In December, 1854, on my return from Kansas to Vermont, I spent several days in St. Louis, in the pleasant family of my friend, Mrs.
Frances D. Gage, who, very much to my regret, was away in Illinois.
The Judge having recently removed to the city, the family were comparatively strangers; Abolitionists in a pro-slavery community.
Mrs. Gage, I think, had broken ground for temperance, but they could tell me of no friends to woman"s rights. Rev. Mr. Elliot was not then one of us, as I learned through a son of Mrs. Gage, who called on him in my behalf for the use of his lecture-room. I felt instinctively that, unfettered by home and business interests, I was less constrained than my friend, and resolved, if possible, to win a hearing for woman. Having secured a hall, I called at the business office of a gentleman of wealth and high social position--a slave-holder and opposed to free Kansas, with whom I had formed a speaking acquaintance in Brattleboro"--and procured from him a voucher for my respectability. Armed with this I called on the editors of the _Republican_ (pro-slavery), and secured a paid notice of my lecture.
The editor of the _Democrat_, who had an interest in free Kansas, and was glad of news items from its immigrants, received me cordially, and gave the "lady lecturer" a handsome "personal," though he had no more interest in my subject than either of the other gentlemen, and gave me little encouragement of an audience. Nevertheless, when the evening came, I met an audience intelligent and respectful, and larger than I had ventured to expect, but not numerous enough to warrant the venture of a second lecture in the expensive hall, which from the refusal of church lecture-rooms, I had been obliged to occupy. But here, as often before and after, a good Providence interposed. Rev. Mr. Weaver, Universalist, claimed recognition as "a reader in his boyhood of Mrs.
Nichols" paper"--his father was a patron of the _Windham County Democrat_--and tendered the use of his church for further lectures. I had found a friend of the cause. The result was a full house, and hearty appeals for "more."
As isolated, historical facts, how very trivial all these "reminiscences" appear! How egotistical the pen that presumes upon anything like a popular interest in their perusal! But to the social and political reformer, as to the Kanes and Livingstons, trifles teach the relations of things, and indicate the methods and courses of action that result in world-wide good or evil. Seeds carried by the winds and waves plant forests and beautify the waste places of the earth. Truths that flowed from the silent nib of my pen in Vermont, had been garnered in a boy"s sympathies to yield me a man"s welcome and aid in St. Louis. How clear the lesson, that for seed-sowing, all seasons belong to G.o.d"s truth!
The autumn and winter of 1860-61 I spent in Wisconsin and Ohio; in Wisconsin, visiting friends and lecturing. In Ohio, Mrs. Frances D.
Gage, Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler, and myself were employed under direction of Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Salem, to canva.s.s the State, lecturing and procuring names to pet.i.tions to the Legislature for equal legal and political rights for the women of the State. The time chosen for this work was inopportune for immediate success--the opening scenes of the rebellion alike absorbing the attention of the people and their Legislature. Women in goodly numbers came out to hear, but men of all cla.s.ses waited in the streets, or congregated in public places to hear the news and discuss the political situation.
From December, 1863, to March, 1866, I was in Washington, D. C., writing in the Military or Revenue Departments, or occupying the position of Matron in the Home for Colored Orphans, which had been opened in the second year of the rebellion, by the help of the Government and the untiring energy of a few n.o.ble women intent on saving the helpless waifs of slavery cast by thousands upon the bare sands of military freedom.
In the autumn of 1867, the Legislature of Kansas having submitted to the voters of the State a woman suffrage amendment to its Const.i.tution, I gave some four weeks to the canva.s.s, which was engaged in by some of the ablest friends of the cause from other States, among them Lucy Stone, Rev. Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. In our own State, among others, Governor Robinson, John Ritchie, and S. N. Wood of the old Free State Guard, rallied to the work. With the canva.s.s of Atchison and Jefferson Counties, and a few lectures in Dougla.s.s, Shawnee, and Osage Counties, I retired from a field overlaid with happy reminders of past trials merged in present blessings. The work was in competent hands, but the time was ill-chosen on account of the political complications with negro suffrage, and failure was the result.
Since December, 1871, my home has been in California, where family cares and the infirmities of age limit my efforts for a freer and a n.o.bler humanity to the pen. Trusting that love of G.o.d and man will ever point it with truth and justice, I close this _expose_ of my public life.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Mrs. Nichols had written up a case occurring among the subscribers to the _Democrat_, in which $500, the whole estate, was divided, the half of that amount being all the law allowed for the support of a woman, then in the decline of life, and sent fifty marked copies of the paper to members of the Legislature elect. One of them introduced the bill, which pa.s.sed the first day of the session.
[23] The violent throbbing of Mrs. Nichols" heart, caused by her unusual position and her intense anxiety that her plea might be successful, had stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy"s batteries and win a verdict of "just and womanly." Mrs. Nichols hoped no further than that. She did not expect conservative Vermont to yield at once for what she asked, as she stood alone with her paper among the press; and there was no other advocate in the State to take the field.
[24] The head and front of the opposition was Judge Kingman, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to which, with the Committee on Elections, my pet.i.tion was referred. He wrote the Report against granting our demand, and of those who signed it all but (Gen.) Blunt and himself were Democrats. The report was adopted by a solid vote of the Democrats (16), and enough Republicans to make a majority. Thirty-six Republicans and 16 Democrats comprised the whole delegation. If my memory is not at fault, 27 Republicans voted in caucus for the provisions which were ultimately carried in our behalf, which was a majority of the whole Convention. In caucus a majority were in favor of political rights; but only a minority, from conviction that Woman Suffrage would prevent admission to the Union, would vote it in Convention.
CHAPTER VIII.
Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.
Women in the Revolution--Anti-Tea Leagues--Phillis Wheatley--Mistress Anne Hutchinson--Heroines in the Slavery Conflict--Women Voting under the Colonial Charter--Mary Upton Ferrin Pet.i.tions the Legislature in 1848--Woman"s Rights Conventions in 1850, "51--Letter of Harriet Martineau from England--Letter of Jeannie Deroine from a Prison Cell in Paris--Editorial from _The Christian Inquirer_--_The Una_, edited by Paulina Wright Davis--Const.i.tutional Convention in 1853--Before the Legislature in 1857--Harriet K. Hunt"s Protest against Taxation--Lucy Stone"s Protest against the Marriage Laws--Boston Conventions--Theodore Parker on Woman"s Position.
During the Revolutionary period, the country was largely indebted to the women of Ma.s.sachusetts. Their patriotism was not only shown in the political plans of Mercy Otis Warren,[25] and the sagacious counsels of Abigail Smith Adams, but by the action of many other women whose names history has not preserved. It was a woman who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride from Boston to Concord, on the night of April 18, 1775, to warn the inhabitants of the expected invasion of the British on the morrow. The church bells pealing far and near on the midnight air, roused tired sleepers hurriedly to arm themselves against the invaders of their homes.
During the war two women of Concord dressed in men"s clothing, captured a spy bearing papers which proved of the utmost importance to the patriot forces.
During these early days, the women of various Colonies--Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, Ma.s.sachusetts--formed Anti-Tea Leagues. In Providence, R. I., young ladies took the initiative; twenty-nine daughters of prominent families, meeting under the shade of the sycamore trees at Roger Williams" spring, there resolving to drink no more tea until the duty upon it was repealed. The name of one of these young ladies, Miss Coddington, has been preserved, to whose house they all adjourned to partake of a frugal repast; hyperion[26] taking the place of the hated bohea. In Newport, at a gathering of ladies, where both hyperion and bohea were offered, every lady present refused the hated bohea, emblem of political slavery. In Boston, early in 1769, the matrons of three hundred families bound themselves to use no more tea until the tax upon it was taken off. The young ladies also entered into a similar covenant, declaring they took this step, not from personal motives, but from a sense of patriotism and a regard for posterity.[27] Liberty, as alone making life of value, looked as sweet to them as to their fathers. The Women"s Anti-Tea Leagues of Boston were formed nearly five years previous to the historic "Boston Tea Party," when men disguised as Indians, threw the East India Company"s tea overboard, and six years before the declaration of war.
American historians ignoring woman after man"s usual custom, have neglected to mention the fact that every paper in Boston was suspended during its invasion by the British, except the chief rebel newspapers of New England, _The Ma.s.sachusetts Gazette_ and _North Boston News-Letter_, owned and edited by a woman, Margaret Draper.
They make small note of Women"s Anti-Tea Leagues, and the many instances of their heroism during the Revolutionary period, equaling, as they did, any deeds of self-sacrifice and bravery that man himself can boast.
The men of Boston, in 1773, could with little loss to themselves, throw overboard a cargo of foreign tea, well knowing that for the last five years this drink had not been allowed in their houses by the women of their own families. Their reputation for patriotism was thus cheaply earned in destroying what did not belong to them and what was of no use to them. Their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters drank raspberry, sage, and birch, lest by the use of foreign tea they should help rivet the chains of oppression upon their country. Why should not the American Revolution have been successful, when women so n.o.bly sustained republican principles, taking the initiative in self-sacrifice and pointing the path to man by patriotic example.
In Ma.s.sachusetts, as in other States, were also formed a.s.sociations known as "Daughters of Liberty."[28] These organizations did much to fan the nascent flames of freedom.
The first naval battle of the Revolution was fought at Machias, Maine, then a part of Ma.s.sachusetts. An insult having been offered its inhabitants, by a vessel in the harbor, the men of the surrounding country joined with them to avenge this indignity to their "Liberty Tree," arming themselves, from scarcity of powder, with scythes, pitchforks, and other implements of peace. At a settlement some twenty miles distant, a quant.i.ty of powder was discovered, after the men had left for Machias. What was to be done, was the immediate question.
Every able-bodied man had already left, only small boys and men too aged or too infirm for battle having remained at home. Upon that powder reaching them the defeat of the British, might depend. In this emergency the heroism of woman was shown. Two young girls, Hannah and Rebecca Weston, volunteered their services. It was no holiday excursion for them, but a trip filled with unseen dangers. The way led through a trackless forest, the route merely indicated by blazed trees. Bears, wolves, and wild-cats were numerous. The distance was impossible to be traversed in a single day; these young girls must spend the night in that dreary wilderness. Worse than danger from wild animals, was that to be apprehended from Indians, who might kill them, or capture and bear them away to some distant tribe. But undauntedly they set out on their perilous journey, carrying twenty pounds of powder. They reached Machias in safety, before the attack on the British ship, finding their powder a most welcome and effective aid in the victory which soon crowned the arms of the Colonists. The heroism of these young girls was far greater than if they had fought in the ranks, surrounded by companions,"mid the accompaniments of beating drums, waving flags, and all the paraphernalia of war.
In the war of 1812 two young girls of Scituate, Rebecca and Abigail W.
Bates, by their wit and sagacity, prevented the landing of the enemy at this point.[29] Congress, during its session of 1880, nearly seventy years afterward, granted them pensions, just as from extreme age they were about to drop into the grave.
Though it is not considered important to celebrate the virtues of the Pilgrim Mothers in gala days, grand dinners, toasts, and speeches, yet a little retrospection would enable us to exhume from the past, many of their achievements worth recording. More facts than we have s.p.a.ce to reproduce, testify to the heroism, religious zeal, and literary industry of the women who helped to build up the early civilization of New England. Their writings, for some presumed on authorship, are quaint and c.u.mbrous; but in those days, when few men published books, it required marked courage for women to appear in print at all. They imitated the style popular among men, and received much attention for their literary ability. Charles T. Congdon, as the result of his explorations through old book-stores, has brought to light some of these early writers.
In 1630, Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, known as quite a pretentious writer, came to Boston with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. Her first work was ent.i.tled "The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America." The first edition was published in London in 1650, and the first Boston edition was published in 1678. If Mrs.
Bradstreet loved praise, she was fortunate in her time and position.
It would have been in bad taste, as it would have been bad policy, not to eulogize the poems of the Governor"s wife. She was frequently complimented in verse as bad as her own. Her next great epic was ent.i.tled "A Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Const.i.tutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year, together with an exact epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz: the a.s.syrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman." "Glad as we were," says the owner, "to obtain this book at a considerable price, we are still gladder of the privilege of closing it." Although this lady had eight children, about whom she wrote some amusing rhymes, she found time in the wilds of America to perpetuate also these ponderous-t.i.tled poems.
Phillis Wheatly, a colored girl, also wrote poetry in Colonial Boston, years before our Declaration of Independence startled the world. She was brought from Africa, and sold in the slave market of Boston, when only six years old. Mr. Sparks, the biographer of Washington, thinks "that the poems contained in her published volume, exhibit the most favorable evidence on record, of the capacity of the African intellect for improvement." When the Rev. George Whitefield died, at Newburyport, Ma.s.s., in 1770, the same writer from whom we quote these facts, says: "It was quite natural, his demise being much talked of in religious families, that our sable Phillis should burst into monody.
That expression of grief I have before me. Of the most rhetorical preacher of his age, it is not inspiring to read:
"He prayed that grace in every heart might dwell.
He louged to see America excel."
Phillis married badly, and died at the age of thirty-one, in 1784, utterly impoverished, leaving three little children. Her own copy of her poems is in the library of Harvard College. When she died it was sold for her husband"s debts.
In a letter thanking her for an acrostic on himself, General Washington said: "If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so gifted by the muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations."
Was there ever any story, which had such a hold upon the readers of a generation, as "Charlotte Temple"? It is said 25,000 copies were sold soon after publication--an enormous sale for that day. Mrs. Rowson, who wrote the book, was a daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; she was an actress in Philadelphia, and afterward kept a school in Boston for young ladies, where she died, in 1824. Her seminary was highly recommended.
Women in the last age naturally drifted into the didactic. They should have the credit of trying always to be useful. They go through so many pages, seeking to give the little people some notion of botany, of natural history, of other branches of human intelligence. There is no book cleverer in its way than Miss Hannah Adams" "History of New England," of which the second edition was published in Boston in 1807. The object of this lady was, as she tells us in the preface, "to impress the minds of young persons with veneration for those eminent men to whom their posterity are so highly indebted." All the tradition is that Miss Adams was a wonderfully learned lady. She is best known by her "History of the Jews." She wrote pretty good English, of which this may be considered a specimen: "Exalted from a feeble state to opulence and independence, the Federal Americans are now recognized as a nation throughout the globe." To a sentence so admirably formed, possibly there is nothing to add.
MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON.
Mistress Anne Hutchinson, founder of the Antinomian party of New England, was a woman who exerted great influence upon the religious and political free thought of those colonies. She was the daughter of an English clergyman, and with her husband, followed Pastor Cotton, to whom she was much attached, to this country in 1634, and was admitted a member of the Boston church, becoming a resident of Ma.s.sachusetts one hundred and forty years before the Revolutionary war. She was of commanding intellect, and exerted a powerful influence upon the infant colony.
It was a long established custom for the brethren of the Boston church to hold, through the week, frequent public meetings for religious exercises. Women were prohibited from taking part in these meetings, which chafed the free spirit of Mistress Hutchinson, and soon she called meetings of the sisters, where she repeated the sermons of the Lord"s day, making comments upon them. Her ill.u.s.trations of Scripture were so new and striking that the meetings were rendered more interesting to the women than any they had attended. At first the clergy approved, but as the men attracted by the fame of her discourses, crowded into her meetings, they began to perceive danger to their authority; the church was pa.s.sing out of their control. Her doctrines, too, were alarming. She taught the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer, its inward revelations, and that the conscious judgment of the mind should be the paramount authority. She was the first woman in America to demand the right of individual judgment upon religious questions. Her influence was very great, yet she was not destined to escape the charge of heresy.
The first Synod in America was called upon her account. It convened August 30, 1637, sat three weeks, and proclaimed eighty-two errors extant; among them the tenets taught by Mistress Hutchinson. She was called before the church and ordered to retract upon twenty-nine points. The infant colony was shaken by this discussion, which took on a political aspect.[30] Mistress Hutchinson remained steadfast, and was sustained by many important people, among whom was the young Governor Vane.
Church and State became united in their opposition to Mistress Anne Hutchinson. The fact that she presumed to teach men, was prominently brought up, and in November, 1637, she was arbitrarily tried before the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court upon a joint charge of sedition and heresy. She was examined for two days by the Governor and prominent members of the clergy. The Boston Church, which knew her worth, sustained her, with the exception of five members, one of them the a.s.sociate pastor, Wilson. But the country churches and clergy were against her, and she was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment and banishment.
As the winter was very severe, she was allowed to remain in Roxbury until spring, when she joined Roger Williams in Rhode Island, where she helped form a body-politic, democratic in principle, in which no one was "accounted delinquent for doctrine." Mistress Hutchinson thus helped to dissever Church and State, and to found religious freedom in the United States.
After her residence in Rhode Island, four men were sent to reclaim her, but she would not return. Upon the death of her husband she moved, for greater security, to "The Dutch Colony," and died somewhere in the State of New York.
Thus, through the protracted struggle of the American Colonies for religious and political freedom, woman bravely shared the dangers and persecutions of those eventful years. As spy in the enemy"s camp; messenger on the battle-field; soldier in disguise; defender of herself and children in the solitude of those primeval forests; imprisoned for heresy; burned, hung, drowned as a witch: what suffering and anxiety has she not endured! what lofty heroism has she not exemplified!
And when the crusade against slavery in our republic was inaugurated in 1830, another Spartan band of women stood ready for the battle, and the storm of that fierce conflict, surpa.s.sing in courage, moral heroism, and conscientious devotion to great principles, all that woman in any age had done or dared. With reverent lips we mention the names of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, Mary S. Parker, Abby Kelly, whose burning words of rebuke aroused a sleeping nation to a new-born love of liberty. To their brave deeds, pure lives, and glowing eloquence, we pay our tributes of esteem and admiration.
To such as these let South Carolina and Ma.s.sachusetts build future monuments, not in Quincy granite, or Parian marble, but in more enduring blessing to the people; inviolable homesteads for the laborer; free schools and colleges for boys and girls, both black and white; justice and mercy in the alms-house, jail, prison, and the marts of trade, thus securing equal rights to all.
WOMAN"S EARLY POLITICAL RIGHTS.