rich
territory from which ten states were formed. But the services of
Sacajawea had for many years no lasting commemoration. Shortly after
the adventure in the boat the leaders did indeed name a river for the
Bird-woman, one of the branches of the Musselshell in central Montana,
but the very first settlers changed it from Sacajawea to Crooked Creek
and so it is called to-day. In very recent times the Geological Survey
named for her the great peak in the Bridger range overlooking the spot
where she was captured, and where she pointed out the pass over the
mountains--a route chosen years later by the engineers of the Northern
Pacific Railroad. This place was also marked with a boulder and tablet
by the Montana chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution.
That is all that remains of Sacajawea--a peak bearing her name, and her
story. A century after her long journey the women of Oregon erected,
in the center of the great exposition court at Portland, a bronze
statue of the noble Indian girl whose faithful service as a guide made
possible the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
CHAPTER IX
DOLLY MADISON
1772-1836
Dolly Payne was a Virginian, though she was born while her parents
were on a visit in North Carolina. She lived on a great plantation
where she had wide fields to play in, and a devoted black mammy to look
after her. Both her mother and grandmother were noted belles and Dolly,
who was named for her second cousin, Mrs. Patrick Henry, evidently
inherited their beauty, for as a very little girl, going to school, she
wore a wide-brimmed sunbonnet and long mitts, to shield her face and
arms from the sun.
Dolly remembered how her father, in spite of the fact that they were
Quakers, had buckled on his sword and ridden away to be a captain in
the Revolutionary army, and how when the war was over, he came home
again to join in the neighborhood’s thanksgiving for America.
Soon after the war, when Dolly was fourteen years old, he freed his
slaves, sold the plantation, and moved north to the city of brotherly
love that he might be among Quakers. It was then the largest town in
the nation, with a reputation for being very rich and gay. But the
Paynes maintained a strict Quaker standard of simplicity.
Dorothy was a pretty girl, demure in her gray dress, but with bright
Irish-blue eyes, long lashes, curling black hair and soft warm-hued
skin. She had a particularly gay and joyous disposition, but was
forbidden such pleasures as dancing and music. She went to the
Friends’ meeting-house where the men and boys in their black coats and
broad-brimmed hats sat on one side of the room, the women and girls in
their mouse-colored bonnets and drab gowns on the other.
Dolly’s father had done very well on the southern plantation, but when
he went into business in Philadelphia he found many troubles. Living
cost much more than in Virginia, a good deal of his property had been
lost through the war and he failed, then ill health added its burden.
A rich young Quaker lawyer named John Todd helped and advised him. He
had fallen in love with Dolly, and though she meant never to marry, she
consented, to please her father who had only a few months more to live.
On two successive Sundays she went through the embarrassing Quaker
ceremony of rising in meeting and saying she proposed taking John Todd
in marriage; and standing up before the congregation, they were married
in the somber bare-walled meeting-house. Mistress Todd lived for three
years the life of a Quaker lady, and a devoted wife she was to her
young husband. She always wore a cap of tulle, a gray gown, with a lace
kerchief over her shoulders and a large brooch fastening it--no other
ornaments. Except for her beauty she was like a hundred other young
Quaker women in the city of brotherly love.
In August of 1793 an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in
Philadelphia. Todd sent his wife and their two little children to a
summer resort on the river, where many of their friends took refuge.
He stayed in the city to care for his father and mother but they died
of the plague. Already ill himself he joined his family, only to
give them the dread disease, he and the baby dying shortly after his
arrival. Dolly too was stricken with the fever, but recovered.
At first she was bowed down by her great loss. But Philadelphia was
gay and gradually Mistress Todd began going about again, far more
freely than in the days of her sober girlhood. She found herself really
enjoying society and all the pleasures of the city. From a shy girl she
developed into a most attractive woman. With her youth and her riches,
it is no wonder that she became the object of much attention. Gentlemen
would station themselves to see her pass, and her friends would say,
“Really, Dolly, thou must hide thy face. There are so many staring at
thee!”
Among her many admirers was Aaron Burr, then a United States senator.
For Philadelphia, you remember, was the capital of the newly organized
government, and the leading men of the time lived in the city. One day
he asked her if he might bring a friend to call, for the “great little
Madison,” as his colleagues called him, had requested the honor of
being presented. So the handsome Colonel Burr introduced Mr. James
Madison, a little man dressed all in black, except for his ruffled
shirt and silver buckles. Dolly wore a mulberry satin gown with silk
tulle about her neck and a dainty lace cap on her head, her curly hair
showing underneath. The scholarly Madison, who was twenty years older
than she, was captivated by the pretty widow, sparkling with fun and
wit, and soon offered himself as a husband, and was accepted.
The President and Mrs. Washington were much pleased when they heard of
the engagement. Sending for Dolly Mrs. Washington asked her if the news
was true.
“No, I think not,” said Mistress Todd.
“Be not ashamed to confess it, if it is so. He will make thee a good
husband and all the better for being so much older. We both approve
of it. The esteem and friendship existing between Mr. Madison and my
husband is very great, and we would wish you two to be happy.”
Happy they were, during the week’s journey when they drove down to
Virginia, to be married at the home of Dolly’s sister; and during the
merrymaking following the wedding which lavish southern hospitality,
with, a ball and feast after the ceremony, made quite different from
her first marriage. The quiet reserved Madison let the girls cut off
bits of his Mechlin lace ruffles as keepsakes. And happy they were
together for more than forty years.
They lived only a short time at Montpelier, Madison’s home in the Blue
Ridge country, for public affairs soon took them back to Philadelphia
and then to Washington. At her husband’s request Dolly laid aside her
Quaker dress, entered society and entertained frequently. Her sweet
manners, her tact and kindness of heart, made her friends everywhere.
At that time party spirit ran high and political differences caused
great bitterness, but all animosities seemed forgotten in Mrs.
Madison’s presence. She slighted no one, hurt no one’s feelings, and
often made foes into friends. Perhaps her influence had almost as much
to do with Madison’s prominence in national affairs as did his own
unquestioned ability; for her sound common sense and exceptionally
good judgment often helped him in deciding public questions.
When Jefferson was elected president he made Madison his secretary of
state. And since Jefferson was a widower and needed a lady to preside
at the White House, he often called upon Mrs. Madison for this service.
Then Madison succeeded Jefferson and Dolly became in name what she had
been in effect, the first lady of the land. Thus for sixteen years she
was hostess for the nation, and a famous hostess she was indeed.
“Every one loves Mrs. Madison,” said Henry Clay, voicing the common
sentiment.
“And Mrs. Madison loves everybody,” was her quick response.
The president used to say that when he was tired out from matters of
state a visit to her sitting-room, where he was sure of a bright story
and a hearty laugh, was as refreshing as a long walk in the open air.
But even with such a mistress of the White House the affairs of the
nation did not remain tranquil. Trouble with England, which had long
been brewing, came to a crisis and war was declared in 1812. As most
of the fighting was at sea, life at Washington went on undisturbed
until August of 1814, when the British landed five thousand men near
the capital and marched to attack it. The town was in a panic when the
messenger rode in at full speed, announcing fifty ships anchoring in
the Potomac.
“Have you the courage to stay here till I come back, to-morrow or next
day?” asked the president.
And Dolly Madison replied, “I am not afraid of anything, if only you
are not harmed and our army triumphs.”
“Good-by then, and if anything happens, look out for the state papers,”
said Madison, and rode away to the point where the citizen-soldiers
were gathering.
Many Washington people began carrying their property off to the
country, but the brave woman at the White House did not run away. At
last there came a penciled note from the president:
“Enemy stronger than we heard at first. They may reach the city and
destroy it. Be ready to leave at a moment’s warning.”
Most of Mrs. Madison’s friends were already gone, even the soldiers
who had been left to guard the executive mansion. Not a wagon could be
secured. “Bring me as many trunks as my carriage will hold,” ordered
Dolly Madison and set to work packing them with the nation’s most
valuable papers. Night came but the lady of the White House worked on.
At dawn she began searching through her spyglass, hoping to catch a
glimpse of her husband. All she could see was here and there a group of
soldiers wandering about, men sleeping in the fields, frightened women
and children hurrying to the bridge over the Potomac. She could hear
the roar of cannon, the battle was going on only six miles away; still
the president did not come.
One of the servants, French John, offered to spike the cannon at the
gate and lay a train of powder that would blow up the British if they
entered the house. But to this Mrs. Madison objected, though she could
not make John understand why in war every advantage might not be taken.
About three o’clock in the afternoon two men covered with dust
galloped up and cried, “Fly, fly! The house will be burned over your
head!”
Some good friends had succeeded in getting a wagon and Mrs. Madison
filled it with the White House silver.
“To the bank of Maryland,” she ordered, and added to herself, “or the
hands of the British--which will it be?”
Two friends came in to urge haste, reminding her that the English
admiral, Cockburn, had taken an oath that he would sit in her
drawing-room and that other officers had boasted they would take the
president and his wife both prisoner and carry them to London to make a
show of them. They were just ready to lift her into the carriage when
Dolly stopped.
“Not yet--the portrait of Washington--it shall never fall into the
hands of the enemy. That must be taken away before I leave the house.”
The famous painting by Gilbert Stuart was in a heavy frame, screwed to
the wall in the state dining-room, but in that frantic hurry there were
no tools at hand to remove it.
“Get an axe and break the frame,” commanded Dolly Madison. She watched
the canvas taken from the stretcher, saw it rolled up carefully, and
sent to a place of safety. Later it was returned to her, and to-day
hangs over the mantel in the red room of the White House.
One more delay--the Declaration of Independence was kept in a glass
case, separate from the other state papers. Notwithstanding all the
protests of her friends, Dolly Madison ran back into the house,
broke the glass, secured the Declaration with the autographs of the
signers, got into her carriage and drove rapidly away to a house beyond
Georgetown.
None too soon did she leave. The sound of approaching troops was heard.
The British were upon the city. They broke into the executive mansion,
ransacked it, had dinner there in the state dining-room, stole what
they could carry, and then set fire to the building.
Instead of sleeping that night, Dolly Madison, with thousands of
others, watched the fire destroying the capital, while the wind from an
approaching storm fanned the flames. Before daybreak she set out for a
little tavern, sixteen miles away, where her husband had arranged to
meet her. The roads were filled with frightened people, while fleeing
soldiers spread the wildest rumors of the enemy’s advance.
Arrived at the inn finally in the height of the storm, the woman in
charge refused to take her in, saying, “My man had to go to fight; your
husband brought on this war and his wife shall have no shelter in my
house!”
The tavern was thronged with women and children, refugees from the
city, who finally prevailed on the woman to let Mrs. Madison enter. The
president arrived later, but before he had rested an hour a messenger
came crying, “The British know you are here--fly!”
Dolly Madison begged him to go to a little hut in the woods where he
would be safe, and promised that she would leave in disguise and find
a refuge farther away. In the gray of the morning she started, but
soon came the good news that the English, hearing reinforcements were
coming, had gone back to their ships. At once she turned and drove
toward the city. The bridge over the Potomac was afire.
“Will you row me across?” she asked an American officer.
“No, we don’t let strange women into the city.”
In vain she pleaded. He was firm. “We have spies enough here. How do
I know but the British have sent you to burn what they have left? You
will not cross the river, that is sure.”
“But I am Mrs. Madison, the wife of your president,” she answered,
throwing off her disguise. Then he rowed her across the Potomac.
Through clouds of smoke, past heaps of still smoldering ruins, she made
her way to the home of her sister, and waited there for Mr. Madison to
return.
While the White House was being rebuilt the Madisons lived in
Pennsylvania Avenue, and a brilliant social life centered about them.
They revived the levees of Washington and Adams, gave handsome state
dinners and introduced music at their receptions.
When Madison’s second term was ended they went to live at Montpelier,
their beautiful Virginia home, where they entertained with true
southern hospitality the many friends and tourists who visited them.
Mr. Madison, for many years an invalid, busied himself with books and
writing.
Soon after his death in 1836 Dolly returned to Washington, to be near
her old friends. Her home again became a social center, for her tact
and beauty and grace made her always a favorite and a leader. She
entertained many distinguished guests, “looking every inch a queen,”
the British ambassador declared. Sometimes there were as many visitors
at her receptions as at those at the White House. All the homage of
former times was hers, and much consideration was shown her by public
officials, Congress voting her a seat on the floor of the House.
Brought up in strict Quaker ways, she adorned every station in life
in which she was placed. And in a crisis when the White House was in
danger, Dolly Madison was courageous enough to delay her departure
till she had saved the Stuart Washington and the Declaration of
Independence.
CHAPTER X
LUCRETIA MOTT
1793-1880
Lucretia Coffin was a Quaker, born on the quaint little island of
Nantucket. Her father “followed the sea,” captain of a whaler, and
was often gone for long periods of time. So it was the mother who was
responsible for the early training of the six children. Thrift and
efficient housekeeping Lucretia learned, along with the Quaker doctrine
of non-resistance, and a thorough knowledge of the Bible.
When she was twelve, Captain Coffin forsook the sea and moved his
family to Boston. Public schools there gave Lucretia a feeling of
sympathy for the patient struggling poor which was always a prominent
trait in her character.
Later she was sent to a Friends’ boarding-school at Nine Partners, New
York, and stayed for two years, with no holidays and no vacation. A
strict school it was, for though both boys and girls were the pupils,
they were not allowed to speak to each other unless they were near
relatives in which case they might talk on certain days over the fence
that separated their playgrounds. Punishment Lucretia Coffin could bear
herself far more easily than she could see some one else endure it;
when for some trifling misdemeanor, a little boy, a cousin of James
Mott, one of the teachers, was locked up in a dark closet and given
only bread and water, Lucretia managed to slip into the forbidden side
of the house and supply him with more substantial food.
One of the instructors left the school, and fifteen-year-old Lucretia
became an assistant teacher, working with her classes in the daytime,
and with her books by the light of a solitary candle far into the
night. A year later she was made a regular teacher, with a salary of a
hundred dollars, her living and tuition for one of her little sisters.
The two young pedagogues, James Mott and Lucretia Coffin, found that
they had many ideas in common--ability, and a desire for knowledge and
a wider culture--so they formed a French class and had lessons for six
weeks. Such good friends they became that when she was eighteen and he
a few years older, they became engaged and were married and settled
in Philadelphia. He was quiet, reserved, serious; she bright, active,
very pretty. And after they had worked together for a great cause, they
loved each other more deeply than ever.
As a very young girl Lucretia Mott had been interested in slavery.
Her sympathy had first been enlisted from reading in her schoolbooks
Clarkson’s vivid picture of the slave ships. Many years later she
repeated word for word a description of the horrors of the “middle
passage,” which she had memorized from a reader. In 1818 on a journey
to Virginia, she had a first affecting glimpse of the slaves themselves.
This trip to the South was for the purpose of holding religious
meetings, for early that year Lucretia Mott discovered her great
gift--public speaking. Among the Friends it was no uncommon thing for
women to take part in meeting, and Mrs. Mott soon became one of their
favorite preachers. She had a real power over her audiences--her
slight figure, her delicate, charming face in the Quaker bonnet, at
once strong and tender, her sweetness of voice added to the convincing
earnestness of her manner.
People of all denominations went miles to hear her. Soon she began
traveling around the country, speaking in Quaker meeting-houses,
telling her listeners of the peace-loving principles of the Friends,
pointing out the evils of injustice in any form, and always, in
season and out of season, emphasizing the sin of slavery. Long before
Lundy and Garrison began their newspapers, long before Garrison and
Wendell Phillips were thundering against slavery and urging immediate
emancipation, this small sweet-faced Friend, mild and gentle in nature,
was blazing the way for the anti-slavery movement, a pioneer among the
advocates for freedom.
Through New York State, into New England and across to Nantucket,
as far south as Virginia, west to Ohio and Indiana, she traveled by
stage-coach or boat or carriage. Speaking at seventy-one meetings
in a ten weeks’ trip seems to have been no unusual record for her.
She always wore a simple, dove-colored dress, with a crossed muslin
kerchief at the neck, and a prim little cap. But the secret of her
magnetic personality was that she spoke because she was conscious of a
power impelling her to do so. Words came to her, as tears come, without
will of her own, because her heart was full and she couldn’t help
it. Though the leading abolitionists were often described as raving
fanatics, Lucretia Mott was noted for her unfailing composure, her
calm tone of profound faith, her lack of vehement accents and violent
gestures.
“Notice was given here for a religious meeting,” said the distressed
elders in one western town that bordered on a slave state. “We do hope,
Mrs. Mott, you will not name slavery, or allude to it this afternoon.”
“Why,” was her answer, “that is eminently a religious subject. I should
consider myself disobedient to the voice of God in my soul if I did not
speak against it.”
Her audience there was so large that many had to stand. Ordinarily they
would have become restless. For an hour and a half she held them,
closely attentive, and though she said some things far from palatable
to that prejudiced, excited, border section, her sincerity commanded
their respect and they crowded the hall again that evening to hear her
speak.
Gradually the opposition to slavery, which she had been fostering,
won adherents to its cause. The Garrison campaign began. Friends of
freedom came out openly and spoke their views. In 1833 a national
anti-slavery society was formed in Philadelphia. Of the sixty or
seventy delegates, four were women, Lucretia Mott among them. They were
present by invitation, as listeners only. But during the discussion of
the proposed constitution, when one of the women briefly, modestly,
suggested transposing certain sentences, to put first the reference
to the Declaration of Independence, the men were so impressed that
they made the change immediately. But more than this Mrs. Mott, a
listener, accomplished. Her encouragement strengthened and confirmed
their purpose at a critical moment when some overcautious souls urged a
policy of delay.
The following year the Female Anti-slavery Society was formed, the
majority of its members Friends, and Lucretia Mott served as president
during most of its existence. For women to have an association of
their own was almost unheard of, in the eighteen thirties. They had no
idea of the meaning of preambles, resolutions and voting; and later
they confessed with amusement that they had to invite a colored man to
preside at their first meeting, to get them started.
In 1840 came a world’s anti-slavery convention in London, and Lucretia
Mott was one of the delegates from the United States. Full of
enthusiasm the first group arrived, only to find that women were not to
be recognized. The doors were shut against them, because of the old,
old prejudice--women should stay at home and be entertaining, public
affairs would rob them of their sweetest charm.
Wendell Phillips protested and moved that the ladies be admitted. The
excited discussion lasted for several hours, but when the vote was
taken the majority against the resolution was overwhelming. So in
the gallery sat Lucretia Mott, with Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Wendell
Phillips, and other women delegates, and their recruit, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
Arriving some days later, Garrison felt so outraged at this treatment
of his co-workers that he refused to take his seat in the convention.
With two other masculine members from the American Society he sat
up-stairs with the ladies. The British were scandalized--what sort
of world’s convention was this, with the founder of the greatest
anti-slavery movement of the century debarred from taking his seat on
the floor? They sent him a special invitation, but Garrison was firm.
He remembered that Lucretia Mott had been the first to shake his hand
when he came out of prison!
But before the meetings were over a tea was given with more than
four hundred guests; and there, much to the men’s consternation,
Lucretia Mott spoke. With a dignity that carried great force, with
real eloquence, she chose this way of addressing the convention. The
delegates found themselves listening with pleasure and admiration, and
broke into applause.
While they were in London, Lucretia Mott had a call from Clarkson, the
English abolitionist, then an old, old man of eighty-one, almost blind,
and they had a long talk together.
It is difficult for people of to-day to appreciate what peril and
reproach it meant to take a stand against slavery. Individuals who
dared to do so had to face private detraction and public abuse,
sometimes actual physical violence. On the side of slavery was
ranged all the power of trade and politics, of church and state, of
respectability and riot. This opposition became more and more bitter,
more and more popular, more and more widely spread. In equal or greater
ratio the earnestness and zeal of the anti-slavery group increased.
They were held up to odium and ridicule, for the spirit of persecution
was abroad. Lucretia Mott’s old friends scorned her and laughed at her.
They passed her on the street without speaking.
“But,” said she, “misrepresentation and ridicule and abuse heaped on
these reforms do not in the least deter me from my duty.”
Mobs of men and women would assemble outside the halls where
anti-slavery meetings were being held. They stoned the windows, they
broke in, leaped on the platform, and shouted so loudly that the
speaker’s voice was lost in the noise. Pennsylvania Hall, dedicated
to “liberty and the rights of man,” was surrounded by a crowd while
Lucretia Mott was addressing an audience of Philadelphia women, and
brickbats were hurled through the windows. The next day, shortly after
the meeting had adjourned, the mob set the hall on fire, then marched
through the streets, threatening an attack on the Motts’ house. The
children were sent away to a place of safety, and the little Quaker
lady, with her husband and a few friends, sat quietly waiting for the
crowd to come. But their fury was turned against another part of the
city and the Motts were safe for that night.
Shortly afterward they were sitting in the parlor one evening when they
heard confused noises and cries that came nearer and nearer--an angry
rumble hard to describe, but all too familiar to the experienced ears
of negroes and abolitionists. In the crowd was a young man who knew the
Quaker family. “On to the Motts’!” he cried, and purposely ran up the
wrong street, making several quick turnings. The rioters followed him
blindly until he slipped away from them, and a second time the Motts
were saved from violence.
In New York City an anti-slavery meeting was broken up by the crowd
and Garrison and other speakers roughly handled. Lucretia Mott, whose
fears and thoughts were never for herself, always unshrinking and
self-possessed in the stormiest scenes, noticed that some of the women
looked timid.
“Won’t thee look after the others?” she asked the gentleman who
accompanied her.
“Then who will take care of you?”
“This man will see me through,” she said, putting her hand on the arm
of a big ruffian in a red shirt. Roused by this unexpected appeal to
his chivalry he made way for her through the crowd and escorted her
safely to the house where she was staying.
The next day in a restaurant near the hall, she recognized him and
sitting down at his table began talking with him. When he left he asked:
“Who is that lady?”
“Lucretia Mott.”
Dumfounded for a moment he shook his head and then said, “Well, she’s a
good sensible woman!”
In her own home Lucretia Mott sheltered fugitive slaves, till it became
widely known as a place of refuge. Many a poor negro she helped on his
way to Canada, by the Underground Railroad. In the entrance hall of
the Mott house there stood two roomy armchairs which the family called
“the beggars’ chairs,” for there applicants, rich and poor, known and
unknown, black and white, waited to see Mrs. Mott.
Almost incredible was the opposition she met. Even the gentle Quakers
reproached her for “lugging in” slavery at their meetings. Many of
them wished she would resign. A minority wanted to disown her. They
refused the use of their meeting-houses for abolition lectures. When
she was speaking away from Philadelphia they allowed her to stay at
country taverns, instead of inviting her to their homes--a great breach
of hospitality. They discussed taking away her “approved minister’s
minute,” which introduced her to Quaker communities. But in justice
to herself, and because she loved the society and its traditions and
desired to remain a Friend, she was so careful that they could bring no
case against her.
Never did she compromise her principles. Never did she ask for police
protection, though the mob clamored and howled around the building.
And never did she meet bodily harm. She lived the Quaker doctrine
of non-resistance, and did not believe in repelling violence with
violence. Holding that slavery was wrong, the Motts decided to use
nothing made with slave labor. That meant giving up sugar and candy
and cotton cloth. Most of all, it meant giving up the cotton goods
commission business in which for the first time James Mott was finding
it possible to make a comfortable living. Yet unflinchingly they
sacrificed material prosperity for the spiritual gain. Mrs. Mott opened
a school and they managed to get along until a new business could be
established.
After the Civil War colored people were not allowed to ride in the
Philadelphia street-cars except in certain ones reserved for them.
One rainy day Lucretia Mott saw a negress, evidently in poor health,
standing on the platform in a cold drizzle. She asked the conductor
to let her enter the car, but he refused. Immediately Mrs. Mott went
outside and stood by the woman. The famous Mrs. Mott, seventy years
old, riding in the rain on the platform of his car? That would never
do! The conductor begged her to come in.
“Not without this woman--I can not!” was the reply.
“Oh, well, bring her in then,” he said. And soon the company changed
the rule discriminating against colored passengers.
After the fugitive slave law was passed in 1850 many exciting cases
came up in Philadelphia. Perhaps the most famous was the trial of a
negro named Daniel Webster Dangerfield, who was arrested, charged with
being a fugitive slave. The alleged master engaged a famous lawyer
who was later attorney-general of the United States. The trial lasted
all one day, into the night and the next day; all that time Lucretia
Mott with her knitting sat in the crowded room beside the poor ragged
prisoner, like a guardian spirit. The opposing counsel asked that her
chair be moved, fearing that her face would influence the jury!
In the court the negro won; but outside a rabble surged up and down,
threatening to give him over to his Maryland master, while inside a
group of young Quakers was equally determined that he should keep his
hard-won freedom. Another colored man, resembling him, was driven
away from the court-house in the carriage, while Dangerfield walked a
few squares with some of his friends, then was sent eight miles to an
unsuspected station of the Underground Railroad, and in a few days was
safe in Canada.
“I have heard a great deal of Mrs. Mott,” said the opposing lawyer at
the conclusion of the trial, “but never saw her before to-day. She is
an angel!”
Soon after he joined the party of freedom. Asked how he dared to
make the change, with so many interests arrayed on the other side,
his answer was, “Do you think there is anything I dare not do, after
sitting in that court room facing Lucretia Mott?”
With all her public work this gentle Friend was first of all a womanly
woman, a fine housekeeper, a splendid mother, a devoted wife. Her
letters speak constantly of the varied activities of her hands--of
doing the family ironing, making mince meat for forty pies, sewing
and putting down carpets, knitting, and making carpet-rags and the
children’s clothes. She was herself the best answer to the argument
that public affairs must necessarily take a woman’s attention from her
household.
For years the abolitionists felt their cause hopeless. The very utmost
they could do would be a lifelong protest against slavery. But Lucretia
Mott lived to see freedom for the negroes an accomplished fact. Nor did
she confine her work to this one cause. She was as firm an advocate
of woman’s equality with man, an able speaker for woman’s rights in
that early day when the subject met only ridicule and abuse. She used
her eloquence for temperance, for the advancement of the freedmen, for
peace through arbitration.
Instead of averted faces and open condemnation, in her last years
she met everywhere with tenderness and veneration. And her face was
like that of a transfigured saint, for she was without jealousy or
bitterness, free from malice, incapable of hate. She was a preacher, a
reformer, a woman commanding our admiration.
Exactly how much she did for abolition in that half-century of
agitation and reform can not be measured accurately. She planted the
seed and encouraged others. As famous and as much abused as Garrison,
as popular a speaker as Phillips, she antedated them both. She was a
veritable pioneer in the great movement that culminated in Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation.
CHAPTER XI
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
1811-1896
The Beechers came to America in 1638 and were leaders in the New Haven
colony. Almost two centuries later the most celebrated member of this
family was born in the old parsonage in the beautiful Connecticut
hilltown of Litchfield. The father of this little girl, Lyman Beecher,
was preaching earnest sermons, on the munificent salary of five hundred
a year. To add to their income the mother, a beautiful and gifted
woman, opened a school, though she had eight children of her own to
care for. All of them grew up to be distinguished, especially the two
youngest, Harriet and Henry Ward, who were inseparable companions.
Harriet had a remarkable memory and read all the books she could find.
But most of her father’s library was sermons and church pamphlets,
appeals and replies and theological discussions; so you can imagine
her delight when at the bottom of a garret barrel of musty sermons and
essays she discovered _The Arabian Nights_, and delicious fragments of
_The Tempest_ and _Don Quixote_. Her father had said his children were
not to read novels, but made an exception of _Ivanhoe_. The delighted
Harriet and her brother George read it through seven times in six
months, until indeed they could recite many scenes by heart.
The Beecher children were wide-awake, bright, happy youngsters, a big
family of them, partly educated by running wild on the long breezy
hills. Until she was eleven Harriet went to a “dame school” and to the
Litchfield Academy, showing her future bent by thoroughly enjoying,
instead of dreading, the task of composition writing. Sir Walter Scott
helped form her style. She read and re-read her few books until words
and sentences were fixed in her mind.
At one of the school exhibitions when compositions were read, Doctor
Beecher, listening idly, suddenly brightened and looked up.
“Who wrote that?” he asked.
“Your daughter, sir,” replied the teacher.
“That,” said Harriet years later, when she knew something of fame, “was
the proudest moment of my life.”
The older sister Catherine had opened a school for girls at Hartford,
and twelve-year-old Harriet went there, first as a pupil, then as
teacher. Indeed she was for a time both, and crowded days she had. In
this double race for development her brain wearied out her body. The
memory of those overworked days lingered with her all her life. Healthy
and hearty as a little child, she was allowed to think and feel and
study too much. Consequently as a woman she was far from vigorous,
finding her lack of strength a continual drawback to her work.
Her father had been preaching for six years in Boston and was now
offered the presidency of Lane Seminary, to be opened in Cincinnati.
Catherine was to start a school for girls, with Harriet as her
assistant. The whole family made the toilsome adventurous journey
across the mountains by stage-coach, to what was then considered the
Far West.
In addition to her work in the school Harriet wrote short essays and
sketches for publication, giving them away at first. But when the
_Western Magazine_ offered a prize of fifty dollars for a story and she
won it, she began to think of writing as a possible means of livelihood.
In 1836 she married Calvin Stowe, a professor in the seminary. They
were far from wealthy, at times even poor, for Professor Stowe, rich in
Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Arabic, was rich in nothing else. Though
she had a household of little children, and often a few boarders,
Harriet continued writing from time to time. Her first check was used
to buy a feather bed. When a new mattress or carpet was needed, or the
year’s accounts wouldn’t balance, she would send off a story, literally
to keep the pot boiling.
Outwardly their life in Ohio was orderly and quiet, but every month
occurred something stirring, even spectacular. There were fierce
debates on the slavery question among the seminary students. Doctor
Bailey, a Cincinnati editor who started a discussion of the subject in
his paper, twice had his presses broken and thrown into the river.
Mrs. Stowe’s brother went about his newspaper work armed. Houses of
colored people were burned and attacked; the shop of an abolitionist
was riddled; free negroes were kidnapped. The Beecher family slept with
weapons at hand, ready to defend the seminary. Many slaves escaping
from Kentucky sought refuge in the town, where the Underground Railroad
helped them to reach Canada and safety.
It was impossible to live in Cincinnati and not be personally affected.
Servants were hard to secure, especially for a household with slender
means, though colored maids were available. The Stowes had a young
negress from Kentucky who had been brought to Cincinnati by her
mistress and left there. When a man came across the river hunting for
her, meaning to take her back to slavery again, Mr. Stowe and Henry
Ward Beecher drove the poor girl at night, in a severe storm, twelve
miles into the country, where they left her with a friend until search
for her was given over.
Colored boys and girls came to the classes Mrs. Stowe had for her own
children. One little fellow was claimed by his former master, arrested
and put up at auction. The distracted mother begged and pleaded for
help. Harriet Beecher Stowe went out and raised the money to buy the
child and give him back to his mother.
Pathetic incidents such as these were continually coming to the
attention of the professor’s family. In Cincinnati this New England
woman had a real acquaintance with negroes, and was quick to note
their peculiar characteristics. Unconsciously she was absorbing and
assimilating pictures of slavery which later served a great purpose.
“What is there here to satisfy one whose mind is awakened on the
subject?” she asked. “No one can have it brought before him without an
irrepressible desire to do something, but what is there to be done?”
To find this something-to-do gradually became one of her chief
thoughts, even though her domestic cares were almost overwhelming and
her health suffered from the strain. The resources of the family did
not increase. One year she was ill six months out of the twelve, yet
she put up the stiffest kind of fight against the most disheartening
odds. Whenever the household was in a comparative calm she would seize
her pen and write some story or sketch. A delicate, highly strung,
little woman, with seven children on her hands, she wrote in the tumult
of the living-room, with babies tumbling about her, with tables being
set and cleared away, with children being washed and dressed, and
everything imaginable in a household going on.
Doctor Stowe received a call to Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine.
Perhaps the family was glad to leave the excited atmosphere of
Cincinnati where feeling on the slavery question was so inflamed, and
live once more in the calm of New England. Yet for Mrs. Stowe it was
not to remain for long a calm background.
On the journey north she stopped in Boston at the home of her brother
Edward. The fugitive slave bill was being debated in Congress just at
this time and everywhere the hearts of thinking men were stirred. Her
visit came at the height of the fierce and fiery discussion of the
proposed law which not only gave southern owners the right to pursue
their slaves into free states, but forced the North to assist in the
business. Her brother had received and forwarded fugitives many a time.
She heard heartrending accounts of slaves recaptured and dragged back
in irons, of children torn from their mothers and sold south--this
breaking up of families offended her most of all.
Soon after the Stowes were settled in their Maine home a letter came
from her sister-in-law in Boston.
“Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something to
make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.”
Reading this letter aloud to the family, when she came to that sentence
Harriet Beecher Stowe rose, crushed the paper in her hand, and with a
look on her face that her children never forgot, she exclaimed, “I will
write something--if I live, I will!”
She was forty years old, in delicate health, overladen with
responsibilities; a devoted mother, with small children, one still a
baby; with untrained servants requiring supervision; with her pupils
to be taught daily; and boarders to eke out the limited salary--her
hands were full to overflowing. It seemed unlikely that she would ever
do anything but this ceaseless labor. But her heart burned within her
for those in bondage. The law passed and the fugitives were hunted out
and sent back into servitude and death. The people of the North looked
on indifferently. Could she, a woman with no reputation, waken them by
anything she might write?
While at a communion service in the little church at Brunswick, like a
vision the death of Uncle Tom on Legree’s plantation came before her.
Scarcely able to control her sobbing, she hurried home, locked herself
in her room, and wrote it out, exactly as it stands now, in a white
heat of passionate enthusiasm. She read it to her two little boys, ten
and twelve years old. Through his sobs one of them said, “Oh, mamma,
slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!”
Then she wrote the opening chapters and offered the manuscript to
Doctor Bailey who had moved his paper from Cincinnati to Washington.
He accepted it and arranged that it should be printed in weekly
instalments--a dangerous method unless the story is completed before
publication begins. With only fragments of her time to write, she sent
off the necessary chapters each week, composed sometimes in pain and
weariness, under almost insurmountable difficulties, seldom revised,
sometimes not even punctuated. But the story was to her so much more
intense a reality than any other earthly thing that the required pages
never failed.
The subject possessed her. Her whole being was saturated with her
theme. Her hot indignation was welling up, her deep pity was a part
of her inmost soul. Day and night it was there in her mind, waiting
to be written, needing but a few hours to bring it into sentences
and paragraphs. She had been a guest at the Shelby plantation soon
after her arrival in Cincinnati. Now, nearly twenty years later, she
described the details of that visit with minutest fidelity--the humble
cot of the negro, the planter’s mansion, the funny pranks and songs of
the slaves. Eliza’s escape was suggested by the story of one of her own
servants. Uncle Tom’s simple honor and loyalty were characteristics
impressed on her by the husband of a former slave woman for whom she
wrote letters, a man who remained in bondage rather than break his
promise to his master and so win his freedom. Topsy was a child in Mrs.
Stowe’s mission Sunday-school class, who only grinned in bewilderment
when asked, “Have you ever heard anything about God?” When the teacher
asked again, “Do you know who made you?” the answer was, “Nobody as I
knows on,” the eyes twinkling as she added, “I ’spect I growed.” And
Legree’s plantation was pictured to her in a letter from her brother
Charles, who went on a business trip up the Red River to an estate
where the slaves were treated with a brutality almost indescribable.
Her own experiences thus gave the personal touch that fires knowledge
into passion.
“My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and
injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying God to let
me do a little, and to cause my cry for them to be heard. Weeping many
a time as I thought of the slave mothers whose babes were torn from
them, I put my lifeblood, my prayers, my tears, into the book,” was
her own graphic description of its making.
The story was not so much composed by her as imposed upon her. Scenes
and conversations and incidents rushed on her with a vividness and
importunity admitting of no denial. She had no choice in the matter,
the book insisted on getting itself into shape and could not be
withstood.
Years afterward an old sea captain asked to shake hands with the author
of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.
“I did not write it,” said the white-haired lady gently.
“You didn’t?” he ejaculated in great surprise. “Why, who did, then?”
“God wrote it,” she replied simply, “I merely did His dictation.”
“Amen,” said the captain reverently, and walked thoughtfully away.
The serial ran in the _New Era_ from June of 1851 to the following
April. When it was nearing completion a firm in Boston offered to print
it in book form, but feared failure if it was much longer.
“I can not stop,” was her answer, “until it is done.”
Henry Ward Beecher told his sister his plans to work against slavery in
Plymouth church.
“I too have begun to do something,” was her reply; “I have begun a
story trying to set forth the sufferings and wrongs of the slaves.”
“That’s right, Hattie. Finish it and I’ll scatter it thick as the
leaves of Vallombrosa.”
But there was small need for his endorsement. It was soon published
as a book. Would anybody read it, she asked herself doubtfully;
the subject was so unpopular. She would help it make its way, if
possible, and sent a copy to Queen Victoria, knowing how deeply she was
interested in the abolition of slavery. Then this busy woman waited in
the quiet Maine home to see what the world would say.
The first day three thousand copies were sold, ten thousand in ten
days, over three hundred thousand the first year. The magazine had
paid her three hundred dollars for the manuscript; the check for
her first month’s royalty was ten thousand dollars, when Professor
Stowe had hoped the proceeds would buy her a new silk dress. There
were translations into twenty different languages, forty editions in
England, while the publishers lost count of the number in America. How
restful for the tired overworked woman to have more than enough for her
daily needs, to be free from the anxieties of poverty!
“Having been poor all my life,” she said, “and expecting to be poor for
the rest of it, the idea of making money by a book which I wrote just
because I couldn’t help it, never occurred to me.”
Written with a purpose, a great underlying principle, _Uncle Tom’s
Cabin_ is distinctly the work of a woman’s heart, not of her head. And
this explains the book’s merits as well as its literary defects.
“But if critics find unskilful treatment,” wrote George Sand, “look
well at them and see if their eyes are dry when they are reading this
or that chapter. The life and death of a little child and of a negro
slave--that is the whole book. The affection that unites them is the
only love story.”
Yet this book met with a success that reads like a fairy tale. It was
dramatized immediately, six London theaters playing it at the same
time. Learned reviews printed long notices of it, leading writers
in America and England added their critical appreciation. Even those
rating it low as a work of art called it a true picture of slavery.
The common people accepted it eagerly, making it the most widely read
book of modern times. It was one of the greatest triumphs in literary
history, to say nothing of the higher moral triumph.
Its effect on the public was electric. The air, already charged with
feeling, was ready to become impassioned. After its reading the
Missouri Compromise was felt to be monstrous and impossible, enforcing
the fugitive slave law absolutely out of the question. Throughout the
North the book was received with acclamations. All classes, rich and
poor, young and old, religious and irreligious, read it. No one who
began it could remain unchanged. Echoes of sympathy came to the author
from all parts of the land; the indignation, pity and distress which
had long weighed on her soul seemed to pass from her to the readers of
the book.
Some of the slaveholders Mrs. Stowe pictured as amiable, generous,
just, with beautiful traits of character. She admitted fully their
temptations, their perplexities, their difficulties. She thought the
abolitionists would say, “Too mild altogether!” But the entire South
rose against the book, in a hurricane of denial and abuse. The daily
papers featured column after column of minute criticism which seemed to
leave the book in tatters--its facts were false, its art contemptible,
its moral tone slanderous and anti-Christian. Thousands of angry and
abusive letters poured in on the author.
“_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ met with such a universal praising,” she said to
one of her brothers, “that I began to think, ‘Woe unto you when all men
speak well of you!’ But I have been relieved of my fears on that score.
If there is any blessing in all manner of evil said falsely against
one, I am likely to have it.”
In the North a large element condemned the book no less severely--those
who thought slavery just, who feared civil strife, who opposed
abolition. But it was encouraging at least in this respect: The subject
of slavery was now fairly up for inquiry before the public mind. The
systematic efforts which had been made for years to prevent its being
discussed were proving ineffectual. And on the whole the North accepted
the story as a fair indictment of the national sin and as a sermon to
them on their part in it.
For the moral sense of the people was awakened. The men who had viewed
the subject with indifference became haters of the system. The sleepy
church which had lagged behind in the rear of progress was stirred as
if by a blast from the last trumpet. Politicians in Congress trembled,
statesmen scented danger near. The unpopular reformers who had taken
their lives in their hands, found their ranks reinforced by sturdy
enthusiastic recruits. The story told the same appalling facts they
had been stating in their meetings and printing in their papers, but
the people would neither listen nor read. But Uncle Tom spoke with
authority, and not as the scribes.
The marvel of its time, the wonder of succeeding generations of
readers, this book was the beginning of the end of slavery. No other
individual contributed so much to its downfall--Whittier’s fiery
lyrics, Sumner’s speeches, Phillips’ eloquence, the sermons of Parker
and the Beechers, all fell short of the accomplishment of Harriet
Beecher Stowe. She now found herself the most famous woman in the
world. When she went to Washington, after the Civil War had begun,
Abraham Lincoln on being introduced to her asked, “What! are you the
little woman that caused this great war?” and then took her off to a
deep window-seat for an hour’s talk.
Invited to England, Mrs. Stowe found her journey there almost a royal
progress. People stood at their doors to see her pass by. Children ran
ahead of the carriage and offered her flowers. “That’s her,” cried
out the newsboys on the street, “d’ye see the courls?” A national
penny offering, coming from all classes of society, was turned into a
thousand golden sovereigns and presented to her, to be used for the
cause of the slave. There were many addresses and public meetings and
demonstrations of sympathy, and from the people a perfect ovation. The
great of the court, of literary England, anti-slavery leaders, united
to pay her homage.
One of her gifts she brought back to America, in order to complete
its record. The Duchess of Sutherland gave her a gold bracelet in
the form of a slave’s shackles, inscribed “We trust it is a memorial
of a chain that is soon to be broken.” Its links bore the dates for
the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery itself in England
and her possessions. Later Mrs. Stowe had other links marked for
the ending of slavery in the District of Columbia, the Emancipation
Proclamation, and the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in
this country--changes due largely to her work, two of these events
coming within a decade after _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was published.
After her return to America, Mrs. Stowe kept on writing--sketches of
her experiences abroad, essays and stories of New England life, and
a second slavery novel called _Dred_, which the critics announced a
greater book than _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, but its popular success was less.
Her whole soul was bound up in the affairs of the nation as the crisis
of 1861 drew nearer. She dreaded war, yet believed that it was the
red-hot iron that must burn away the nation’s disease.
“It was God’s will,” she said, “that this land, north as well as
south, should deeply and terribly suffer for the sin of consenting
to and encouraging the great oppressions of the south; that the
ill-gotten wealth which had arisen from striking hands with oppression
and robbery should be paid back in the taxes of war; that the blood of
the poor slave, that had cried so many years from the ground in vain,
should be answered by the blood of the sons from the best hearthstones
through all the free states; that the slave mothers whose tears nobody
regarded should have with them a great company of weepers, north
and south, Rachels weeping for their children and refusing to be
comforted; that the free states who refused to listen when they were
told of lingering starvation, cold, privation, and barbarous cruelty
as perpetrated on the slave, should have lingering starvation, cold,
hunger, and cruelty doing its work among their own sons, at the hands
of these slave masters with whose sins our nation had connived.”
Her own son was among the first to enlist when Lincoln called for
volunteers. “Would you have men say that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son is
a coward?” he replied to a question about his going. And she received
him back from Gettysburg with a wound in his head from which he never
recovered.
From morning till night, all the days of the week, throughout the war
Mrs. Stowe worked steadily. Years before she had written an appeal
to the women of America, setting forth the injustice and misery of
slavery, begging them to work together to have the system abolished.
And when a strong party arose in England favoring the South, she wrote
another appeal to her sisters there, which helped to crystallize public
sentiment in favor of abolition and the North, to stop the English talk
of recognizing the independence of the confederacy and of mediation.
Its effect on the press and on Parliament was at once evident, and all
over the kingdom resolutions were passed for the Union.
During the trying days of reconstruction she worked to secure full
rights for the freedmen. Living in Florida for the winters, and in
Connecticut in the summers, both north and south she helped to educate
the negroes whom she had helped to free.
She still wrote well for many years, though she never achieved another
exceptional success. Thirty books in all she published, some of them
admirable, and then claimed a release from active service, saying she
had written all her thoughts. But had Uncle Tom been her only hero,
still would she live in the history of our country as foremost in the
movement against slavery.
CHAPTER XII
JULIA WARD HOWE
1819-1910
Julia Ward was born in New York City, and lived most of her life there
and in Boston. Her father was a wealthy banker, with a fine sense of
American noblesse oblige. Her mother, a woman of scholarly tastes, died
when Julia was only five.
Mr. Ward gave his children every possible advantage--lessons in French
and Italian and music, as well as the best English education; and the
three daughters had as good a training as the three sons. Julia was
an unusual child with a wonderful memory, and learned very quickly.
She wrote poems, solemn poems, when a very little girl. At nine she
listened at school to recitations in Italian and handed the amazed
instructor a composition in that language asking to be allowed to join
the class--and this request was granted, though the other pupils were
twice her age.
Life was a serious thing to this child who was brought up very
strictly, with duty and dignity constantly impressed upon her. She
heard frequently stories of her ancestors--colonial governors,
Revolutionary officers, Nathaniel Greene, and Marion, the “swamp fox
of Carolina,”--the long line passed before the grave little girl,
terrible as an army with banners; but always with the trumpet call of
inspiration in the thought that they belonged to her.
When she was sixteen her brother returned from several years of study
in Germany, and a new world was opened to her--German philosophy and
poetry, and simultaneously New York society; for at once he made the
Ward home one of the social centers of the city. Julia became the
reigning favorite and won everybody by her beauty and charm, her tact
and ready wit and good humor. She continued her studies regularly,
translating German and French and Italian poems, reading philosophy and
writing verses.
Visiting in Boston, she made the acquaintance of the literary group
there--Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Holmes. Charles Sumner was
her brother’s intimate friend, and one day when he and Longfellow
were calling on Miss Ward they suggested driving over to the Perkins
Institute for the Blind.
They had frequently talked to her of its founder, Doctor Samuel Gridley
Howe, the truest hero that America and their century had produced, and
withal the best of comrades. The Chevalier, they named him, a Bayard
without fear and without reproach. She knew something of the six years
he had spent in Greece, fighting during the war for independence
and serving as surgeon-in-chief. She knew of his pioneer work for
educating the blind, and of his marvelous achievement in teaching Laura
Bridgeman--the little blind and deaf and dumb girl, the statue which he
had brought to life.
When the three friends arrived Doctor Howe was absent, but before
they had finished their tour of the building Sumner spied him from
the window and called out, “There he is now, on his black horse.” The
young lady saw him, “a noble rider on a noble steed,” and into her
life he rode that day, like a medieval chevalier, in spite of the
fact that he was forty and she only twenty-four, in spite of the fact
that she had lived a gay social life and he was a serious reformer and
philanthropist who believed that with the world so full of needy people
no one had a right to luxury.
Life with a reformer husband was not always the care-free thing Julia
Ward had known, but she had shipped as mate for the voyage, she once
said with a merry laugh, and added, “I can not imagine a more useful
motto for married life.” She realized always that the deepest and
most steadfast part of herself she owed to Doctor Howe. “But for
the Chevalier, I should have been merely a woman of the world and a
literary dabbler.”
With all the cares and joys of a rich home life with her six children,
she found time for study and writing. She published two volumes of
verse, the first anonymously, but the secret could not be kept, for
people declared that no one but Julia Ward Howe could be its author.
In addition to his work for the blind, Doctor Howe edited an
anti-slavery paper called the _Boston Commonwealth_, and his wife
helped him with that task. Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson and
Theodore Parker became their friends and co-workers. To balance the
reformers, Edwin Booth, Holmes, Longfellow and Emerson were frequent
guests, drawn by the magnet of Mrs. Howe’s personality.
The slavery question became more and more acute, and soon the country
was plunged into civil war. Every earnest woman longed to be of some
immediate service to the nation and to humanity. Mrs. Howe was fired
with the desire to help. Her husband was beyond the age for military
duty, her oldest son was a lad, the youngest child two years old. She
could not leave home as a nurse. She lacked the practical deftness to
prepare lint and hospital stores. She seemed to have nothing to give,
there was nothing for her to do.
If only her gift for verses were not so slight! If she could but voice
the spirit of the hour!
During the autumn of 1861 Julia Ward Howe visited Washington. With
friends she went to watch a review of the northern troops, at
some distance from the city. While the maneuvers were going on, a
sudden movement of the Confederates brought the pageant to a close.
Detachments of soldiers galloped to the assistance of a small body of
men in danger of being surrounded and cut off from retreat; while the
troops remaining were ordered back to camp.
The carriage with the Boston visitors returned very slowly to
Washington, for soldiers filled the roads. There were tedious waits
while the marching regiments passed them. To beguile the time and to
relieve the tense situation, they sang snatches of popular army songs,
and one of these was _John Brown’s Body_.
“Good for you!” called out the passing boys in blue, and joined in the
chorus with a will, “His soul goes marching on.”
“Mrs. Howe,” asked James Freeman Clarke, who was in the carriage with
her, “why don’t you write some really worthy words for that stirring
tune?”
“I have often wished to do it,” she replied.
And that night her wish was fulfilled. Very early, in the gray of the
morning twilight, she awoke and as she waited for the dawn the poem
came to her, line by line, till the first stanza was finished. Phrase
by phrase, and another stanza! The words came sweeping over her with
the rhythm of marching feet. Resistlessly the long lines swung into
place before her eyes. “Let us die to make men free, while God is
marching on,” and the _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ was achieved.
“I must get up and write it down, lest I fall asleep again and forget
it,” she said to herself. In the half light she groped for pen and
paper and scrawled the lines down, almost without looking--a thing she
had often done before, when verses came to her in the night. With the
words put down in black and white, safe from oblivion, she went to
sleep again, saying drowsily to herself, “I like this better than most
things I have written.”
The poem was published soon after in the _Atlantic Monthly_, but
aroused little comment. The war, with alternate victory and defeat,
engrossed public attention. Small heed could be paid to a few lines in
a magazine.
But an army chaplain in Ohio read it, liked it, and memorized it before
putting down the _Atlantic_. Captured at Winchester, where he had
delayed to help the doctors with the wounded, this chaplain was sent
to Libby Prison, in Richmond. One large, comfortless room the Union
men had, with the floor for a bed. The Confederate officer in charge
told them one night that the South had just had a great victory; and
while they sat there in sorrow old Ben, a negro who sold them papers,
whispered to one prisoner that this news was false, that Gettysburg had
been a great defeat for the South.
The word passed like a flame. Men leaped to their feet, and broke into
rejoicings. They shouted and embraced one another in a frenzy of joy
and triumph. And the fighting Chaplain McCabe, standing in the middle
of that great room, lifted up his fine baritone voice and sang, “Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Every voice took
up the chorus and “Glory, glory hallelujah, our God is marching on,”
rang through Libby Prison. You can imagine the effect of the tremendous
uplift of the lines.
Released, the fighting chaplain began work for the Christian Commission
and gave a lecture in the hall of representatives in Washington.
As part of his recent experiences he told this incident of their
celebration of the battle of Gettysburg, and ended by singing Mrs.
Howe’s poem, as only the man who had lived it could sing it. The great
audience was electrified. Men and women sprang to their feet and wept
and shouted. Above the wild applause they heard the voice of Abraham
Lincoln calling, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, “Sing it
again!”
McCabe sang it and the nation took up the chorus. The story of this
lecture made the hymn popular everywhere. It was sung in all the homes
of the North, at recruiting meetings and rallies. The troops sang it in
bivouac at night, and on the march. The Union army seized on it as its
battle cry and sang it as they went into action.
This song, which wrote itself in a wonderful moment of inspiration,
embodied the very soul of the Union cause. Yet throughout its twenty
lines there is no hint of sectional feeling. It was like an electric
shock to the people of the North, the call of a silver trumpet, the
flash of a lifted sword. It inspired them with hope and courage, giving
a new faith in the justice of God. The strength it brought to millions
of men and women can never be measured.
And in the world war of the twentieth century, somewhere in France,
it was sung over and over. Phrase by phrase, the words fitting new
conditions, as they fitted those of the sixties--the lightning of His
terrible sword, the fiery gospel written in burnished rows of steel,
the trumpet that shall never call retreat, sifting out men’s hearts
before His judgment seat, let us die to make men free--these apply in
any warfare or crusade where men are fighting not for self, but for
ideals.
After the war was ended Mrs. Howe continued to study, to write essays
and poems, to give lectures, to serve in many great causes. But she
is best remembered for the message which seemed to come to America,
through her loving and sorrowing heart, from God himself, in the
_Battle Hymn of the Republic_.
CHAPTER XIII
MARY A. LIVERMORE
1821-1905
Mary Ashton Rice was a little Boston girl, brought up very strictly.
She was a restless active child, quick to learn at school, always
enthusiastic over her tasks. A great favorite and a leader, she took
the part of any unfortunate child in school; a cripple, a shabbily
dressed youngster, one who was ridiculed because of her scanty
luncheon, found friend and defender in Mary.
There were few playthings for the Rice children and Mary invented
a wonderful game called “playing church.” In the old woodshed they
arranged logs for the pews and sticks of wood eked out the audience of
children. Mary always conducted the services, praying and preaching
with the greatest seriousness, while the others listened. And her
father would say, “I wish you’d been a boy, child, we’d have trained
you for the ministry.” None of them ever dreamed that she would become
a great public speaker and would often give addresses in churches.
Graduating from school at fourteen, she went to the Charlestown Female
Seminary, and before the term closed was asked to take a position made
vacant by the death of one of the teachers. Reciting and studying out
of hours, she managed to complete the four-year course in two years and
at the same time earned the money for this education.
Then she went as governess in the family of a Virginia planter. She
had heard Lucretia Mott and Whittier lecture, and determined to find
out for herself whether the facts of slavery were as black as they
were painted. She came back from her two years in Virginia, a stanch
abolitionist.
She served as principal in a Massachusetts high school for the next
three years, and resigned to marry Doctor Livermore, a young minister
whose church was near the school. She assisted in his parish work; she
started benevolent and literary and temperance societies among the
church-members; and she helped her husband edit a religious paper,
after they moved to Chicago. She frequently wrote stories and sketches
for eastern magazines, and she sat at the press table in the “Wigwam”
when Lincoln was nominated for the presidency in 1860. With her
writing, her three children, and a quiet, happy home life, doing the
common duties of every day, it seemed impossible that Mary Livermore
would ever be helping to make American history.
But Lincoln was elected, Sumter was fired on, the nation plunged into
civil war, the president called for volunteers.
Summoned to Boston by her father’s illness, Mrs. Livermore was in
the station when the Massachusetts troops started south. The streets
were crowded, the bells rang, the bands played. Women smiled and said
good-by when their hearts were breaking. After the train had pulled out
several women fainted and Mrs. Livermore stayed to help them.
“He has only gone for three months, you know,” she said to one little
mother.
“If my country needs him for three months or three years, I’m not the
woman to hinder him,” was the brave reply. “When he told me at noon
to-day he’d enlisted I gave him my blessing and told him to go, for if
we lose our country, what is there to live for?”
Seeing such partings Mary Livermore could not rest. She had no sons to
send. What could women do to help?
“Nothing,” was the answer from Washington when they offered their
services; “there is no place for women at the front, no need for them
in the hospitals.”
The outbreak of the war found the North wholly unprepared. Hospitals
were few and poorly equipped, nurses scarce and not well trained; there
were no diet kitchens, no organized ways to supply medicines to the
sick, to care for the wounded. Taxed to the utmost in every direction,
the government could not meet all the urgent demands for hospital
supplies. Relief societies sprang up everywhere, working individually,
sending boxes to the troops from their special localities.
But what a waste in that haphazard method! Perishable freight
accumulated till it was a serious problem. Baggage cars were flooded
with fermenting sweetmeats and broken jars of jelly. Decaying fruit
and demoralized cakes were found packed in with clothing and blankets.
The soldiers were constantly moving about and many packages failed of
delivery. The lavish outpouring of the generous people of the North
meant for a time a lavish waste. If the men’s answer to Lincoln’s call
was unparalleled, no less remarkable was the response of the women; but
it needed to be systematized and organized like a great business. That
was Mary A. Livermore’s contribution to saving the Union.
To supplement the work of the federal government the Sanitary
Commission was established. Mrs. Livermore was president of an aid
society in Chicago which was one of the first to merge with the
Commission. And from then till peace came she gave her time, her
energy, her heart and mind and soul to the work of relief. She had
enlisted not for three months, but for the duration of the war. With
Mrs. Jane Hoge she served as organizer and executive not only for all
the activities of Chicago and Illinois, but for the entire Northwest.
Faithfully she worked to provide for the sick and wounded soldiers
abundantly, persistently, methodically.
What full and varied days she had for those four years--opening a great
sewing-room in Chicago where hospital garments were made by the wives
of soldiers, writing hundreds of letters with news of missing men,
establishing a system of relief for their families and for refugees,
giving instructions and arranging transportation for groups of nurses
starting to the front, planning ways and means to raise money and
supplies, writing for her husband’s journal and for other publications
sketches of her “Sanitary” experiences, supervising the four thousand
aid societies under the Chicago office, constantly visiting groups
of ladies to help them start the work, sending out monthly bulletins
to keep in close touch with these branches, appointing inspectors to
report on the quality of food and water, and the sanitary arrangements
in camps and hospitals, printing and distributing to the army pamphlets
on preserving health in camp and emergency treatment, initiating and
overseeing forty soldiers’ lodgings--free hotels for men passing back
and forth separated from their regiments--helping with a pension
agency, a back-pay agency, a directory of more than two hundred
hospitals, sending to the battle-fields surgeons and instruments,
ambulances, anesthetics, and frequently going herself to see that the
things reached the men and were efficiently distributed.
The work of the women of the Northwest she consecrated and organized,
making them half-soldiers while she kept the soldiers half-civilian by
bridging over the chasm between military and home life. She planned
wisely, largely. She worked exactly, persistently. In a few months army
surgeons were enthusiastic in their praise of the Sanitary Commission,
where at first the whole scheme was regarded as quixotic, described
as the fifth wheel of a coach, and reluctantly agreed to only because
its plans could do no harm. And the people of the North accepted their
larger methods and gave supplies to any hospital and any men needing
them. The Commission became the great channel through which the bounty
of the nation flowed to the army.
Every hour saw boxes arriving at the crowded rooms of the Chicago
branch, where the total force of workers was four. Supplies were
unpacked, assorted, repacked, one kind in a box, and sent to Washington
or Louisville, the gates to the South. A high standard Mrs. Livermore
set for her aid societies--one box of hospital supplies every month,
and this standard she upheld throughout the war. Such a rigid system
was insisted on, in receiving and distributing their stores, that a
very insignificant fraction was lost, the vouchers taken at every stage
making it possible to trace them back to the original contributors.
Her first actual war experience was after the victory at Donelson.
There was a cold rain during the first day’s fighting which changed
to sleet and snow with a bleak wind. There were no tents. The men
bivouacked in the snow. Hundreds of them who fell were frozen to the
ground and had to be dug out. The hospitals were not ready for such a
stream of patients. There were few ambulances. In their bloody frozen
uniforms wounded men were jolted over the hilly roads in springless
carts, to be sent to St. Louis.
Mrs. Livermore spent three weeks in the different hospitals there and
in Cairo, visiting every ward, reporting careless arrangements, happy
to see great improvements on her second visit. Always the men greeted
her gladly, stretching out their hands to touch hers, talking freely of
home and friends.
A year later she was sent down the Mississippi with shipments of
sanitary stores, to inspect every hospital from Cairo to Young’s Point,
opposite Vicksburg. Mud and water she found everywhere, swamp fever and
malaria and scurvy. One group of hopelessly sick men she offered to
take north with her, and Grant made this possible by cutting the red
tape of the military régime.
The demand for hospital supplies increased steadily, as the army
increased in numbers and in the scope of its operations. The Sanitary
Commission expended fifty million dollars during the war, each battle
costing about seventy-five thousand, and Gettysburg half a million. And
in raising this vast sum Mrs. Livermore was one of the most efficient
workers.
She planned a great Sanitary Fair in Chicago, to raise twenty-five
thousand dollars. The men laughed at such an impossibility. But the
women went ahead. They hired fourteen of the largest halls in the city,
and went into debt ten thousand dollars. They must have gone crazy,
said the business men, and sent a committee to advise that the fair be
given up, and adding that when they thought the money was needed they
would contribute the twenty-five thousand. But the ladies thanked them
courteously and continued with their plans.
Such a fair as it was, opening with a great parade, “the potato
procession,” the papers had called it, making sport of the scheme. The
school children were given a holiday. Banks and stores were closed.
Railroads ran excursions, bells rang, guns were fired, the whole city
gathered to see the parade--children carrying flags, convalescent
soldiers in carriages, captured standards of the Confederate armies,
and farmers’ wagons with mottoes such as “Our father lies at Stone
River” and “We buried a son at Donelson.” The flags on the horses’
heads were edged with black. The women who rode beside son or husband
were dressed in black. And when the parade stopped in front of Mrs.
Livermore’s house, the crowd was in tears.
The farmers gave great wagon loads of potatoes and cabbages and onions,
for shipment to the soldiers. Live stock was sold at auction just
outside the main hall. In manufacturers’ annex were plows and reapers
and stoves and trunks and washing machines, all for sale. There was
a curiosity shop, an art gallery whose treasures were loaned for the
fair, one hall for entertainments every evening--concerts, tableaux,
lectures by Anna Dickinson, the girl orator. Dinner was served each
day. When it was all over the women had cleared a hundred thousand
dollars.
But the fair did far more than raise this large sum of money. It
was a splendid demonstration of loyalty to the Union. It encouraged
the soldiers. It kindled an electric generosity and a contagious
patriotism, infusing into widely scattered groups of workers an impetus
that lasted through the war. It captured the attention of the entire
loyal North for weeks. Its success led to Sanitary Fairs in Cleveland,
Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, New York and Philadelphia.
Soon after the Chicago fair was over, Mrs. Livermore was asked to
speak to an aid society in Dubuque, Iowa. She left on the night train,
reaching the Mississippi River at a point where there was no bridge and
travelers must cross by ferry. But the ice in the river had stopped the
boats. She waited nearly all day. Could she keep her engagement? At
last she saw two men starting out in a small rowboat, but they refused
to take her.
“You’ll be drowned,” they said.
“I can’t see that I shall drown any more than you!” was her reply, and
finally they rowed her across. Her determination to accomplish whatever
she undertook was one reason for her success.
She had expected to talk informally to a small group of women. To her
dismay she found that great preparations had been made. The largest
church in Dubuque was filled with an eager crowd, the governor and many
noted men being present, and every county in Iowa represented. And her
lecture was announced, “A Voice from the Front.”
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I’m not a public speaker. What I had to
say to a few ladies is not worthy to be called a lecture to this great
audience. I can’t do it!”
So it was arranged that Colonel Stone, with whose regiment she had
spent some time near the line of battle, should take down brief notes
of the talk she would have given to the aid society, and tell the story
to the people. They had started into the church to carry out this plan
when he said to her, “I’ve seen you at the front, I watched your work
in the hospital, and I believe you’re in earnest. I’ve heard you say
you’d give anything for the soldiers. Now is the time for you to give
your voice. Shall this opportunity be lost--or shall Iowa be enlisted
for the work of the Sanitary Commission?”
“I will try,” said Mary A. Livermore.
The sea of faces blurred before her. She seemed to be talking into
blank darkness. She could not hear her own voice. But suddenly the
needs of the soldiers crowded upon her mind, the destitution, sickness,
suffering she had seen at the front,--and the people of Iowa must be
roused to do their share. She thought she had spoken half an hour, it
was nearly two hours. The audience listened spellbound, men and women
weeping, every heart filled with a new patriotism.
“Now,” said the governor when she closed, “Mrs. Livermore has told us
of the soldiers’ needs. It is our turn to speak, and we must speak in
money and gifts.”
Eight thousand dollars were pledged, five hundred barrels of potatoes,
bushels of onions and anti-scorbutics of which the army was greatly
in need. People stayed till eleven o’clock, and the leaders till one,
planning for an Iowa fair which later cleared sixty thousand dollars.
That was the first public speech of the little Mary Rice who had
preached to sticks of wood. But it was not the last. In hundreds of
towns she spoke, raising thousands of dollars for hospital work and
soldiers’ homes, helping organize aid societies and fairs.
And after the war, from Atlantic to Pacific, in churches and colleges,
in city and country, she lectured to crowded houses, talking on her war
experiences in the “Sanitary,” on temperance and woman’s suffrage. A
most popular speaker she was, achieving much for the various causes
with which she was connected. But most of all she is remembered for the
wonders accomplished in the many-sided work of the Sanitary Commission,
whose efficient service helped to win the war.
CHAPTER XIV
BARBARA FRITCHIE
1766-1862
In December, 1766, a daughter was born in the house of a German
immigrant, Nicolaus Hauer, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and she was
named Barbara. She had four sisters and brothers. Their early years
were spent in Pennsylvania and then the family moved to Frederick,
Maryland.
Barbara went to school for a while in Baltimore. Her education was
the best that could be obtained at that day, for she was “thoroughly
well-read and could write.” When she was ninety-two years old she
scorned making her mark on business papers and proudly signed her name.
Barbara remembered the discussions that went on, when she was a very
little girl, about the Boston tea party and the English taxes. She was
nearly ten years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
All her life long she talked with great pride of the success of the
colonists. She remembered many scenes of the Revolution. Step by step
she watched Washington’s career and shared in the popular rejoicing
when peace was announced. In 1791 Washington was entertained in
Frederick and Barbara begged that her china be used in pouring the tea
at the ball. And when Washington died and a memorial funeral was held
in the town, she was chosen as one of the pall-bearers.
Frederick was a lovely little gem, set in a circle of historic hills,
like Nazareth--an old town with narrow streets and lanes, and houses
with queer roofs where the shingles had a double lap that made them
look like old Dutch tiles. There was a market square in the center of
the town, and on the outskirts the stone barracks built during the
reign of Queen Anne, where Braddock met Washington and Franklin in
council, and where prisoners were kept during the Revolution.
Here lived Barbara Fritchie, an active capable woman, known for her
sturdy good sense, her incessant industry and her intense loyalty to
her country. Literally she grew with its growth, watching its progress
through the War of 1812, the admission of new states, westward and ever
westward expanding, till gold was discovered in California; and always
the slavery question sinister and threatening in the background.
When Barbara was nearly forty she married John Caspar Fritchie, a glove
maker. They lived in a little high-gabled story-and-a-half house on
West Patrick Street, built of red brick penciled in white, with white
shutters and two dormer windows in the long sloping roof. They owned
two slaves, Nellie and Harry, who were so kindly treated that when
freed they returned often, as children seek the home of their parents.
Her husband died in 1849 and Dame Fritchie, who never had any children,
lived alone in the little house, busy with her many nieces and nephews,
her knitting and her garden; a slight figure, under medium height, with
small penetrating eyes, usually dressed in black alpaca or satin, with
a starched muslin kerchief crossed on her breast, and a close white
cap. She was always firm and decisive, and had indeed the reputation of
a sharp tongue.
Then began the Civil War and Barbara, ninety-four years old, was noted
for her fearless behavior and her intense outspoken loyalty, when
loyalty was not the easiest matter in that border state. For Frederick
had much to endure that winter. Soldiers of both armies were constantly
in the way, skirmishes and duels were frequent in the narrow streets.
The flag was always flying from the Fritchie window and Dame Barbara
kept busy, helping sick soldiers and cheering the despairing Unionists.
“Never mind,” she would say when news of reverses came, “we must
conquer sometime.” For stimulated by the glorious memory of what
she had lived through, she had a supreme faith that the Union must
survive. “It will never happen that one short life like mine shall see
the beginning and the end of a nation like this.” She would ask the
shopkeeper, “How do matters look now?” If the reports were cheering her
joy was evident; if sad, she would say, “Do not be cast down. We have
seen darker times. Stand firm, it will all come right, I know it will.
The Union must be preserved.”
Often the southern troops marched through Frederick, tired out, and
stopped to rest on the porches of private houses. Once they halted in
front of Barbara Fritchie’s home, sat on her steps, and went to the
spring near by for water. To all this she made no objection, but when
they began to talk in a derogatory way of her beloved country, she was
at the door in a moment and bade them move on, laying about her with
her cane in the most vigorous manner, crying, “Off, off, you Rebels!”
and clearing the porch in a few moments.
With victory alternating between North and South, matters dragged on
until September of 1862, when Lee’s advance troops under Stonewall
Jackson spent a week in Frederick, to encourage recruiting for the
Confederate army. Every Union flag was ordered hauled down, and
according to one version of the story Barbara Fritchie, with the other
loyalists, took down her flag and hid it in the Bible, saying that no
Rebel would think of looking for it there.
Another story tells how on the morning of the sixth Dame Barbara’s
niece went to see her and told her of a rumor that the soldiers would
pass through the town that day. Presently the child ran in and called
out in great excitement, “Aunt Fritchie, the troops are coming!”
To the loyal old lady troops meant only one army. She heard the sound
of marching feet. Picking up a silk flag she stepped out on the porch
and waved it at the men passing. Instantly a murmur arose. A captain,
riding up to the porch, said kindly, “Granny, you had better take your
flag in the house.”
“I won’t do it, I won’t,” was her reply, as she saw for the first time
that the passing soldiers were dressed in gray. Defiantly she shook the
flag. The excitement in the ranks increased. Threatening murmurs arose.
Another officer left the line and said, “Old woman, put that flag away,
or you may get in trouble.”
“I won’t,” she responded and waved it again.
Angry shouts came from the men. A third officer approaching warned her:
“If you don’t stop that, you’ll have that flag shot out of your hand.”
The captain, who was still standing near, turned to him and said
angrily, “If you harm a hair of her head, I’ll shoot you like a dog!
March on,” he commanded sternly, for some of the soldiers had lifted
their guns.
On the twelfth of September the southerners left Frederick and the
Union forces marched in, to leave the following day for South Mountain
and Antietam. It was common talk among the northern soldiers that
some old lady had kept a Union flag flying from her window during the
Rebels’ possession of the town, and that it had been fired on.
As the Federal troops were leaving the city General Reno noticed a
crowd of people in front of Barbara Fritchie’s home, reined in his
horse and heard the story. On being told that she was more than ninety
years old, he exclaimed, “The spirit of 1776!” and his men gave a
mighty shout that echoed along the street. Some of the boys in blue ran
to the window and grasped her hand, saying, “God bless you, old lady!”
and “May you live long, you dear old soul!”
The general dismounted to shake hands with the aged heroine, who gave
him some home-made currant wine, served in the blue delft from which
Washington had drunk. He asked if she would sell him the flag. This she
refused to do, but gave him a bunting flag.
“Frank,” he said to his brother as they rode away, “whom does she
remind you of?”
“Mother.”
The general nodded his head. The next day Reno fell at South Mountain,
mortally wounded, and Barbara’s flag was placed on his casket when it
was sent north to his Massachusetts home.
Three months later Dame Fritchie died, at fourscore and sixteen, and
was buried in the little graveyard of the Reformed Church in Frederick.
Her story was published in the newspapers and gained credence in
Maryland and in Washington. It was accepted as a fitting symbol of a
real and great emotion of the people. Mrs. Southworth, the novelist,
hearing it from friends and from a neighbor who was a connection of the
Fritchie family, sent it to Whittier, adding, “This story of a woman’s
heroism seemed as much to belong to you as a book picked up with your
autograph on the fly-leaf.”
Within a fortnight after its receipt the Quaker poet, in his most
heroic mood, wrote his Barbara Fritchie ballad, remarkable for its
lofty patriotism. Though he had no military training his lines are full
of the spirit of army life, the tread of marching soldiers, the orders
short and sharp, a stirring setting for the courageous act of an old
lady of ninety-six.
“It ought to have fallen into better hands,” Whittier wrote to Mrs.
Southworth. “If it is good for anything thee deserves the credit of it.”
The poem was sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_, whose editor replied,
“Enclosed is a check for fifty dollars, but Barbara’s weight should be
in gold!”
The ballad was, and is, most popular through the North, for it belongs
in the class which the world will never willingly let die. But it
aroused great enmity in the South where people bitterly resented the
statement that a favorite general had ordered his men to fire on an old
lady. There were many denials of all the details of the story, some
from members of the Fritchie family--that Jackson did not pass the
Fritchie house, proved by statements from his staff; that Barbara had
waved her flag only to welcome the Union army, and the incident had
been blended with the story of Mrs. Quantrell, a loyal school-teacher
who did wave the flag in sight of the Confederates; that no such person
as Barbara Fritchie had ever lived in Frederick!
Said Whittier years later, “There has been a good deal of dispute about
my little poem. That there was a Dame Fritchie in Frederick who loved
the old flag is not disputed by any one. If I made any mistake in the
details there was none in my estimate of her noble character and her
loyalty and patriotism. If there was no such occurrence, so much the
worse for Frederick City.”
Across the town from the little churchyard where John and Barbara
Fritchie lie buried is the monument marking the grave of the author of
_The Star-Spangled Banner_. And in both cemeteries the flag floats out,
signaling the one to the other, fulfilling the lines of the Quaker poet:
“Over Barbara Fritchie’s grave
Flag of freedom and union, wave!
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town.”
CHAPTER XV
CLARA BARTON
1821-1912
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December twenty-fifth, in an old
farmhouse in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Her grandfather had
fought through the Revolution, her father in Mad Anthony Wayne’s
campaigns against the Indians. Clara listened to many a stirring story
of the dangers they had met. As they fought their battles over again,
she learned her country’s history and loved it passionately.
The older Barton children were her teachers and very rapidly indeed she
learned. For she went to school at three, able to spell words of three
syllables, but so shy she could not answer questions. Her athletic
brother David, whom she admired greatly, taught her to ride.
“Learning to ride is just learning a horse!” said he.
“How can I learn a horse?” asked the little sister.
“Just feel the horse a part of yourself, the big half for the time
being. Here, hold fast by the mane,” and David lifted her up to a
colt’s back, sprang on another himself and away they galloped down the
pasture--a mad ride which they repeated often, till she learned to
stick on. In after years when she rode strange horses in a trooper’s
saddle, for all-night gallops to safety, she was grateful to David for
those wild rides among the colts.
Strong in body, alert in mind, Clara Barton grew up, never free from
shyness unless she was busily at work. “The only real fun is doing
things,” she would say. She helped milk and churn, she learned to drive
a nail straight, to deal with a situation efficiently, with quick
decision.
When she was eleven David was seriously injured by a fall from the
roof of a new barn, and was for two years an invalid. At once Clara
took charge, her love and sympathy expressed in untiring service. In a
moment she was changed from a lively child, fond of outdoor sports, to
a nurse calm and cheerful, full of resources, no matter how exacting
the doctors’ orders were, no matter how much David was suffering. The
sickroom was tidy and quiet. Clara was clear-headed, equal to every
emergency, always at her post, nothing too hard for her to do well and
promptly, if it would make her brother more comfortable. For those two
years she had not even one half-holiday, so her apprenticeship was
thoroughly served.
“That child’s a born nurse,” the neighbors would say. And the doctors,
agreeing, praised her tenderness and patience. Years later thousands of
men echoed David’s words when he spoke of her loving care.
But these two years made her more sensitive and self-conscious. Her
shyness and unhappiness made her a real problem to her mother.
“Give her some responsibility,” advised a wise family friend, “give her
a school to teach. For others she will be fearless.”
Far ahead of girls of her age in her studies, at fifteen Clara Barton
put up her hair and lengthened her skirts and went to face her forty
pupils. “It was one of the most awful moments of my life,” she
described it long afterward. “I could not find my voice, my hand
trembled so I was afraid to turn the page. But the end of that first
day proved I could do it.”
Her pluck and strength won the respect of the big rough boys, who tried
her out on the playground and found she was as sturdy as they. That
school was a great success, and for sixteen years she taught, winter
and summer.
In Bordentown, New Jersey, no school was possible, she heard, because
of the lawless children who ran wild on the streets. The town officials
were convinced it was hopeless, no use to make the experiment. Here was
something to be done, it challenged her!
“Give me three months, and I’ll teach for nothing,” she proposed, her
eyes flashing with determination.
In a tumbledown old building she began with six gamins, each of whom
at the end of the day became an enthusiastic advertisement for the new
teacher. At the close of the school year she had an assistant, six
hundred children on the roll, and a fine new building was erected, the
first public school in the state. For Clara Barton had a gift for
teaching, plus a pioneer zeal.
When her voice gave out she went to Washington for a rest and secured
a position in the patent office. So she was at the capital when the
conflict long threatening between North and South developed into civil
war. Sumter was fired on. The time for sacrifice had come.
In response to Lincoln’s call for volunteers Massachusetts sent men
immediately, and on the historic nineteenth of April one regiment was
attacked in the streets of Baltimore by a furious mob. With a good many
wounded their train finally reached Washington and was met by a number
of sympathetic women, Clara Barton among them. In the group of injured
soldiers she recognized some of her old pupils and friends. At the
infirmary she helped dress their wounds. Nothing was ready for such an
emergency. Handkerchiefs gave out. Women rushed to their homes and tore
up sheets for bandages. This was Clara Barton’s first experience in
caring for wounded soldiers.
She wanted them to have the necessities, and all the comforts
possible. So she put an advertisement in a Worcester paper, asking
for supplies and money for the wounded men of the sixth regiment,
and stating that she would receive and give out whatever was sent.
Overwhelming was the response of Massachusetts. The food and clothing
filled her apartment to overflowing and she had to rent space in a
warehouse.
This work made a new person of the shy Clara Barton who had been a
bundle of fears. This was no time to be self-conscious. Here was a
great need, and she knew that she had the ability to meet it.
South of Washington battles were going on. Transports left each day
with provisions for the army of the Potomac, returning with a load of
wounded soldiers. Clara Barton went to the docks to meet them. She
moved about, bandaging here, giving medicine there, feeding those weak
from the long fighting and lack of nourishment, writing letters home,
sick at heart when she saw men who had lain on the damp ground for
hours, whose fever had set in, for whom her restoratives and dressings
and tender care were too late.
If only wounds could be attended to as soon as the soldiers fell in
battle, she knew that hundreds of deaths could be prevented. She must
go to the front, to the very firing line, though it was against all
tradition, against all army regulations, against public sentiment. For
many weeks she met only rebuffs and refusals, always the same reply:
“No, the battle-field is no place for a woman. It is full of danger!”
True--but how great was the need of the men at the front, how great the
need of each soldier’s life for the nation! Help must be brought to
them when they fell. She laid her plan before her father who said, “If
you believe that it is your duty, you must go to the front. You need
not fear harm. Every true soldier will respect and bless you.”
Without a doubt then she determined to persist until she
received permission. At last she was able to put her request to
Assistant-Quartermaster General Rucker and asked him for a pass to the
battle front.
“I have the stores, give me a way to reach the men.”
“But you must think of the dangers this work will bring you. At any
time you may be under the fire of the enemy’s guns.”
“But,” was her answer, “I am the daughter of a soldier, I am not afraid
of the battle-field.” She described to him the condition of many of the
men when they reached Washington and added earnestly, “I must go to the
front, to care for them quickly.”
The passport was given her and through the weary years of the war she
stayed at her post--giving medicine to the sick, stimulants to the
wounded and dying, nourishing food to men faint from loss of blood.
Working under no society or leader she was free to come and go. On
sixteen battle-fields, during the hot, muggy summer days of the long
siege of Charleston, all through the Wilderness campaign, in the
Richmond hospitals, there was no limit to her service. And from her
first day on the firing line she had the confidence of the officers and
their help and encouragement. Wherever there were wounded soldiers who
had been under her care, Clara Barton’s name was spoken with affection
and with tears.
In as far as was possible, word of coming engagements was sent her in
advance, that she might be ready with her supplies. At Antietam while
shot was whizzing thick around the group of workers, she ordered her
wagons driven to an old farmhouse just back of the lines. Between the
tall rows of corn, into the barnyard, the worst cases were carried. For
lack of medical supplies the surgeons were using bandages of cornhusks.
Her supplies quickly unloaded, Clara Barton hurried out to revive the
wounded, giving them bread soaked in wine. The store of bread ran out,
she had left only three cases of wine. “Open them,” she commanded,
“give us that, and God help us all!” for faster and faster soldiers
were coming in. She watched the men open the cases. What was that
around the bottles? Cornmeal! She looked at it closely; yes, finely
ground and sifted. It could not have been worth more if it had been
gold dust. In the farmhouse they found kettles. She mixed the cornmeal
with water and soon was making great quantities of gruel. All night
long they carried this hot food up and down the rows of wounded
soldiers.
On one of these trips, in the twilight, she met a surgeon tired and
disheartened. He had only one short candle left, and if men’s lives
were to be saved, the doctors must work all night. “Heartless neglect
and carelessness,” he stormed. But Miss Barton had four boxes of
candles in her stores, ready for just such an emergency.
Near that battle-field she remained until all her supplies were gone.
“If we had had more wagons,” she reported to General Rucker, “there
would have been enough for all the cases at Antietam.”
“You shall have enough the next time,” he responded. And the
government, recognizing the value of her service, gave her ten wagons
and sixty mules and drivers.
Her work succeeded because she had initiative and practical judgment
and rare executive ability and the power of managing men. When her
drivers were rebellious and sulky, showing little respect for orders
that put them under a woman, she controlled them just as she had the
rough boys in her school. Once she prepared a hot dinner and asked them
to share it. After she had cleared away the dishes and was sitting
alone by the fire, awkward and self-conscious they came up to her.
“Come and get warm,” she welcomed them.
“No’m, we didn’t come for that,” said the leader. “We come to tell you
we’re ashamed. Truth is, lady, we didn’t want to come. We knew there
was fightin’ ahead, an’ we ain’t never seen a train with a woman in
charge. Now we’ve been mean and contrary all day long, and here you’ve
treated us like we was the general and his staff, and it’s the best
meal we’ve had in two years and we shan’t trouble you again.”
The next morning they brought her a steaming hot breakfast and for
six months remained with her, through battles and camps and marches,
through frost and snow and heat, a devoted corps of assistants, always
ready for her orders. They helped her nurse the sick and dress the
wounded and soothe the dying, and day by day they themselves grew
gentler and kinder and more tender.
Once Clara Barton worked for five days and nights with three hours of
sleep. Once she had a narrow escape from capture. Often in danger it
seemed as though she had a special protection that she might save the
lives of others. Stooping to give a wounded soldier a drink of water,
a bullet whizzed between them, tearing a hole in her sleeve and ending
the boy’s life.
She gave her help to men who had fought on either side. They were
suffering, they needed her, that was enough. No man is your enemy
when he is wounded. She leaned over a dying officer in a hospital; a
Confederate looked up into her kind face and whispered:
“You have been so very good to me. Do not cross the river, our men are
leading you into an ambush. You must save yourself.”
But his warning was unheeded when later that day the hero-surgeon who
was opening an emergency dressing-station across the river, asked her
help. She went over to Fredericksburg where every stone wall was a
blazing line of battle. A regiment came marching down the street. She
stepped aside. Thinking she must be a terrified southerner, left behind
in their hurried flight, the general leaned from his saddle to ask:
“You’re alone and in great danger, madam. Do you want protection?”
“Thank you, but I think”--Clara Barton looked up at the ranks of
soldiers marching past--“I think, sir, I’m the best protected woman in
the United States!”
“That’s so, that’s so,” cried out the men and gave her a great cheer
that was taken up by line after line till it sounded like the cheering
after a victory.
“I believe you’re right, madam,” said the general, bowing low, and
galloped away.
Over the battle-field a sharp wind was blowing. The suffering men lay
shivering and half frozen in the bitter cold. Some were found famished
under the snow. Clara Barton had all the wounded brought to one place
and great fires built up. But that was not heat enough to warm them.
What to do? She discovered an old chimney not far away. “Tear it down,”
she ordered, “heat the bricks and place them around the men.” Soon she
had kettles of coffee and gruel steaming over the fires, and many a
life she saved at Fredericksburg.
As the war drew to an end President Lincoln received hundreds and
hundreds of letters from anxious parents asking for news of their
boys. The list of missing totaled sixty thousand. In despair the
president sent for Miss Barton, thinking she had more information than
any one else, and asked her to take up the task. A four years’ task
it proved to be. She copied infirmary and burial lists. She studied
records of prisons and hospitals. At Andersonville she laid out the
national cemetery and identified nearly thirteen thousand graves. She
succeeded in tracing and sending definite word of thirty thousand men.
From Maine to Virginia the soldiers knew her. Through the whole country
her name became a household word.
Her strong will had held her body to its work during the long war and
for this tracing service afterward. Then the doctors insisted she must
rest and sent her to Switzerland for change of scene. After a month
when she was beginning to feel some improvement, she had callers one
day representing the International Red Cross Society.
“What is that?” asked Clara Barton.
And they explained--how a Swiss, visiting the battle-field of
Solferino and seeing thousands of French and Austrians wounded,
inadequately cared for, had planned a society for the relief of
soldiers. Its badge, a red cross on a white ground, would give its
workers protection from both armies, and they would help all persons
without regard to their race or religion or uniform--exactly the
principle on which she had been working, and to-day the very heart of
the Red Cross plan. Already, they said, the society was formed and
twenty-two nations had joined it. But the United States, though invited
twice, had done nothing. They asked her help.
Three days afterward the Franco-Prussian War began and soon Clara
Barton was again at the front. With the German army she entered
Strasburg after the siege. On every hand were sick and wounded
soldiers, women and children homeless and ragged and starving. Relief
work started, she went to Paris on the outbreak of the revolution
there. And this work made her enthusiastic about the Red Cross. For at
once she felt the difference--she saw the new society accomplish in
four months, with system and trained workers, what our country had
failed to do in four years. What a contrast--supplies in plenty, wounds
dressed at once, cleanliness, comfort, wherever the white flag with the
red cross was flying, instead of mistakes, delays, needless suffering,
lives sacrificed. She said to herself, “If I live to return to America,
I will try to make them understand what the Red Cross and the Geneva
Treaty mean.”
She succeeded, though it was a task of years. She found officials
indifferent, hard to convince, clinging to the tradition and prejudice
that forbade any alliance with foreign countries, and saying, “Why make
plans for another war? We’ll never have it!”
But in March, 1882, the treaty was signed. Clara Barton became the
first president of the American Red Cross Society, an office she held
for twenty-two years. It was her suggestion that they be prepared to
meet any emergency and give relief in time of peace as well as war.
It was her influence that carried this American amendment in the
International Red Cross Congress.
Many have been the calamities where the Red Cross has given aid--two
wars, floods in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Texas famine, the
Charleston earthquake, the disaster at San Francisco, Florida’s yellow
fever, the Johnstown flood, forest fires--these are a few of the urgent
calls in our own land; and abroad the sufferers in the Russian and
Chinese famines, in Armenia and South Africa, bear witness to her care.
Eighty years old, she went herself to Galveston. At seventy-seven
McKinley sent her to carry relief to the starving Cubans. And during
the Spanish War she nursed American and Cuban and Spanish soldiers,
once in a storm repeating her Antietam experience with hot gruel!
Vast sums of money, poured out by the generous American people, were
placed at her disposal for relief to the suffering and destitute.
A sufficient sum in ready cash she always kept on hand, in case a
telegram came when the banks were closed; for there must be no delay in
the Red Cross’s starting on its mission of mercy.
The world over Clara Barton was known and loved and honored. The German
emperor gave her the order of the iron cross, which at that time had
been awarded only for heroism on the battle-field. Queen Victoria
herself pinned an English decoration on her dress. The Duke of Baden,
Serbia, the Prince of Jerusalem all gave her honors; and her home was
decorated with the flags of all the nations.
Dying at ninety, Clara Barton, retiring and bashful, had given fifty
years of service to suffering humanity, working always on the firing
line. David’s born nurse became head nurse to all the nation. The angel
of the battle-field, as the soldiers loved to call her, became the
country’s angel of mercy.
And in the Red Cross Society, building perhaps better than she knew,
Clara Barton gave the opportunity for every American citizen, man or
woman or little child, to share in her work of love and mercy.
EPILOGUE
Thus ends the story of these women who helped to make the history of
our country. It is a record of courage and of service, of splendid
achievement. And these fifteen women by no means tell the whole story.
The contribution of each could be duplicated, in less degree, many
times. They are but typical of countless women who have been true
American patriots.
The exploring and settling of our country lasted for three centuries,
the building of the nation is not yet finished. There is work for the
women of to-day, if they would be worthy inheritors of these fifteen,
to shape the present true, for the generations to come after. Making
history offers a wide range of service, for heroism wears many forms,
as these brief stories show. But it is of the greatest importance to
the nation that its ideals of heroism shall be high and true.
Every woman can be a soldier faithful, brave and loyal. We of to-day
and of to-morrow must stand shoulder to shoulder with the inspired
women of the past, to express the best in womanhood, to work for the
highest ideals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
Eggleston--_A First Book in American History_, 23-41.
Holland--_Historic Girlhoods_, 92-106.
Jenks--_Captain John Smith_.
Seelye and Eggleston--_Pocahontas_.
Smith--_The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith_.
Sweetser--_Ten American Girls from History_, 1-35.
CHAPTER II
Bouvé--_American Heroes and Heroines_, 13-31.
Brooks--_Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_, 1-29.
Eggleston--_The Beginners of a Nation_, 326-341.
Foster, ed.--_Heroines of Modern Religion_, 1-22.
Hart--_American History Told by Contemporaries_, I, 382-387.
CHAPTER III
Harrison--_The Stars and Stripes_, 60-64.
Horner--_The American Flag_.
Schauffler--_Flag Day_, 50-58 and 61-66.
Tappan--_The Little Book of the Flag_.
CHAPTER IV
Brooks--_Century Book of the American Revolution_, 87-89.
Hemstreet--_The Story of Manhattan_.
Ullmann--_Landmark History of New York_.
Wilson--_New York Old and New_.
CHAPTER V
Bouvé--_American Heroes and Heroines_, 120-128.
Brooks--_Century Book of the American Revolution_, 130-135.
_Journal of American History_, 5:84 (1911).
Stockton--_Stories of New Jersey_.
Sweetser--_Ten American Girls from History_, 71-85.
CHAPTER VI
Brooks--_Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_, 133-167.
Herbert--_The First American--His Homes and His Households_.
Lossing--_Mary and Martha Washington_.
Wharton--_Martha Washington_.
CHAPTER VII
Brady--_Border Fights and Fighters_, 151-163.
Purcell--_Stories of Old Kentucky_.
CHAPTER VIII
Brooks--_First across the Continent_.
Dye--_The Conquest_.
Holland--_Historic Adventures_, 21-58.
_Journal of American History_, I:468 (1907).
Laut--_Pathfinders of the West_.
Lewis and Clark--_Journals_.
Schultz--_Bird Woman_ (written by a man adopted by the Blackfeet
Indians, from accounts given him by friends of Sacajawea).
CHAPTER IX
Bolton--_Famous Leaders among Women_, 123-158.
Bouvé--_American Heroes and Heroines_, 171-180.
Brooks--_Dames and Daughters of the Young Republic_, 1-42.
Holland--_Historic Girlhoods_, 203-216.
Madison--_Memoirs and Letters_.
Tappan--_American Hero Stories_, 224-230.
Todd--_The Story of Washington_.
CHAPTER X
Bolton--_Girls Who Became Famous_, 33-49.
Foster, ed.--_Heroines of Modern Religion_, 88-114.
Hallowell--_James and Lucretia Mott--Life and Letters_.
Morris--_Heroes of Progress in America_, 219-225.
CHAPTER XI
Adams and Foster--_Heroines of Modern Progress_, 89-119.
Bolton--_Girls Who Became Famous_, 1-17.
Crowe--_Harriet Beecher Stowe: Biography for Girls_.
Fields--_Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe_.
Stowe--_Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe_ (by her son).
Wright--_Children’s Stories in American Literature_, 188-202.
CHAPTER XII
Adams and Foster--_Heroines of Modern Progress_, 178-214.
Bolton--_Famous Leaders among Women_, 272-303.
Bristol--_Life of Chaplain McCabe_, 192-203.
Howe--_Reminiscences_.
Parkman--_Heroines of Service_, 117-147.
Richards and Elliott--_Julia Ward Howe_ (by her daughters).
Wade--_The Light Bringers_, 142-171.
Wright--_Children’s Stories in American Literature_, book 2, 212-221.
CHAPTER XIII
Bolton--_Girls Who Became Famous_, 50-67.
Livermore--_My Story of the War_.
Livermore--_The Story of My Life_, chapter 28.
_Our Famous Women_, 386-414.
Whiting--_Women Who Have Ennobled Life_, 53-85.
CHAPTER XIV
_Bookman_, 13:418 (1901).
_Pennsylvania German_, 1906.
_Southern Historical Society Papers_, vol. 27.
CHAPTER XV
Adams and Foster--_Heroines of Modern Progress_, 149-177.
Barton--_The Red Cross in Peace and War_.
Bolton--_Successful Women_, 198-223.
Epler--_Life of Clara Barton_.
Parkman--_Heroines of Service_, 59-85.
Sweetser--_Ten American Girls from History_, 143-173.
Wade--_The Light Bringers_, 64-111.
INDEX
Barton, Clara:
nurse at eleven, 190-1;
success as teacher, 191-3;
cares for first wounded soldiers in Civil War, 193;
distributes supplies, 194;
receives permission to go to front, 195-6;
war record, 196-201;
appointed to search for missing, 201-2;
serves under Red Cross in Franco-Prussian War, 203-4;
starts Red Cross in America, 204;
its president for twenty-two years, 204;
service in disasters, 205;
honors paid her, 205-6.
_Battle Hymn of the Republic_, 159-63.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 132, 136, 144.
Bishop (Washington’s body-servant), 56-8, 67.
Burr, Aaron, 45, 104-5.
Chaboneau, Toussaint, 81-7, 91, 96-8.
Dale, Governor, 11, 12.
Declaration of Independence, 111, 120, 170.
Fritchie, Barbara:
saw four wars, 179-82;
marriage, 181;
her loyalty and faith when Civil War broke out, 182;
troops in Fredericksburg, 182-3;
different versions of flag story, 183-5;
Whittier’s poem, 186-8.
Fugitive slave law, 128-9, 138-40, 146.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 118, 122, 125, 131.
Hamilton, Alexander, 45, 63.
Harlem, battle of, 45-6.
Howe, General, 41, 43-6.
Howe, Julia Ward:
ancestry, 155;
carefully educated, 154;
a social favorite, 155;
marriage, 156-7;
longed to help in Civil War, 158;
how the _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ was written, 159-60;
how Chaplain McCabe popularized it, 161-2.
Hutchinson, Anne:
voyage to America, 18-9;
popularity, 20-1;
her meetings for women, 21-3;
church and state, 22-4;
trial and banishment, 24-8;
massacred by Indians, 28.
Jackson, Stonewall, 183, 187.
Jamestown colony, 7-11, 16-7.
Johnson, Jemima:
Indians attack frontier settlement, 72-3;
imperative need of water, 74-5;
volunteers to bring it, 75-6;
scheme succeeds, 76-7;
attack repulsed, 77-8.
Jones, Paul, 36.
Lafayette, 53.
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 81-5, 89-96, 99.
Libby Prison, 161.
Lincoln, Abraham, 149, 162, 201-2.
Livermore, Mary A.:
first-hand experience with slavery, 165;
helped husband in church and editorial work, 165-6;
organized and systematized relief work of Northwest, 167-72;
Sanitary fairs, 172-4;
first public speech, 175-7.
McCabe, Chaplain, 161-2.
Madison, Dolly:
girlhood in Virginia and Philadelphia, 101-2;
marries John Todd, 103;
death of husband and baby, 103-4;
popularity, 104, 107;
marries Madison, 105-6;
mistress of White House for sixteen years, 107, 113;
British attack Washington, 108-11;
saves Stuart portrait of Washington and Declaration of
Independence, 110-1;
adventures in flight from city, 111-3;
homage paid her, 114.
Madison, James, 104-8, 112-4.
Martineau, Harriet, 121.
Mataoka, 1, 2, 6.
Monmouth, battle of, 50-2.
Morris, Robert, 33, 35.
Mott, Lucretia:
childhood at Nantucket, 115;
early interest in slavery, 117;
preaches in Quaker meeting-houses, 117-20, 126-7, 165;
member of anti-slavery societies, 120-1;
delegate to London convention, 121;
excluded from its meetings, 121-2;
abused and attacked, 123-7;
her part in Dangerfield trial, 128-9;
pioneer work for abolition, 130-1.
Mount Vernon, 59, 63, 66-8, 70, 71.
Murray, Mary Lindley:
delays Howe’s march across Manhattan Island, 43-5;
saves patriot army, 45-6.
Phillips, Wendell, 118, 121, 131.
Pitcher, Molly (Mary Ludwig Hays):
childhood on farm, 47;
accompanies husband to war, 48-50;
carries water for soldiers, 51;
takes husband’s place at cannon, 51-2;
honors given her, 52-4;
monument, 54.
Pocahontas:
saves John Smith, 4-6;
how she got her name, 1, 2, 6;
befriends Jamestown colony, 7;
taken prisoner, 8-10;
marries Rolfe, 11;
visits England, 12-5;
descendants, 16.
Powhatan, 2-6, 8-13.
Putnam, Israel, 41-6.
Red Cross, 202-6.
Rolfe, John, 11, 12, 15.
Ross, Betsy:
apprenticed, 30;
marriage, 30;
reputation as needlewoman, 31, 33;
widowed, 32;
five-pointed star, 35;
her flag adopted by Congress, 35-7.
Ross, Colonel George, 33.
Sacajawea (Bird-woman):
taken prisoner, 80-1;
marries Chaboneau, 81;
meets Lewis and Clark, 81-2;
engaged as interpreter, 82;
birth of son, 82;
heroine of expedition, 83-4;
saves papers and instruments, 84-5;
illness, 85-6;
escape from cloudburst, 86-7;
guides expedition, 88, 92-3;
meets friend and brother, 89-90;
persuades tribe to help white men, 90, 92;
bargaining with Indians, 91;
resourcefulness, 94;
rapid return trip, 95-6;
bids farewell to leaders, 96;
later years and death on Indian reservation, 98-9;
memorials, 99-100.
Sanitary Commission, 168-72.
Smith, John, 2-8, 14.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 122.
Stars and Stripes, 34-7.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher:
early interest in compositions, 133-4;
moves to Cincinnati, 134;
marries Professor Stowe, 135;
discussions over slavery, 135-7;
her own experiences with negroes, 136-7, 141-2;
writing, 135, 138;
excitement over fugitive slave bill, 138-9;
how _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was written, 139-43;
its reception and results, 144-9;
translations, 145;
trip to England, 149-50;
helps change public sentiment in England during Civil War, 152.
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, 139-50.
Valley Forge, 62, 64-6.
Washington, George, 32-5, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49-54, 56-71, 110-1, 180.
Washington, Martha:
education, 55;
first meeting with Washington, 56-7;
marriage, 57-8;
life at Mt. Vernon, 59, 67;
interest in public affairs, 60, 69-70;
patriotic sacrifices, 59, 63-4;
winters spent at headquarters, 61-6;
work for soldiers, 63-6;
at Valley Forge, 62, 64-6;
first lady of the land, 68-71.
Whittier, John G., 148, 186-8.
Williams, Roger, 23, 28.
Winthrop, John, 20, 24-7, 29.
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