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History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II

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Title: History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II

Editor: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
        Susan B. Anthony
        Matilda Joslyn Gage


        
Release date: February 9, 2009 [eBook #28039]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Edited by

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AND MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.

Illustrated with Steel Engravings.

In Three Volumes.

VOL. II.

1861-1876.


[Illustration: Anna Dickinson. "The World belongs to those who take
it. Truly Yours Anna Dickinson"]


  ALL PERSONS BORN OR NATURALIZED IN THE UNITED STATES, AND SUBJECT TO
       THE JURISDICTION THEREOF, ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.







Susan B. Anthony,
17 Madison St., Rochester, N. Y.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, And
Matilda Joslyn Gage.
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.




PREFACE.


In presenting to our readers the second volume of the "History of
Woman Suffrage," we gladly return our thanks to the press for the many
favorable notices we have received from leading journals, both in the
old world and the new. The words of cordial approval from a large
circle of friends, and especially from women well known in periodical
literature, have been to us a constant stimulus during the toilsome
months we have spent in gathering material for these pages. It was our
purpose to have condensed the records of the last twenty years in a
second volume, but so many new questions in regard to Citizenship,
State rights, and National power, indirectly bearing on the political
rights of women, grew out of the civil war, that the arguments and
decisions in Congress and the Supreme Courts have combined to swell
these pages beyond our most liberal calculations, with much valuable
material that can not be condensed nor ignored, making a third volume
inevitable.

By their active labors all through the great conflict, women learned
that they had many interests outside the home. In the camp and
hospital, and the vacant places at their firesides, they saw how
intimately the interests of the State and the home were intertwined;
that as war and all its concomitants were subjects of legislation, it
was only through a voice in the laws that their efforts for peace
could command consideration.

The political significance of the war, and the prolonged discussions
on the vital principles of government involved in the reconstruction,
threw new light on the status of woman in a republic. Under a liberal
interpretation of the XIV. Amendment, women, believing their rights of
citizenship secured, made several attempts to vote in different
States. Those who succeeded were arrested, tried, and convicted. Those
who were denied the right to register their names and deposit their
votes, sued the Inspectors of Election. Others attempting to practice
law, being denied that right in the States, took their cases up to the
Supreme Court of the United States for adjudication. Others invaded
the pulpit, asking to be ordained, which brought the question of
woman's right to preach before ecclesiastical assemblies. These
various attempts to secure her political and civil rights have called
forth endless discussions on woman's true position in the State, the
church, and the world of work.

While gratefully accepting the generous praises of our friends, we
must briefly reply to some strictures by our critics. Some object to
the title of our work; they say you can not write the "History of
Woman Suffrage" until the fact is accomplished. We feel that already
enough has been achieved to make the final victory certain. Women vote
in England, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and
even India, on certain interests and qualifications; in Wyoming and
Utah on all questions, and on the same basis as male citizens; and in
a dozen States of the Union on school affairs. Moreover, women are
filling many offices, such as Clerks of Courts, Notaries Public,
Masters in Chancery, State Librarians, School Superintendents,
Commissioners of Charity, Post Mistresses, Pension Agents, Engrossing
and Enrolling Clerks in Legislative Assemblies.

After years of persistent effort a resolution was passed in both
Houses, during the present session of Congress (1882), securing "a
select committee on the political Rights and Disabilities of
Woman"--the first time in the history of our Government that a special
committee to look after the interests of woman was ever appointed. A
proposition for a XVI. Amendment to the National Constitution, to
secure to women the right of suffrage, is now pending in Congress.
Some phase of this question is being debated every year in State
Legislatures. Propositions for so amending their constitutions as to
extend the elective franchise to women will be voted upon by the
people in four of the Western States within the coming two years.
These successive steps of progress during forty years are as surely a
part of the History of Woman Suffrage as will be the events of the
closing period in which victory shall at last crown the hard fought
battles of half a century.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.
                                                                  PAGE
The first gun on Sumter, April 12, 1861--Woman's military
genius--Anna Ella Carroll--The Sanitary Movement--Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell--The Hospitals--Dorothea Dix--Services on the
battle-field--Clara Barton--The Freedman's Bureau--Josephine
Griffing--Ladies' National Covenant--Political campaigns--Anna
Dickinson--The Woman's Loyal National League--The Mammoth
Petition--Anniversaries--The Thirteenth Amendment                    1


CHAPTER XVII.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION.

First Petitions to Congress December, 1865, against the word "male"
in the 14th Amendment--Joint resolutions before Congress--Messrs.
Jenckes, Schenck, Broomall, and Stevens--Republicans protest in
presenting petitions--The women seek aid of Democrats--James
Brooks in the House of Representatives--Horace Greeley on the
petitions--Caroline Healy Dall on Messrs. Jenckes and Schenck--The
District of Columbia Suffrage Bill--Senator Cowan, of Pennsylvania,
moved to strike out the word "male"--A three days' debate in the
Senate--The final vote nine in favor of Mr. Cowan's amendment, and
thirty-seven against                                                90


CHAPTER XVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS IN 1866-67.

The first National Woman Suffrage Convention after the
war--Speeches by Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
Henry Ward Beecher, Frances D. Gage, Theodore Tilton, Wendell
Phillips--Petitions to Congress and the Constitutional
Convention--Mrs. Stanton a candidate to Congress--Anniversary of
the Equal Rights Association                                       152


CHAPTER XIX.

THE KANSAS CAMPAIGN--1867.

The Battle Ground of Freedom--Campaign of 1867--Liberals did
not Stand by their Principles--Black Men Opposed to Woman
Suffrage--Republican Press and Party Untrue--Democrats in
Opposition--John Stuart Mill's Letters and Speeches Extensively
Circulated--Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone Opened
the Campaign--Rev. Olympia Brown Followed--60,000 Tracts
Distributed--Appeal Signed by Thirty-one Distinguished Men--Letters
from Helen E. Starrett, Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S. Tenney,
Lieut.-Governor J. B. Root, Rev. Olympia Brown--The Campaign closed
by ex-Governor Robinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and the Hutchinson Family--Speeches and Songs at the Polls in every
Ward in Leavenworth Election Day--Both Amendments lost--9,070 Votes
for Woman Suffrage, 10,843 for Negro Suffrage                      229


CHAPTER XX.

NEW YORK CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

Constitution Amended once in Twenty Years--Mrs. Stanton before the
Legislature Claiming Woman's Right to Vote for Members to the
Convention--An Immense Audience in the Capitol--The Convention
Assembled June 4th, 1867. Twenty Thousand Petitions Presented for
Striking the Word "Male" from the Constitution--"Committee on the
Right of Suffrage, and the Qualifications for Holding Office"
Horace Greeley, Chairman--Mr. Graves, of Herkimer, Leads the
Debate in favor of Woman Suffrage--Horace Greeley's Adverse
Report--Leading Advocates Heard before the Convention--Speech of
George William Curtis on Striking the Word "Man" from Section 1,
Article 11--Final Vote, 19 For, 125 Against--Equal Rights
Anniversary of 1868                                                269


CHAPTER XXI.

RECONSTRUCTION.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments--Universal Suffrage and
Universal Amnesty the Key-note of Reconstruction--Gerrit Smith and
Wendell Phillips hesitate--A Trying Period in the Woman Suffrage
Movement--Those Opposed to the word "Male" in the Fourteenth
Amendment Voted Down in Conventions--The Negro's Hour--Virginia L.
Minor on Suffrage in the District of Columbia--Women Advised to be
Silent--The Hypocrisy of the Democrats preferable to that of the
Republicans--Senator Pomeroy's Amendment--Protests against a Man's
Government--Negro Suffrage a Political Necessity--Charles Sumner
Opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment, but Voted for it as a Party
Measure--Woman Suffrage for Utah--Discussion in the House as to who
Constitute Electors--Bills for Woman Suffrage presented by the Hon.
George W. Julian and Senators Wilson and Pomeroy--The Fifteenth
Amendment--Anna E. Dickinson's Suggestion--Opinions of Women on the
Fifteenth Amendment--The Sixteenth Amendment--Miss Anthony chosen a
Delegate to the Democratic National Convention July 4, 1868--Her
Address Read by a Unanimous Vote--Horatio Seymour in the
Chair--Comments of the Press--_The Revolution_                     313


CHAPTER XXII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1869.

First Convention in Washington--First hearing before
Congress--Delegates Invited from Every State--Senator Pomeroy, of
Kansas--Debate between Colored Men and Women--Grace Greenwood's
Graphic Description--What the Members of the Convention Saw and
Heard in Washington--Robert Purvis--A Western Trip--Conventions in
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Springfield, and Madison--Editorial
Correspondence in _The Revolution_--Anniversaries in New York and
Brooklyn--Conventions in Newport and Saratoga                      345


CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE--UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Francis Minor's Resolutions--Hearing before Congressional
Committee--Descriptions by Mrs. Fannie Howland and Grace
Greenwood--Washington Convention 1870--Rev. Samuel J. May--Senator
Carpenter--Professor Sprague, of Cornell University--Notes
of Mrs. Hooker--May Anniversary in New York--The Fifth Avenue
Conference--Second Decade Celebration--Washington, 1871--Victoria
Woodhull's Memorial--Judiciary Committee--Majority and Minority
Reports--George W. Julian and A. A. Sargent in the House--May
Anniversary, 1871--Washington in 1872--Senate Judiciary
Committee--Benjamin F. Butler--The Sherman-Dahlgren Protest--Women
in Grant and Wilson Campaign                                       407


CHAPTER XXIV.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1873, '74, '75.

Fifth Washington Convention--Mrs. Gage on Centralization--May
Anniversary in New York--Washington Convention, 1874--Frances
Ellen Burr's Report--Rev. O. B. Frothingham in New York
Convention--Territory of Pembina--Discussion in the
Senate--Conventions in Washington and New York, 1875--Hearings
before Congressional Committees                                    521


CHAPTER XXV.

TRIALS AND DECISIONS.

Women Voting under the XVI. Amendment--Appeals to the
Courts--Marilla M. Ricker, of New Hampshire, 1870--Nannette
B. Gardner, Michigan--Sara Andrews Spencer, District of
Columbia--Ellen Rand Van Valkenburgh, California--Catherine V.
Waite, Illinois--Carrie S. Burnham, Pennsylvania--Sarah M. T.
Huntingdon, Connecticut--Susan B. Anthony, New York--Virginia
L. Minor, Missouri--Judges McKee, Jameson, Sharswood,
Cartter--Associate Justice Hunt--Chief Justice Waite--Myra
Bradwell--Hon. Matt. H. Carpenter--Supreme Court Decisions         586


CHAPTER XXVI.

AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.

Circular Letter--Cleveland Convention--Association Completed--Henry
Ward Beecher, President--Convention in Steinway Hall, New
York--George William Curtis Speaks--The First Annual Meeting held
in Cleveland--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, President--Mass Meeting in
Steinway Hall, New York, 1870--State Action Recommended--Moses Coit
Tyler Speaks--Mass Meetings in 1871 in Philadelphia, Washington,
Baltimore, Pittsburgh--Memorial to Congress--Letters from William
Lloyd Garrison and others--Hon. G. F. Hoar Advocates Woman
Suffrage--Anniversary celebrated at St. Louis--Dr. Stone, of
Michigan--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, President, 1872--Convention
in Cooper Institute, New York--Two Hundred Young Women march
in--Meeting in Plymouth Church--Letters from Louise May Alcott and
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps--The Annual Meeting in Detroit--Julia Ward
Howe, President--Letter from James T. Field--Mary F. Eastman
Addresses the Convention. Bishop Gilbert Haven President for
1875--Convention in Steinway Hall, New York--Hon. Charles Bradlaugh
Speaks--Centennial Celebration, July 3d--Petition to Congress for a
XVI. Amendment--Conventions in Indianapolis, Cincinnati,
Washington, and Louisville                                         756

Appendix                                                           863




LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

Vol. II.


  ANNA E. DICKINSON         _Frontispiece._
  CLARA BARTON                       page 25
  CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D.              153
  REV. OLYMPIA BROWN                     265
  JANE GRAHAM JONES                      313
  VIRGINIA L. MINOR                      409
  ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER                489
  BELVA A. LOCKWOOD                      521
  ELLEN CLARK SARGENT                    553
  MYRA BRADWELL                          617
  LUCY STONE                             761
  JULIA WARD HOWE                        793




CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.

     The first gun on Sumter, April 12, 1861--Woman's military
     genius--Anna Ella Carroll--The Sanitary Movement--Dr. Elizabeth
     Blackwell--The Hospitals--Dorothea Dix--Services on the
     battle-field--Clara Barton--The Freedman's Bureau--Josephine
     Griffing--Ladies' National Covenant--Political campaigns--Anna
     Dickinson--The Woman's Loyal National League--The Mammoth
     Petition--Anniversaries--The Thirteenth Amendment.


Our first volume closed with the period when the American people stood
waiting with apprehension the signal of the coming conflict between
the Northern and Southern States. On April 12, 1861, the first gun was
fired on Sumter, and on the 14th it was surrendered. On the 15th, the
President called out 75,000 militia, and summoned Congress to meet
July 4th, when 400,000 men and $400,000,000 were voted to carry on the
war.

These startling events roused the entire people, and turned the
current of their thoughts in new directions. While the nation's life
hung in the balance, and the dread artillery of war drowned alike the
voices of commerce, politics, religion and reform, all hearts were
filled with anxious forebodings, all hands were busy in solemn
preparations for the awful tragedies to come.

At this eventful hour the patriotism of woman shone forth as fervently
and spontaneously as did that of man; and her self-sacrifice and
devotion were displayed in as many varied fields of action. While he
buckled on his knapsack and marched forth to conquer the enemy, she
planned the campaigns which brought the nation victory; fought in the
ranks when she could do so without detection; inspired the sanitary
commission; gathered needed supplies for the grand army; provided
nurses for the hospitals; comforted the sick; smoothed the pillows of
the dying; inscribed the last messages of love to those far away; and
marked the resting-places where the brave men fell. The labor women
accomplished, the hardships they endured, the time and strength they
sacrificed in the war that summoned three million men to arms, can
never be fully appreciated.

Think of the busy hands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making
garments, canning fruits and vegetables, packing boxes, preparing lint
and bandages[1] for soldiers at the front; think of the mothers, wives
and daughters on the far-off prairies, gathering in the harvests, that
their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons might fight the battles of
freedom; of those month after month walking the wards of the hospital;
and those on the battle-field at the midnight hour, ministering to the
wounded and dying, with none but the cold stars to keep them company.

Think of the multitude of delicate, refined women, unused to care and
toil, thrown suddenly on their own resources, to struggle evermore
with poverty and solitude; their hopes and ambitions all freighted in
the brave young men that marched forth from their native hills, with
flying flags and marshal music, to return no more forever. The
untiring labors, the trembling apprehensions, the wrecked hopes, the
dreary solitude of the fatherless, the widowed, the childless in that
great national upheaval, have never been measured or recorded; their
brave deeds never told in story or in song, no monuments built to
their memories, no immortal wreaths to mark their last resting-places.

How much easier it is to march forth with gay companions and marshal
music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting
scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of
reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling
every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How
much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing to
stimulate hope or ambition.

The evils of bad government fall ever most heavily on the mothers of
the race, who, however wise and far-seeing, have no voice in its
administration, no power to protect themselves and their children
against a male dynasty of violence and force.

While the mass of women never philosophize on the principles that
underlie national existence, there were those in our late war who
understood the political significance of the struggle: the
"irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery; between national
and State rights. They saw that to provide lint, bandages, and
supplies for the army, while the war was not conducted on a wise
policy, was labor in vain; and while many organizations, active,
vigilant, self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the
material wants of the army, these few formed themselves into a
National Loyal League to teach sound principles of government, and to
press on the nation's conscience, that "freedom to the slaves was the
only way to victory." Accustomed as most women had been to works of
charity, to the relief of outward suffering, it was difficult to rouse
their enthusiasm for an idea, to persuade them to labor for a
principle. They clamored for practical work, something for their hands
to do; for fairs, sewing societies to raise money for soldier's
families, for tableaux, readings, theatricals, anything but
conventions to discuss principles and to circulate petitions for
emancipation. They could not see that the best service they could
render the army was to suppress the rebellion, and that the most
effective way to accomplish that was to transform the slaves into
soldiers. This Woman's Loyal League voiced the solemn lessons of the
war: liberty to all; national protection for every citizen under our
flag; universal suffrage, and universal amnesty.

As no national recognition has been accorded the grand women who did
faithful service in the late war; no national honors nor profitable
offices bestowed on them, the noble deeds of a few representative
women should be recorded. The military services of Anna Ella Carroll
in planning the campaign on the Tennessee; the labors of Clara Barton
on the battle-field; of Dorothea Dix in the hospital; of Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell in the Sanitary; of Josephine S. Griffing in the Freedman's
Bureau; and the political triumphs of Anna Dickinson in the
Presidential campaign, reflecting as they do all honor on their sex in
general, should ever be proudly remembered by their countrywomen.


ANNA ELLA CARROLL.

THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN.

Anna Ella Carroll, the daughter of Thomas King Carroll formerly
Governor of Maryland, belongs to one of the oldest and most patriotic
families of that State. Her ancestors founded the city of Baltimore;
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, was of the same family.

At the breaking out of the civil war, Maryland was claimed by the
rebellious States, and for a long time her position seemed uncertain.
Miss Carroll, an intimate friend of Gov. Hicks, and at that time a
member of his family, favored the national cause, and by her powerful
arguments induced the Governor to remain firm in his opposition to the
scheme of secession. Thus, despite the siren wooing of the South, in
its plaint of

  "Maryland, my Maryland."

Miss Carroll was the means of preserving her native State to the
Union. Although a slave-owner, and a member of that class which so
largely proved disloyal, Miss Carroll freed her slaves, and devoted
herself throughout the war to the cause of liberty. She replied to the
secession speech of Senator Breckenridge, made during the July session
of Congress 1861, with such lucid and convincing arguments, that the
War Department not only circulated a large edition, but the Government
requested her to prepare other papers upon unsettled points. In
response she wrote a pamphlet entitled "The War Powers of the
Government," published in December, 1861. By the especial request of
President Lincoln she also prepared a paper entitled "The Relation of
Revolted Citizens to the National Government," which was approved by
him, and formed the basis of his subsequent action. In September,
1861, she also prepared a paper on the Constitutional power of the
President to make arrests, and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_;
a subject upon which a great conflict of opinion then existed, even
among persons of unquestioned loyalty.

Early in the fall of 1861, Miss Carroll took a trip to St. Louis to
inspect the progress of the war in the West. A gun-boat fleet, under
the special authorization of the President, was then in preparation
for a descent of the Mississippi. An examination of this plan by Miss
Carroll showed its weakness, and the inevitable disaster it would
bring to the National arms. Her astute military genius led her to the
substitution of another plan, upon which she based great hopes of
success, and its results show it to have been one of the profoundest
strategic movements of the ages. Strategy and generalship are two
entirely distinct forms of the art of war. Many a general, good at
following out a plan, is entirely incapable of forming a successful
one. Napoleon stands in the foremost ranks as a strategist, and is
held as the greatest warrior of modern times, yet he led no forces
into battle. So entirely was he convinced that strategy was the whole
art of war, that he was accustomed to speak of himself as the only
general of his army, thus subordinating the mere command and movement
of forces to the art of strategy. Judged by this standard, which is
acknowledged by all military men, Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland,
holds foremost rank as a military genius. On the 12th of November,
1861, while still in St. Louis, Miss Carroll wrote to Hon. Edward
Bates at Washington (the member of the Cabinet who first suggested the
expedition down the Mississippi), that from information gained by her
she believed this plan would fail, and urged him, instead, to have the
expedition directed up the Tennessee River, as the true line of
attack. She also dispatched a similar letter to Hon. Thomas A. Scott,
at that time Assistant Secretary of War. On the 30th of this month
(November, 1861), Miss Carroll laid the following plan, accompanied by
explanatory maps, before the War Department:

     The civil and military authorities seem to me to be laboring
     under a great mistake in regard to the true key of the war in the
     South-west. It is not the Mississippi, but the Tennessee River.
     Now, all the military preparations made in the West indicate that
     the Mississippi River is the point to which the authorities are
     directing their attention. On that river many battles must be
     fought and heavy risks incurred, before any impression can be
     made on the enemy, all of which could be avoided by using the
     Tennessee River. This river is navigable for medium-class boats
     to the foot of Muscle Shoals in Alabama, and is open to
     navigation all the year, while the distance is but two hundred
     and fifty miles by the river from Paducah on the Ohio. The
     Tennessee offers many advantages over the Mississippi. We should
     avoid the almost impregnable batteries of the enemy, which can
     not be taken without great danger and great risk of life to our
     forces, from the fact that our forces, if crippled, would fall a
     prey to the enemy by being swept by the current to him, and away
     from the relief of our friends. But even should we succeed, still
     we have only begun the war, for we shall then have to fight the
     country from whence the enemy derives his supplies.

     Now an advance up the Tennessee River would avoid this danger;
     for, if our boats were crippled, they would drop back with the
     current and escape capture. But a still greater advantage would
     be its tendency to _cut the enemy's lines in two_, by reaching
     the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, threatening Memphis, which
     lies one hundred miles due west, and no defensible point between;
     also Nashville, only ninety miles north-east, and Florence and
     Tuscumbia in North Alabama, forty miles east. A movement in this
     direction would do more to relieve our friends in Kentucky, and
     inspire the loyal hearts in East Tennessee, than the possession
     of the whole of the Mississippi River. If well executed, it would
     cause the evacuation of all those formidable fortifications on
     which the rebels ground their hopes for success; and in the event
     of our fleet attacking Mobile, the presence of our troops in the
     northern part of Alabama, would be material aid to the fleet.

     Again, the aid our forces would receive from the loyal men in
     Tennessee would enable them soon to crush the last traitor in
     that region, and the _separation of the two extremes_ would do
     more than one hundred battles for the Union cause. The Tennessee
     River is crossed by the Memphis and Louisville Railroad, and the
     Memphis and Nashville Railroad. At Hamburg the river makes the
     big bend on the east, touching the north-east corner of
     Mississippi, entering the north-west corner of Alabama, forming
     an arc to the south, entering the State of Tennessee at the
     north-east corner of Alabama, and if it does not touch the
     north-west corner of Georgia, comes very near it. It is but eight
     miles from Hamburg to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, which
     goes through Tuscumbia, only two miles from the river, which it
     crosses at Decatur thirty miles above, intersecting with the
     Nashville and Chattanooga road at Stephenson. The Tennessee never
     has less than three feet to Hamburg on the "shoalest" bar, and
     during the fall, winter, and spring months, there is always water
     for the largest boats that are used on the Mississippi River. It
     follows, from the above facts, that in making the Mississippi the
     key to the war in the West, or rather in overlooking the
     Tennessee River, the subject is not understood by the superiors
     in command.

The War Department looked over these papers, and Col. Scott, the
Assistant Secretary, possessing a knowledge of the railroad facilities
and connections of the South, unequaled perhaps by any other man in
the country at that time, at once saw the vital importance of Miss
Carroll's plan. He declared it to be the first clear solution of the
difficult problem, and was soon sent West to assist in carrying it out
in detail. The Mississippi expedition was abandoned, and the Tennessee
made the point of attack. Both land and naval forces were ordered to
mass themselves at this point, and the country soon began to feel the
wisdom of this movement. The capture of Fort Henry, an important
Confederate post on the Tennessee River serving to defend the railroad
communication between Memphis and Bowling Green, was the first result
of Miss Carroll's plan. It fell Feb. 6, 1862, and was rapidly followed
by the capture of Fort Donelson, which, after a gallant defense,
surrendered to the Union forces Feb. 16th, and the name of Ulysses S.
Grant, as the general commanding these forces, for the first time
became known to the American people. By these victories the line of
Confederate fortifications was broken, and the enemy's means of
communication between the East and the West were destroyed.

All the historians of our civil war concede that the strategy which
made the Tennessee River the base of military operations in the
South-west, thus cutting the Confederacy in two by its control of the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, also made its final destruction
inevitable. At an early day the Government had neither a just
conception of the rebellion, nor of the steps necessary for its
suppression. It was looked upon from a political rather than a
military point of view, and much valuable time was wasted in
suggestions and plans worse than futile. But while the national
Government had been blind to the real situation, the Confederacy had
every hour strengthened its position both at home and abroad, having
so far secured the recognition of France and England as to have been
acknowledged belligerents, while threats of raising the blockade were
also made by the same powers.

In order to a more full understanding of our national affairs at that
time, we will glance at the proceedings of Congress. When this body
met in December, 1861, a "Committee on the Conduct of the War" was at
once created, and spirited debates upon the situation took place in
both the Senate and the House. It was acknowledged that the salvation
of the country depended upon military success. It was declared that
the rebellion must be speedily put down or it would destroy the
resources of the country, as $2,000,000 a day were then required to
maintain the army in the field. Hon. Mr. Dawes compared the country to
a man under an exhausted receiver gasping for breath, and said that
sixty days of the present state of things must bring about an
ignominious peace. Hon. Geo. W. Julian declared that the country was
in imminent danger of a foreign war, and that in the opinion of many
the great model Republic of the world was in the throes of death. The
credit of the nation was then so poor as to render it unable to make
loans of money from foreign countries. The treasury notes issued by
the Government were falling in the market, selling at five and six per
cent. discount. Mr. Morrill, in the Senate, gave it as his opinion
that in six months the nation would be beyond hope of relief.

England was anxiously hoping for our downfall. _The London Post_, Lord
Palmerston's paper, the organ of the English Government, prophesied
our national bankruptcy within a short time. _The London Times_
denounced us in language deemed too offensive to be read before the
Senate. It urged England's direct interference; counseled the pouring
of a fleet of gun-boats through the St. Lawrence into the lakes with
the opening of spring, "to secure, with the mastery of these waters,
the mastery of all," and declared that three months hence the field
would be all England's own. At that time the British Government had
already sent some thirty thousand men into its colonies in North
America, preparatory to an assault upon our north-western frontier.
The nation seemed upon the point of being lost, and the hopes of
millions of oppressed men in other lands destroyed by the
disintegration of the Union. The war had been waged six months, but
with the exception of West Virginia, the battle had been against the
Union. The fact that military success alone could turn the scale,
though now acknowledged, seemed to Congress as far as ever from
consummation. Our military commanders, quite ignorant of both the
geographical and topographical outlines of our vast country, were
unable to formulate the plan necessary for a decisive blow.

Such was the situation at the time Miss Carroll sent her plan of the
Tennessee campaign to the War Department. Fortunately for civilization
this plan was adopted, and with the fall of Fort Henry, the enemy's
center was pierced, the decisive point gained. From that hour the
nation's final success was assured. Its fall opened the Tennessee
River, and its capture was soon followed by the evacuation of Columbus
and Bowling Green. Fort Donelson was given up, its rebel garrison of
14,000 troops marched out as prisoners of war, and hope sprang up in
the hearts of the people. Pittsburg Landing and Corinth soon followed
the fate of the preceding forts. The President declared the victory at
Fort Henry to be of the utmost importance. North and South its
influence was alike felt. Gen. Beauregard was himself conscious that
this campaign sealed the fate of the "Southern Confederacy." The
success of the Tennessee campaign rendered intervention impossible,
and taught those foreign enemies who were anxiously watching for our
country's downfall, the power and stability of a Republic. Missouri
was kept in the Union by its means, Tennessee and Kentucky were
restored, the National armies were enabled to push to the Gulf States
and secure possession of all the great rivers and routes of internal
communication through the heart of the Confederate territory.

On the 10th of April, 1862, the President issued the following
proclamation:

     It has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the
     land and naval forces engaged in suppressing an internal
     rebellion; and at the same time to avert from our country the
     damages of foreign intervention and invasion.

During all this time the author of this plan remained unknown, except
to the President and his Cabinet, who feared to reveal the fact that
the Government was proceeding under the advice and plan of a civilian,
and that civilian _a woman_. Shortly after the capture of Forts Henry
and Donelson a debate as to the author of this campaign took place in
the House of Representatives.[2] The Senate discussed its origin March
13. It was variously ascribed to the President, to the Secretary of
War, and to different naval and land commanders, Halleck, Grant,
Foote, Smith, and Fremont. The historians of the war have also given
adverse opinions as to its authorship. Draper's "History of the Civil
War" ascribes it to Gen. Halleck; Boynton's "History of the Navy" to
Commodore Foote; Lossing's "Civil War" to the combined wisdom of
Grant, Halleck, and Foote; Badeau's "History of the Civil War"
credits it to Gen. C. F. Smith; and Abbott's "Civil War," to Gen.
Fremont.

But abundant testimony exists proving Miss Carroll's authorship of the
plan, in letters from Hon. B. F. Wade,[3] Chairman of the Committee on
the Conduct of the War; from Hon. Thos. A. Scott, Assistant Secretary
of War; from Hon. L. D. Evans, former Chief-Justice of the Supreme
Court of Texas (entrusted by the Government with an important secret
mission during the war); from Hon. Orestes A. Bronson, and many other
well-known public men; from conversations of President Lincoln and
Secretary Stanton; and from reports of the Military Committee of the
XLI., XLII., and XLVI. Congresses.[4] So anxious was the Government to
keep the origin of the Tennessee campaign a secret, that Col. Scott,
in conversation with Judge Evans, a personal friend of Miss Carroll,
pressed upon him the absolute necessity of Miss Carroll's making no
claim to the authorship while the struggle lasted. In the plenitude of
her self-sacrificing patriotism she remained silent, and saw the
honors rightfully belonging to her heaped upon others, although she
knew the country was indebted to her for its salvation.

Previous to 1862 historians reckoned but fifteen decisive battles[5]
in the world's history, battles in which, says Hallam, a contrary
result would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its
subsequent scenes. Professor Cressy, of the chair of Ancient and
Modern History, University of London, has made these battles the
subject of two grand volumes. The battle of Fort Henry was the
sixteenth, and in its effects may well be deemed the most important of
all.[6] It opened the doors of liberty to the downtrodden and
oppressed among all nations, setting a seal of permanence on the
assertion that self-government is the natural right of every person.

But it was not alone through her plan of the Tennessee campaign that
Miss Carroll exhibited her military genius; throughout the conflict
she continued to send plans and suggestions to the War Department. The
events of history prove the wisdom of those plans, and that had they
been strictly followed, the war would have been brought to a speedy
close,[7] and millions of men and money saved to the country.

Upon the fall of Fort Henry, February, 1862, she again addressed the
War Department, advising an immediate advance upon Mobile or
Vicksburg. In March, 1862, she presented a memorial and maps to
Secretary Stanton in person, in regard to the reduction of Island 10,
which had long been a vain effort by the Union forces, in which she
said:

     The failure to take Island 10, which thus far occasions much
     disappointment to the country, excites no surprise to me. When I
     looked at the gun-boats at St. Louis, and was informed as to
     their powers, and that the current of the Mississippi at full
     tide runs at the rate of five miles per hour, which is very near
     the speed of our gun-boats, I could not resist the conclusion
     that they were not well fitted to the taking of batteries on the
     Mississippi River, if assisted by gun-boats perhaps equal to our
     own. Hence it was that I wrote Col. Scott from there, that the
     Tennessee River was our strategic point, and the successes at
     Forts Henry and Donelson establish the justice of these
     observations. Had our victorious army, after the fall of Fort
     Henry, immediately pushed up the Tennessee River and taken
     position on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, between Corinth,
     Miss., and Decatur, Ala., which might easily have been done at
     that time with a small force, every rebel soldier in Western
     Kentucky and Tennessee would have fled from every position south
     of that railroad. And had Buell pursued the enemy in his retreat
     from Nashville, without delay, into a commanding position in
     North Alabama, on the railroad between Chattanooga and Decatur,
     the rebel government at Richmond would necessarily have been
     obliged to retreat to the cotton States. I am fully satisfied
     that the true policy of General Halleck is to strengthen Grant's
     column by such a force as will enable him at once to seize the
     Memphis and Charleston Railroad, as it is the readiest means of
     reducing Island 10, and all the strongholds to Memphis.

In October, 1862, observing the preparations for a naval attack upon
Vicksburg, Miss Carroll again addressed the Secretary of War in the
following memorial:

     As I understand an expedition is about to go down the river, for
     the purpose of reducing Vicksburg, I have prepared the enclosed
     map in order to demonstrate more clearly the obstacles to be
     encountered in the contemplated assault. In the first place, it
     is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a
     loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only
     about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank
     range of their guns, not only from their water-batteries which
     line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills,
     while the enemy would be protected from the range of our fire.

     By examining the map I enclose, you will at once perceive why a
     place of so little apparent strength has been enabled to resist
     the combined fleets of the Upper and Lower Mississippi. The most
     economical plan for the reduction of Vicksburg now, is to push a
     column from Memphis or Corinth down the Mississippi Central
     Railroad to Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi. The
     occupation of Jackson, and the command of the railroad to New
     Orleans, would compel the immediate evacuation of Vicksburg, as
     well as the retreat of the entire rebel army east of that line;
     and by another movement of our army from Jackson, Miss., or from
     Corinth to Meridan, in the State of Mississippi, on the Ohio and
     Mobile Railroad, especially if aided by a movement of our
     gun-boats on Mobile, the Confederate forces, with all the
     disloyal men and slaves, would be compelled to fly east of the
     Tombigbee. Mobile being then in our possession, with 100,000 men
     at Meridan, would redeem the entire country from Memphis to the
     Tombigbee River. Of course I would have the gun-boats with a
     small force at Vicksburg, as auxiliary to this movement. With
     regard to the canal, Vicksburg can be rendered useless to the
     Confederate army upon the very first rise of the river; but I do
     not advise this, because Vicksburg belongs to the United States,
     and we desire to hold and fortify it, for the Mississippi River
     at Vicksburg and the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad will become
     necessary as a base for our future operations. Vicksburg might
     have been reduced eight months ago, as I advised after the fall
     of Fort Henry, and with much more ease than it can be done
     to-day.

It will be recollected that after a month's attack upon Vicksburg,
commencing June 28, 1862, by the combined Farragut fleet, Porter
mortar flotilla and the gun-boat fleet under Capt. C. H. Davis, the
bombardment of the city was suspended, it being found impossible to
capture and hold it with the forces at command.

In October, 1862, Grant was appointed to the command of the forces
from New Orleans to Vicksburg under the name of the "Department of
Tennessee," and the capture of this "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" was
once more attempted. This was the period of Miss Carroll's memorial
above given, and the results proved the wisdom of her suggestions, as
it was not until the army, by an attack upon its rear, were enabled to
capture this stronghold, July 4, 1863, more than a year after the
first demand of Farragut's fleet for its capitulation. Had it been
attacked immediately after the fall of Fort Henry, according to Miss
Carroll's plan, many lives, costly munitions of war, and much valuable
time would have alike been saved. Miss Carroll's claim before Congress
in connection with the Tennessee campaign of 1862, shows that the
Military Committee of the United States Senate at the third session of
the 41st Congress, reported (document 337), through Senator Howard,
that Miss Carroll "furnished the Government the information which
caused the change of the military expedition which was preparing in
1861 to descend the Mississippi, from that river to the Tennessee
River." The same committee of the 42d Congress, second session
(document 167), reported the evidence in support of this claim. For
the House report of the 46th Congress, third session, see document
386.[8]

No fact in the history of our country is more clearly proved than that
its very existence is due to the military genius of Miss Carroll, and
no more shameful fact in its history exists, than that Congress has
refused all recognition and reward for such patriotic services because
they were rendered by a woman. While in the past twenty years
thousands of men, great and small, have received thanks and rewards
from the country she saved--for work done in accordance with her
plans--Grant, first made known at Donelson, having twice received the
highest office in the gift of the nation--having made the tour of the
world amid universal honors--having received gifts of countless value
at home and abroad--Miss Carroll is still left to struggle for a
recognition of her services from that country which is indebted to her
for its very life.


DOROTHEA DIX,

GOVERNMENT SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES.

Upon the breaking out of the war, Miss Dix, who for years had been
engaged in philanthropic work, saw here another requirement for her
services and hurried to Washington to offer them to her country. She
found her first work in nursing soldiers who had been wounded by the
Baltimore mob.[9] Upon June 10, 1861, she received from the War
Department, Simon Cameron at that time its head, an appointment as the
Government Superintendent of Women Nurses. Secretary Stanton,
succeeding him, ratified this appointment, thus placing her in an
extraordinary and exceptional position, imposing numerous and onerous
duties, among them that of hospital visitation, distributing supplies,
managing ambulances, adjusting disputes, etc. But while appointed to
this office by the Government, Miss Dix found herself as a member of a
disfranchised class, in a position of authority without the power of
enforcing obedience, and the subject of jealousy among hospital
surgeons, which largely militated against the efficiency of her
work.[10]


ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.

THE SANITARY COMMISSION.

It has been computed that since the historic period, fourteen thousand
millions of human beings have fallen in the wars which men have waged
against each other. From careful statistics it has also been estimated
that four-fifths of this loss of life has been due to privation,
exposure, and want of care. At an early day the mortality from
sickness was evidently far greater than the above estimate; as late as
the Crimean War, this mortality reached seven-eighths of the whole
number of deaths. Military surgery was formerly but little understood.
The wounded and sick of an army were indebted to the chance aid of
friend or stranger, or were left to perish from neglect. Nothing has
ever been held so cheap as human life, unless, indeed, it were human
rights. But even from times of antiquity we read of women, sometimes
of noble birth, who followed the soldiers to the field, treating the
wounds of friend or lover with healing balms or rude surgical
appliance. To woman is the world indebted for the first systematic
efforts toward relief, through the establishment of hospitals for sick
or wounded soldiers. As early as the fifth century, the Empress Helena
erected hospitals on the routes between Rome and Constantinople, where
soldiers requiring it, received careful nursing.

In the ninth century an order of women, who consecrated themselves to
field work, arose in the Catholic Church. They were called Beguines,
and everywhere ministered to the sick and wounded of the armies of
Continental Europe during its long period of devastating wars.

To Isabella of Spain,[11] she who sold her jewels to fit Columbus for
the discovery of a New World, is modern warfare most indebted for a
mitigation of its horrors, through the establishment of the first
regular Camp Hospitals. During her war with the Moors she caused a
large number of tents to be furnished at her own charge, with the
requisite medicines, appliances, and attendants for the wounded and
sick of her army. These were known as the "Queen's Hospitals," and
formed the inception of all the tender care given in army hospitals by
the most enlightened nations of to-day.

It is but a few years since Christendom was thrilled by the heroism of
a young English girl of high position, Florence Nightingale, who
having passed through the course of training required for hospital
nurses, voluntarily went out to the Crimea at the time when English
soldiers, wounded and sick, were dying by scores and thousands without
medicine or care, broke over the red-tape rules of the army, and with
her corps of women nurses, brought life in place of death, winning the
gratitude and admiration of her country and mankind by her
self-sacrifice and her powers of organization. Rev. Henry Kinglake, in
his "History of the Crimea," says she brought a priceless
reinforcement of brain power to the nation at a time when the brains
of Englishmen had given signs of inanition.

A few years later brought our own civil war, and the wonderful
sanitary commission, more familiarly known as "The Sanitary," the
public records of which are a part of the history of the war; its
sacrifices and its successes have burned themselves deep into the
hearts of thousands upon thousands. Its fairs in New York, New
England, and the Northwest, were the wonders of the world in the
variety and beauty of their exhibits and the vast sums realized from
them. Scarcely a woman in the nation, from the girl of tender
years,[12] to the aged matron of ninety, whose trembling hands scraped
lint or essayed to knit socks and mittens for "the boys in blue," but
knows its work, for of it they were a part. But not a hundred of all
those thousands who toiled with willing hands, and who, at every
battle met anew to prepare or send off stores, knows that to one of
her own sex was the formation of the Great Sanitary due.[13]

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, returning to this country from England about
the time of the breaking out of the war, fresh from an acquaintance
with Miss Nightingale, and filled with her enthusiasm, at once called
an informal meeting at the New York Infirmary[14] for Women and
Children, where, on April 25th, 1861, the germ of the sanitary, known
as the Ladies' Central Relief,[15] was inaugurated. A public meeting
was held April 26, 1861, at the Cooper Union, its object being to
concentrate scattered efforts by a large and formal organization. The
society then received the name of the "Woman's Central Relief
Association of New York." Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler was chosen its
president. She soon sent out an appeal to women which brought New York
into direct connection with many other portions of the country,
enabling it "to report its monthly disbursements by tens of thousands,
and the sum total of its income by millions." But very soon after its
organization, Miss Schuyler saw the need of more positive connection
with the Government. A united address was sent to the Secretary of War
from the Woman's Central Relief Association, the Advisory Committee of
the Board of Physicians and Surgeons of the hospitals of New York, and
the New York Medical Association for furnishing medical supplies. As
the result of this address, the Sanitary Commission was established
the 9th of June, 1861, under the authority of the Government, and went
into immediate operation. Although acting under Government
authorization, this commission was not sustained at Government
expense, but was supported by the women of the nation. It was
organized under the following general rules:

     1. The system of sanitary relief established by army regulations
     was to be adopted; the Sanitary Commission was to acquaint itself
     fully with those rules, and see that its agents were familiar
     with all the plans and methods of the army system.

     2. The Commission was to direct its efforts mainly to
     strengthening the regular army system, and work to secure the
     favor and co-operation of the Medical Bureau.

     3. The Commission was to know nothing of religious differences or
     State distinctions, distributing without regard to the place
     where troops were enlisted, in a purely national spirit.

Under these provisions the Sanitary Commission completed its full
organization. Dr. Blackwell, in the Ladies' Relief Association, acted
as Chairman of the Registration Committee, a position of onerous
duties, requiring accord with the Medical Bureau and War Department,
and visited Washington in behalf of this committee. But the
Association soon lost her services by her own voluntary act of
withdrawal. Professional jealousy of women doctors being offensively
shown by some of those male physicians with whom she was brought in
contact, she chose to resign rather than allow sex-prejudice to
obstruct the carrying on of the great work originated by her. The
Sanitary, with its Auxiliary Aid Societies, at once presented a method
of help to the loyal[16] women of the country, and every city,
village, and hamlet soon poured its resources into the Commission.
Through it $92,000,000 were raised in aid of the sick and wounded of
the army. Nothing connected with the war so astonished foreign nations
as the work of the Sanitary Commission.

Dr. Henry Bellows, its President at the close of the war, declared in
his farewell address, that the army of women at home had been as
patriotic and as self-sacrificing as the army of men in the field, and
had it not been for their aid the war could not have been brought to a
successful termination.[17]

At every important period in the nation's history, woman has stood by
the side of man in duties. Husband, father, son, or brother have not
suffered or sacrificed alone.

    "The old Continentals
    In their ragged regimentals
    Faltered not,"

because back of them stood the patriotic women of the thirteen
Colonies; those of the north-eastern pine-woods, who aided in the
first naval battle of the Revolution; those of Massachusetts,
Daughters of Liberty, who formed anti-tea leagues, proclaimed inherent
rights, and demanded an independency in advance of the men; those of
New York, who tilled the fields, and, removing their hearth-stones,
manufactured saltpetre from the earth beneath, to make powder for the
army; those of New Jersey, who rebuked traitors; those of
Pennsylvania, who saved the army; those of Virginia, who protested
against taxation without representation; those of South Carolina, who
at Charleston established a paper in opposition to the Stamp Act;
those of North Carolina, whose fiery patriotism secured for the
counties of Rowan and Mecklenberg the derisive name of "The Hornet's
Nest of America." The women of the whole thirteen Colonies everywhere
showed their devotion to freedom and their choice of liberty with
privation, rather than oppression with luxury and ease.

The civil war in our own generation was but an added proof of woman's
love for freedom and her worthiness of its possession. The grandest
war poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was the echo of a woman's
voice,[18] while woman's prescience and power were everywhere
manifested. She saw, before President, Cabinet, generals, or Congress,
that slavery must die before peace could be established in the
country.[19] Months previous to the issue by the President of the
Emancipation Proclamation, women in humble homes were petitioning
Congress for the overthrow of slavery, and agonizing in spirit because
of the dilatoriness of those in power. Were proof of woman's love of
freedom, of her right to freedom needed, the history of our civil war
would alone be sufficient to prove that love, to establish that right.


WOMEN AS SOLDIERS.

Many women fought in the ranks during the war, impelled by the same
patriotic motives which led their fathers, husbands, and brothers into
the contest. Not alone from one State, or in one regiment, but from
various parts of the Union, women were found giving their services and
lives to their country among the rank and file of the army.[20]
Although the nation gladly summoned their aid in camp and hospital,
and on the battle-field with the ambulance corps, it gave them no
recognition as soldiers, even denying them the rights of
chaplaincy,[21] and by "army regulations" entirely refusing them
recognition as part of the fighting forces of the country.

Historians have made no mention of woman's services in the war;
scarcely referring to the vast number commissioned in the army, whose
sex was discovered through some terrible wound, or by their dead
bodies on the battle-field. Even the volumes especially devoted to an
account of woman's work in the war, have mostly ignored her as a
common soldier, although the files of the newspapers of that heroic
period, if carefully examined, would be found to contain many accounts
of women who fought on the field of battle.[22]

Gov. Yates, of Illinois, commissioned the wife of Lieut. Reynolds of
the 17th, as Major, for service in the field, the document being made
out with due formality, having attached to it the great seal of State.
President Lincoln, more liberal than the Secretary of War, himself
promoted the wife of another Illinois officer, named Gates, to a
majorship, for service in the hospital and bravery on the field.

One young girl is referred to who served in seven different regiments,
participated in several engagements, was twice severely wounded; had
been discovered and mustered out of service eight times, but as many
times had re-enlisted, although a Canadian by birth, being determined
to fight for the American Union.

Hundreds of women marched steadily up to the mouth of a hundred cannon
pouring out fire and smoke, shot and shell, mowing down the advancing
hosts like grass; men, horses, and colors going down in confusion,
disappearing in clouds of smoke; the only sound, the screaming of
shells, the crackling of musketry, the thunder of artillery, through
all this women were sustained by the enthusiasm born of love of
country and liberty.

    Amid "sighing shot and shrieking shell
    And the splintered fire of the shattered hell,
    And the great white breaths of the cannon smoke
    As the growling guns by the battery spoke.

    .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

    Right up to the guns, black-throated and grim,
    Right down on the hedges bordered with steel,"

bravely marched hundreds of women.

Nor was the war without its naval heroines. Among the vessels captured
by the pirate cruiser _Retribution_, was the Union brigantine, _J. P.
Ellicott_, of Bucksport, Maine, the wives of the captain and mate
being on board. Her officers and crew were transferred to the pirate
vessel and ironed, while a crew from the latter was put on the
brigantine; the wife of the mate was left on board the brig with the
pirate crew. Having cause to fear bad treatment at the hands of the
prize-master[23] and his mate, this woman formed the bold plan of
capturing the vessel. She succeeded in getting the officers
intoxicated, handcuffed them and took possession of the vessel,
persuading the crew, who were mostly colored men from St. Thomas, to
aid her. Having studied navigation with her husband on the voyage, she
assumed command of the brig, directing its course to St. Thomas, which
she reached in safety, placing the vessel in the hands of the United
States Consul, who transferred the prize-master, mate, and crew to a
United States steamer, as prisoners of war. Her name was not given,
but had this bold feat been accomplished by a man or boy, the country
would have rung with praises of the daring deed, and history would
have borne the echoes down to future generations.

Not alone on the tented field did the war find its patriotic victims.
Many women showed their love of country by sacrifices still greater
than enlistment in the army. Among these, especially notable for her
surroundings and family, was Annie Carter Lee, daughter of Gen. Robert
E. Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the rebel army. Her father and three
brothers fought against the Union which she loved, and to which she
adhered. A young girl, scarcely beyond her teens when the war broke
out, she remained firm in her devotion to the National cause, though
for this adherence she was banished by her father as an outcast from
that elegant home once graced by her presence. She did not live to see
the triumph of the cause she loved so well, dying the third year of
the war, aged twenty-three, at Jones Springs, North Carolina,
homeless, because of her love for the Union, with no relative near
her, dependent for care and consolation in her last hours upon the
kindly services of an old colored woman. In her veins ran pure the
blood of "Light-Horse Harry" and that of her great aunt, Hannah Lee
Corbin, who at the time of the Revolution, protested against the
denial of representation to taxpaying women, and whose name does much
to redeem that of Lee from the infamy, of late so justly adhering to
it. When her father, after the war, visited his ancestral home,[24]
then turned into a vast national cemetery, it would seem as though
the spirit of his Union-loving daughter must have floated over him,
whispering of his wrecked hopes, and piercing his heart with a
thousand daggers of remorse as he recalled his blind infatuation, and
the banishment from her home of that bright young life.

Of the three hundred and twenty-eight thousand Union soldiers who lie
buried in national cemeteries, many thousands with headboards marked
"Unknown," hundreds are those of women obliged by army regulations to
fight in disguise. Official records of the military authorities show
that a large number of women recruits were discovered and compelled to
leave the army. A much greater number escaped detection, some of them
passing entirely through the campaigns, while others were made known
by wounds or on being found lifeless upon the battle-field. The
history of the war--which has never yet been truly written--is full of
heroism in which woman is the central figure.

The social and political condition of women was largely changed by our
civil war. Through the withdrawal of so many men from their accustomed
work, new channels of industry were opened to them, the value and
control of money learned, thought upon political questions compelled,
and a desire for their own personal, individual liberty intensified.
It created a revolution in woman herself, as important in its results
as the changed condition of the former slaves, and this silent
influence is still busy. Its work will not have been accomplished
until the chains of ignorance and selfishness are everywhere broken,
and woman shall stand by man's side his recognized equal in rights as
she is now in duties.


CLARA BARTON.

MINISTERING ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

Clara Barton was the youngest child of Capt. Stephen Barton, of
Oxford, Mass., a non-commissioned officer under "Mad Anthony Wayne."
Captain Barton, who was a prosperous farmer and leader in public
affairs, gave his children the best opportunities he could secure for
their improvement. Clara's early education was principally at home
under direction of her brothers and sisters. At sixteen, she commenced
teaching, and followed the occupation for several years, during which
time she assisted her oldest brother, Capt. Stephen Barton, Jr., a man
of fine scholarship and business capacity, in equitably arranging and
increasing the salaries of the large village schools of her native
place, at the same time having clerical oversight of her brother's
counting-house. Subsequently, she finished her school education by a
very thorough course of study at Clinton, N. Y. Miss Barton's
remarkable executive ability was manifested in the fact that she
popularized the Public School System in New Jersey, by opening the
first free school in Bordentown, commencing with six pupils, in an old
tumble-down building, and at the close of the year, leaving six
hundred in the fine edifice at present occupied.

At the close of her work in Bordentown, she went to Washington, D. C.,
to recuperate and indulge herself in congenial literary pursuits.
There she was, without solicitation, appointed by Hon. Charles Mason,
Commissioner of Patents, to the first independent clerkship held by a
woman under our Government. Her thoroughness and faithfulness fitted
her eminently for this position of trust, which she retained until
after the election of President Buchanan, when, being suspected of
Republican sentiments, and Judge Mason having resigned, she was
deposed, and a large part of her salary withheld. She returned to
Massachusetts and spent three years in the study of art,
belles-lettres, and languages. Shortly after the election of Abraham
Lincoln, she was recalled to the Patent Office by the same
administration which had removed her. She returned, as she had left,
without question, and taking up her line of duty, awaited
developments.

When the civil war commenced, she refused to draw her salary from a
treasury already overtaxed, resigned her clerkship and devoted herself
to the assistance of suffering soldiers. Her work commencing before
the organization of Commissions, was continued outside and altogether
independent of them, but always with most cordial sympathy. Miss
Barton never engaged in hospital service. Her chosen labors were on
the battle-field from the beginning, until the wounded and dead were
attended to. Her supplies were her own, and were carried by Government
transportation. Nearly four years she endured the exposures and rigors
of soldier life, in action, always side by side with the field
surgeons, and this on the hardest fought fields; such battles as Cedar
Mountain, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Falmouth, and old
Fredericksburg, siege of Charleston, on Morris Island, at Wagner,
Wilderness and Spotsylvania, The Mine, Deep Bottom, through sieges of
Petersburg and Richmond, with Butler and Grant; through summer without
shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far
disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe
battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed
at all times, but never wounded.

Firm in her integrity to the Union, never swerving from her belief in
the justice of the cause for which the North was fighting, on the
battle-field she knew no North, no South; she made her work one of
humanity alone, bestowing her charities and her care indiscriminately
upon the Blue and the Gray, with an impartiality and Spartan firmness
that astonished the foe and perplexed the friend, often falling under
suspicion, or censure of Union officers unacquainted with her motives
and character for her tender care and firm protection of the wounded
captured in battle. Their home-thrusts were met with the same calm
courage as were the bullets of the enemy, and many a Confederate
soldier lives to bless her for care and life, while no Union man will
ever again doubt her loyalty. All unconsciously to herself she was
carrying out to the letter in practice the grand and beautiful
principles of the Red Cross of Geneva (of which she had never heard),
for the entire _neutrality_ of war relief among the nations of the
earth, that great international step toward a world-wide recognized
humanity, of which she has since become the national advocate and
leader in this country.

[Illustration: Clara Barton. "Very Sincerely Yours Clara Barton."]

At the close of the war she met exchanged prisoners at Annapolis.
Accompanied by Dorrence Atwater, she conducted an expedition, sent at
her request by the United States Government to identify and mark the
graves of the 13,000 soldiers who perished at Andersonville. From
Savannah to that point, as theirs were the first trains which had
passed since the destruction of the railroads by Sherman, they were
obliged to repair the bridges and the embankments, straighten bent
rails, and in some places make new roads. The work was completed in
August, 1865, and her report of the expedition was issued in the
winter of 1866.

The anxiety felt by the whole country for the fate of those whom the
exchange of prisoners and the disbanding of troops failed to reveal,
stimulated her to devise the plan of relief, which, sanctioned by
President Lincoln, resulted in the "search for missing men," which
(except the printing) was carried on entirely at her own expense, to
the extent of several thousand dollars, employing from ten to fifteen
clerks. In the winter of '66, when she was on the point, for want of
further means to carry out her plan, of turning the search over to the
Government, Congress voted $15,000 for reimbursing moneys expended,
and carrying on the work. The search was continued until 1869, and
then a full report made and accepted by Congress. During the winter of
1867-8 Miss Barton was called on to lecture before many lyceums
regarding the incidents of the war.

In 1869, her health failing, she went to Switzerland to rest and
recover, where she was at the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian
war, and immediately tendered her services there, as here, on the
battle-field, under the auspices of the Red Cross of Geneva. Her Royal
Highness the Grand Duchess of Baden, daughter of the Emperor of
Germany, invited Miss Barton to aid her in the establishment of her
noble Badise hospitals, a work which consumed several months. On the
fall of Strasburg she entered the city with the German army, organized
labor for women, conducting the enterprise herself, employing
remuneratively a great number, and clothing over thirty thousand. She
entered Metz with hospital supplies the day of its fall, and Paris the
day after the fall of the Commune. Here she remained two months,
distributing money and clothing which she carried, and afterward met
the poor in every besieged city in France, extending succor to them.

She is a representative of the "International Red Cross of Geneva,"
and President of the American National Association of the Red Cross,
honorary and only woman member of "Comité de Strasbourgeois"; was
decorated with the "Gold Cross of Remembrance" by the Grand Duke and
Duchess of Baden, and with the "Iron Cross of Merit" by the Emperor
and Empress of Germany.

Miss Barton may be said to have given her whole life to humanitarian
affairs, largely national in character. The positions she has
occupied, whether remunerative or not--and she has filled but few paid
positions--have been pioneer ones, in which her efforts and success
have been to raise the standard of woman's work and its recognition
and remuneration. Her time, her property, and her influence have been
held sacred to benevolence of that character that will assist in true
progress. Nevertheless, she is one of the most retiring of women,
never voluntarily coming before the world except at the call of
manifest duty, and shrinking with peculiar sensitiveness from anything
verging on notoriety.

Her summers are passed at her pleasant country residence at Dansville,
New York, where she has regained in a most gratifying degree her
shattered health and war-worn strength, and her winters in Washington
in the interests and charge of the great International movement which
she represents in America.


JOSEPHINE SOPHIE GRIFFING.

_The National Freedman's Relief Association._

BY CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.

Josephine Sophie White was born at Hebron, Conn., December, 1816, and
was educated in her native State. She grew to young womanhood in the
pure and religious atmosphere of the New England hills, and developed
a strength of constitution and character which was the basis of her
truly beneficent life-work. Refined, sympathetic, and conscientious,
with the golden rule for her text, her career was ever marked with
deeds of kindness and charity to the oppressed of every class. Taking
an active part in both the "Anti-slavery" and "Woman's Rights"
struggles, she early learned the very alphabet of liberty. With her
the perception of its blessings and its glory was also a rich
inheritance, and the vigilance and courage to conquer and secure it
for others was not less a noble legacy. The love of liberty flowed
down to her through two streams of life. On the mother's side she was
descended from Peter Waldo[25], after whom the Waldenses were named;
and on the father's, from Peregrine White, who was born in
Massachusetts in 1620, the first child of Pilgrim parents. It is not
strange she was by temperament and constitution a reformer, and a
protestant against all despotisms, whether of mind, body, or estate.
In the agitation for human rights of one class after another, in their
historical order, she enlisted with the Abolitionists, with the Woman
Suffragists, with the Loyal League and sanitary workers, and after the
war, in relief of the Freedmen. Her interest in her own sex began
early, and continued to the last.

At the age of twenty-two she married, and about the year 1842 removed
with her family to Ohio, where her home soon became the refuge of the
fugitive slave, and the resting-place of his defenders. In 1849 she
began, with her husband, Chas. S. S. Griffing, her public labors in
connection with the "American" and the "Western Anti-Slavery
Societies," speaking at first to small audiences in school-houses, and
when prejudice and bitterness gave way, to conventions, and
mass-meetings; opposition and curiosity yielding finally to sympathy
and aid. But for years the meetings were often broken up by mobs. The
effort to uproot slavery was pronounced either absurd, treasonable, or
irreligious; that it would incite insurrection of the slaves; or if
successful, bring great responsibility upon the Abolitionists, and
disaster to the whole country.

In 1861, Mrs. Griffing, prompted by the same loyal spirit that moved
all the women of the nation, turned from the ordinary occupations of
life to see what she could do to mitigate the miseries of the war. She
united at once with "The National Woman's Loyal League," lecturing and
organizing societies in the West for the soldiers and freedmen, to
whom large quantities of clothing and other supplies were sent, and
circulating petitions to Congress for the emancipation of slaves as a
war measure.

While thus engaged, her thoughts naturally turned to the large number
of Southern slaves coming with the army into Washington, whose future
she foresaw would be beset with distress and want during the long
period of change from chattelism to the settled habits of freedom.
They were coming by the hundreds and thousands in 1863, with a vague
idea of being cared for by "the Governor," but the Government had as
yet made no provision, separate from that for the soldiers, when Mrs.
Griffing went to Washington and began her labors for them, which were
continued until her death.

She at once counseled with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton as
to the best methods for immediate relief; proposed plans which they
approved, and received from them every aid possible in their
execution. Her first step was to open three ration-houses, where she
fed at least a thousand of the old and most destitute of the freed
people daily. She visited hundreds in the alleys and old stables, in
attics and cellars, and in almost every place where shelter could be
found, and became acquainted personally with their necessities, and
the best means of supplying them. There were 30,000 in the capital at
this time, and it would be difficult to give an idea to one not there,
of the time and labor it cost to hunt out the old barracks and get
them transformed into shelters for these outcasts. Upon the personal
order of the Secretary of War, she was allowed army blankets and wood,
which she distributed herself, going with the army wagons to see that
those suffering most were first supplied. This "temporary relief" was
necessarily continued for some time, during which Mrs. Griffing was
made the General Agent of "The National Freedman's Relief Association
of the District of Columbia." She opened a correspondence with the Aid
societies of the Northern and New England States, which resulted in
her receiving supplies of clothing and provisions, which were most
acceptable. These were carefully dispensed by herself and two
daughters, who were her assistants. Mrs. Griffing opened three
industrial schools, where the women were taught to sew;[26] a price
was set on their labors, and they were paid in ready-made garments.
The Secretary aided in the purchase of suitable cloth, and with that
sent from the North, such outfits were supplied as could be afforded.

It was soon apparent to Mrs. Griffing that the Government must provide
for the old and the infirm, and that until labor could be found, even
a majority of the strong must be included in the provision--with the
understanding, however, that they must seek employment and exert
themselves to find homes--and that educational and political interests
must be established and encouraged. The stress of the situation can
not be said ever to have relaxed during our friend's life, except as
to numbers--at any rate in the early years; but as soon as some system
grew out of the confusion, and all that could be, were supplied with
bread and shelter, she turned her attention in part to the larger
plan, and urged a bureau under Government; a department for these
freedmen's interests. This plan was favored by Messrs. Sumner, Wade,
Wilson, and a few other Senators and Members of Congress, and in
December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was introduced in
the House of Representatives by Hon. Mr. Elliot, of Massachusetts. It
received no welcome; few cared to listen to the details of the
necessity, and it was only through Mrs. Griffing's brave and unwearied
efforts that the plan was accepted, and carried through in March,
1865, under the title of "The Freedman's Bureau." The writer has had
testimony to the truth of this from Senators Wade of Ohio, Howard of
Michigan, and others, as well as to the fact that a majority of the
Congressional Committee in charge of the bill, wished that Mrs.
Griffing should be made Commissioner (among whom, and most active in
support of the bill, was Senator Henry Wilson), but it was decided to
place the Bureau in the War Department, with a military man at the
head, Mrs. Griffing being appointed "Assistant Commissioner." She
really held the position but a few weeks--in name, five months--a
second military officer standing ready to take the appointment, as men
have ever done, and as they will always crowd women aside so long as
they are held political inferiors, without the citizen's charter to
sustain their claim. This officer had the title and drew the pay,
while our noble friend went on as before in her arduous and almost
superhuman labors. The Bureau adopted _her_ plan of finding homes in
the North, sending the freedmen at Government charge, and of opening
employment offices in New York City and in Providence, R. I.;
nevertheless it was necessary to supplement Government provision by
private generosity; and moreover, that Congress should provide
temporary relief for the helpless in the District. Appropriations were
made in sums of $25,000, amounting in all to nearly $200,000, for the
purchase of supplies, a very large proportion of which were
distributed by Mrs. Griffing in person from her own residence.[27]
"Shirley Dare," in writing to _The New York World_, after a little
time spent with Mrs. G., said:

     "I sat an hour this morning in Mrs. Griffing's office during the
     distribution of rations, and a curious scene it was. There was
     not a sound creature among the crowd which filled the yard, and
     which hangs about all day from nine till four, and which the
     neighborhood calls 'Mrs. Griffing's signs.' It reminded me of
     another crowd of impotent folk, lame, halt, and blind, which
     filled the loveliest space in Jerusalem, and was a _sign_ of joy
     and charity in the place. Queer, tender, wistful faces, so
     earnest one forgets their grotesque character and ragged, faded
     forms, cluster in the porch; such a set as one might once have
     seen put up at auction as a 'refuse lot' of plantation negroes.
     The men wear old army cloaks, while the women, with dresses in
     every stage of decay, are so comic, one struggles between the
     ludicrous and the pitiful.... The faith of this class seems to be
     fastened nowhere so strongly as upon Mrs. Griffing. Salutations
     follow her along the streets, enough to satisfy the proudest
     Pharisee, and it provokes one between a smile and a tear, to see
     the women waiting timidly, yet eagerly, for a word from her, to
     set their faces all aglow. They used to say, persistently, 'We
     belongs to you,' and no efforts could induce them to change that
     phrase. 'Who has we but the Lord and you?' was the simple
     argument which stayed protest from the kind, proud woman who was
     their benefactress. A few words from her will draw out histories
     simple, funny, and sad beyond question."

Our friend had a strong belief that the able in body could sustain
themselves if labor were provided, which it could not be there, so she
urged them to go to the North, which greatly needed laborers to fill
the places of Northern men in the army. Woman's help, too, was as much
in demand, for in many places large farms were wholly managed by women
in the absence of husbands and sons; but it was learned by Mrs.
Griffing and daughters through repeated testimony, that the life-long
teaching of the slaves had been, that no good could come from
Northern people,[28] and this led the many in their pitiable ignorance
to believe that, somewhere in the North, the monsters surely lived who
were waiting to destroy them, and that the kind few whom they had met
were of a different race; that "the North" was beyond the sea, and
they could never return, nor hear from their friends left behind; so
persistent argument was needed to convince the most ignorant of their
false notions, and many of them never were, until some had gone and
returned with good tidings. The first company prepared to go numbered
sixty persons, for whom Mrs. Griffing procured Government
transportation and a day's rations. She went with them to New York
City, and as they passed from the cars the sight was a new and strange
one. Filing through the streets, the anxious, wondering women dressed
partly in neat garments given them, with others of their own selection
in less good taste; while on the men an occasional damaged silk hat
topped off a coat that would have made Joseph's of old look plain;
with ironclad army shoes; or a half-worn wedding swallow-tail, eked
out by a plantation broad-brim, and boots too much worn for either
comfort or beauty. This motley band, led by a gentle and
spiritual-faced woman, will not soon be forgotten by those who saw it
depart. Leaving a few at one depot, and a few at another, to be met at
the journey's end by their employer, Mrs. Griffing took those
remaining to Providence, near which place homes had been provided.
After these sent messages back to friends, others went more readily,
and during a little more than two years over seven thousand freed
people left Washington under Mrs. Griffing's special supervision and
direction for homes in the North. I wish I could say how many parties
she actually convoyed on the journey, and how many miles she traveled,
but I know that she went as far as New York with a great many; and as
I have seen them start, knew and felt that it was too much for her,
and longed that some stronger person should appear to share her
burdens, and relieve her from these exhausting duties. Perhaps she had
written letters till twelve o'clock the night before; had taken a long
walk beyond the Navy-Yard cars, in the afternoon, to visit her
centenarians; or had received calls, and talked till her voice had
almost given out.

But she had the comfort of knowing that many remained where they had
been sent, some buying homes and planting vines about the roof-tree.
To behold this, she had wrought heroically in the past for
emancipation. She was busy with her hands, busier with her brain, and
her spiritual nature was like a spring of sweet waters, overflowing in
bounteous blessing on all around. Of the great painter Leonardo da
Vinci, his biographer says: "He always saw four things he wanted to do
at once." Our friend always saw many more. Her mind was teeming not
only with ideals as beautiful as those of the great artist, but with
practical plans to educate the ignorant, and lift them to self-support
and self-protection. Her being was instinct with constructive and
spiritual force.

It would be hard to find any sphere of woman's activity in which she
had not been leader. Believing that "the manifest intention of nature
is the perfection of man," she faithfully did her part. In the
laborious and the menial she served the colored poor, while she
neglected no opportunity to open their spiritual vision. She fed,
warmed, and clothed them; ministered to the sick; attended the dying;
procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the hymns
at their funerals. She instructed them in their Sunday meetings, and
gained release for those in prison for petty offences, or for those
unjustly accused. Soldiers often appealed to her to assist and aid
them. Her work at the jails was very wearing, for the poor creatures,
not unfrequently the mother of an infant left at home, arrested for an
imaginary offense, or for _stealing_ bread to avert starvation, would
_plead_ so hard for her to get them released, and had such full faith
that she could, that it was a constant tax upon her sympathy and
strength, as was all her work connected with them.

Josephine Griffing had to deal too much with the realities of life and
death to make many records of her work, save those required in the
routine of her office. These were mostly kept by her daughter Emma,
her official assistant. But the substance of what was done in these
years may be found in the archives of the Government. On the calendar
of both Houses of Congress, in the _Congressional Globe_, in the War
Office, in the Freedman's Bureau, in the offices of District
Government and District Courts, and perhaps in the prisons, the future
historian may find abundant records of the patient and humane labors
of this merciful, vigilant, and untiring woman. Whether he finds them
in her name is not so certain!

Mrs. Griffing not only devoted to these people the six days of the
week allotted to labor, but her Sundays were given to public
ministrations as well as private visits to the distant and aged,
unable to come to the Relief rooms during the week. But for a real
picture of the condition of these people, nothing can be more graphic
or full of feeling, than her own account in a letter to Lucretia
Mott,[29] intended as an appeal to the Society of Friends in
Philadelphia. It, with others, had early responded, and with its
contributions in part, she had established the soup-houses before
noted. Her account is also in connection with the Bureau, of
historical interest. During this long struggle her evenings were spent
in writing letters to the North, framing bills, petitions, and appeals
to amend the laws of the District. As she was interested in all the
reforms of the day, she was frequently called upon for active service
in conventions and political gatherings.

Of the public men whom she consulted, two at least, I know, made
everybody and everything yield when she appeared; these were Secretary
Stanton and Chas. Sumner--so interested were they in the objects of
her devotion, and so sure that Mrs. Griffing would not take their time
without sufficient reason. Benj. F. Wade and Henry Wilson would not
yield the palm in their respect to her, and Senator Howard, of
Michigan, was also one of her most friendly helpers. Stevens, Julian,
Dawes, Ashley--all the friends in Congress--could tell of her great
achievements, and their unbounded confidence in her, as the following
letters show:


                                   WASHINGTON, D. C., _March 11, 1865._

     _To the Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau_:

     SIR:--I take pleasure in giving my influence to this application
     for a place at the head of freedmen's affairs in the District of
     Columbia for Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, believing her to be
     eminently qualified to develop the resources of the freed people
     in this District, most of whom are women and children--secure the
     national interest, and give satisfaction to the country. Mrs.
     Griffing has given successful public and private efforts in
     behalf of the colored race for many years, and has devoted the
     entire time of the last year to an investigation of the condition
     and best method of giving relief to the multitudes of freed
     people in and around the National Capital. Finding many thousands
     of women with families without employment or the means of
     self-support, she has conferred with the President and Governors
     of the Northwestern States upon the practicability of encouraging
     their emigration. To meet the destitution of these people in this
     city during the past winter, Mrs. Griffing has disbursed from the
     Government about $25,000 in wood and blankets and rations, and
     $5,000 in clothing and money from the public charity. I believe
     the appointment of Mrs. J. S. Griffing to a chief clerkship or
     general agency for the District in this Bureau will be creditable
     to the Government and satisfactory to the freed people.

                                             Z. CHANDLER.


     I fully concur with my colleague. Mrs. Griffing is both worthy
     and capable, and I trust her services will be secured.

                                             J. M. HOWARD.


     If I had this appointment to make, I would make Mrs. Griffing
     Commissioner.

                                             J. M. ASHLEY.


     I know Mrs. Griffing to be capable and humane, and very devoted
     to the colored race. I hope that her services may be secured.

                                             CHARLES SUMNER.


     I most cheerfully join in this recommendation.

                                             H. WILSON,
                                             J. N. GRIMES.


     I fully concur in the above, and hope that Mrs. Griffing will
     receive a conspicuous place in the Freedman's Bureau. She is the
     best qualified of any person within my knowledge; her whole heart
     is in the work.

                                             B. F. WADE, SOLOMON FOOT,
                                             IRA HARRIS, E. D. MORGAN,
                                             W. P. FESSENDEN.


     I most fully concur.

                                             J. V. DRIGGS,
                                             T. W. FERRY.


     I fully concur in all that is said within in behalf of Mrs.
     Griffing, and earnestly commend her to the favor sought.

                                             GEO. W. JULIAN.


                                   WASHINGTON, _July 9, 1869_.

     Mrs. Griffing has for several years devoted herself with great
     industry, intelligence, and success to the freed people in the
     District of Columbia, and in this service she has accomplished
     more good than any other one individual within my acquaintance.
     When the War Department was in my charge, she rendered very
     efficient aid of a humane character to relieve the wants and
     sufferings of destitute freed people, and was untiring in her
     benevolent exertions. Property for distribution was often placed
     in her hands, or under her directions, and she was uniformly
     trustworthy and skillful in its management and administration. In
     my judgment, she is entitled to the most full confidence and
     trust.

                                             EDWIN M. STANTON.


                                   JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Nov. 12, 1869_.

     MY DEAR MRS. GRIFFING:--On my return from Washington I found your
     kind letter of the 28th, ult. I regret much that I did not meet
     with you at Washington. I know your merits. I know that no person
     in America has done so much for the cause of humanity for the
     last four years as you have. Your disinterested labors have saved
     hundreds of poor human beings not only the greatest destitution
     and misery, but from actual starvation and death. I also know
     that in doing this you have not only devoted your whole time, but
     all the property you have. And I know, too, that your labors are
     just as necessary now as they ever have been. Others know all
     this as well as I do. Secretary Stanton can vouch for it all, and
     I can not doubt that Congress will not only pay you for what you
     have done, but give you a position where this necessary work may
     be done by you effectually. This is the very thing that ought to
     be done at once. Since the Bureau has been abolished it will be
     impossible to get along with the great influx of imbecility and
     destitution which gathers and centers in Washington every
     winter, without some one being appointed to see to it, and
     certainly everybody knows that there is no one so competent for
     this work as yourself. To this end I will do whatever I can, but
     you know that I am now out of place, and have no influence at
     Court, but whatever I can do to effect so desirable an object
     will be done.

                                             Truly yours,  B. F. WADE.


                                   SENATE CHAMBER, _April 2_.

     DEAR MADAM:--I have your note of the 31st, and am very sorry to
     hear that there is so much distress in the city. I shall endeavor
     to bring the charter up as soon as I have an opportunity; but
     while this trial is pending,[30] it is improbable that any
     legislative business will be done. I am as anxious as you are to
     secure its adoption.

                                        Yours truly,    CHARLES SUMNER.

     MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington.


                                   BOSTON, _27th July, 1869_.

     DEAR MADAM:--The statement or memorial which you placed in my
     hands was never printed. It is, probably, now on the files of the
     Senate. I wish I could help your effort with the Secretary of
     War. You must persevere. If Gen. Rawlins understands the case, he
     will do all that you desire. Accept my best wishes, and believe
     me, faithfully yours,

                                             CHARLES SUMNER.


     Will Mrs. Griffing let Mr. Sumner know what institution or person
     should disburse the money appropriated?

     SENATE CHAMBER,
                 Tuesday.


     LETTERS ON THE FREEDMAN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION.

                                   WASHINGTON, _April 8, '71_.

     _To the Mayor and Board of Common Council, City of Washington,
     District of Columbia_:

     MESSRS.:--I have the honor to state that the aged, sick,
     crippled, and blind persons, for whom the National Freedman's
     Relief Association of this District partially provides, are at
     this time in very great destitution, many of them in extreme
     suffering for want of food and fuel. The Association has provided
     clothing. It is now twelve weeks since the Government
     appropriation for their temporary support for the last year was
     exhausted. This Association has by soliciting contributions, up
     to this time, relieved the most extreme cases, that otherwise
     must have died; but the want of food is so great among at least a
     thousand of these, not one of whom is able _to labor_ for a
     support, that it is impossible to provide the absolute relief
     they must have, by further contributions from the charitable and
     the humane.

     I would therefore most earnestly appeal in their behalf, that the
     Hon. Council and Mayor will appropriate from the market fund for
     their temporary relief one thousand dollars, to be disbursed by
     the above-named association, which sum will enable these
     destitute persons to subsist until, as is hoped and believed,
     Congress will make the usual special appropriation for their
     partial temporary support. This Association to report the use of
     such money to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of
     Washington, D. C.

          Very respectfully,                      J. S. GRIFFING,
                           _General Agent N. F. R. Association, D. C._


                         TRIBUNE OFFICE, NEW YORK, _Sept. 7, 1870_.

     MRS. GRIFFING:--In my judgment you and others who wish to
     befriend the blacks crowded into Washington, do them great
     injury. Had they been told years ago, "You _must_ find work; go
     out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery. They
     are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow,
     and liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course
     aggravates their weaknesses, when you should raise their ambition
     and stimulate them to self-reliance. Unless you change your
     course speedily and signally, the swarming of blacks to the
     District will increase, and the argument that Slavery is their
     natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened. So long as
     they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they are
     not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages
     who would rather some one else than herself should pay her
     passage to the place where she can have work, then she needs
     reconstruction and awakening to a just and honest self-reliance.

                                    Yours,            HORACE GREELEY.

     MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington, D. C.


                                                  _Sept. 12, 1870_.
     HORACE GREELEY:

     DEAR SIR:--Much as I respect your judgment, and admire your
     candor, I must express entire dissent with your views in
     reference to those who are laboring to befriend the Freedmen, and
     also of your estimate of the character of the black race.

     When you condemn my work for the old slaves, who can not labor,
     and are "crowded into Washington" by force of events
     uncontrollable, as a "great injury," I am at a loss to perceive
     your estimate of any and all benevolent action. If, to provide
     houses, food, clothing, and other physical comforts, to those
     broken-down aged slaves whom we have liberated in their declining
     years, when all their strength is gone, and for whom no home,
     family friendship, or subsistence is furnished; if this is a
     "great injury," in my judgment there is no call for alms-house,
     hospital, home, or asylum in human society, and all
     appropriations of sympathy and material aid are worse than
     useless, and demand your earnest rebuke and discountenance, and
     to the unfortunates crowded into these institutions, you should
     say, "You must find work, go out and seek it." So far as an
     humble individual can be, I am substituting to these a freedman's
     (relief) bureau; sanitary commission; church sewing society, to
     aid the poor; orphan asylum; old people's home; hospital and
     alms-house for the sick and the blind; minister-at-large, to
     visit the sick, console the dying, and bury the dead; and wherein
     I fail, and perhaps you discriminate, is the want of wealthy,
     popular, and what is called honorable associations. Were these at
     my command, with the field before me, it would be easy to
     illustrate the practical use as well as the divine origin of the
     Golden Rule.

     If, in your criticism, you refer to my secondary department in
     which I have labored to furnish employment to the Freedmen both
     in the District and out, is it not a direct reflection upon all
     efforts made for the distribution of labor? Is my course more
     aggravating to the weakness of destitute unemployed freed people,
     than emigrant societies, intelligence offices, benevolent ladies'
     societies, and young men's Christian associations, to give work
     to the poor of all nations; and lastly the Government Indian
     department, that has wisely called to its aid the American
     missionary, and the Quaker societies, to farm out the poor
     Indians? or, if the measures put forth by these admissible agents
     can raise the ambition and stimulate to self-reliance their
     beneficiaries, will you be good enough to show wherein the same
     means, which I claim to employ, must have the opposite effect
     upon the freedmen crowded into Washington.

     Is it possible that the swarming of the Irish, Swiss, and German
     poor, to the city of New York, is attributable to the
     intelligence offices and immigration societies of your city, and
     not, as we have supposed, to the want of work and bread at home,
     and is there really a danger, that in providing and calculating
     for them, we shall strengthen the argument of race, while our
     institutions of charity are filled with descendants of the Saxon,
     the Norman, the Goth, and the Vandal? I think not.

                         Respectfully yours,    JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.


     _From the New National Era._

     MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING THE ORIGINATOR OF THE FREEDMEN's
     BUREAU.

     This truly excellent and noble woman was fitly spoken of in the
     _New National Era_ just after her death, but at that early date
     it was not possible to obtain the facts to prove the statement at
     the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic
     justice.

     Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League
     in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive
     system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the
     trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit
     persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin
     her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing
     daunted by coldness or indifference she nobly persisted, until in
     December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was
     introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott,
     of Massachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee
     of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of
     Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman's
     Bureau finally passed in March, 1865, and was signed by President
     Lincoln just before his assassination.

     The original idea was Mrs. Griffing's; her untiring efforts gave
     it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South
     especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and
     gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor
     sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great
     national charity, the Freedman's Bureau.

The following letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Giles B. Stebbins,
then in Washington, corroborates the above statements:


                                   ROXBURY, MASS., _March 4, 1872_.

     MY DEAR FRIEND: ... I was glad to see the well-merited tributes
     paid by yourself and others to the memory of Mrs. Josephine S.
     Griffing. She was, for a considerable period, actively engaged in
     the anti-slavery struggle in Ohio, where by her rare executive
     ability and persuasiveness as a public lecturer, she aided
     greatly in keeping the abolition flag flying, enlightening and
     changing public sentiment, and hastening the year of jubilee.
     With what unremitting zeal and energy did she espouse the cause
     of the homeless, penniless, benighted, starving freedmen, driven
     by stress of circumstances into the national capital in such
     overwhelming numbers; and what a multitude were befriended and
     saved through her moving appeals in their behalf! How like an
     angel of mercy must she have seemed to them all! No doubt the
     formation of the Freedman's Bureau was mainly due to her
     representations as to its indispensable necessity; and how much
     good was done by that instrumentality in giving food, clothing,
     and protection to those who were so suddenly brought out of the
     house of bondage, as against the ferocity of the rebel element,
     it is difficult to compute because of its magnitude. She deserves
     to be gratefully remembered among "the honorable women not a
     few," who, in their day and generation, have been

    "Those starry lights of virtue that diffuse,
    Through the dark depths of time their vital flame,"

     whose self-abnegation and self-sacrifice in the cause of
     suffering humanity having been absolute, and who have nobly
     vindicated every claim made by their sex to full equality with
     men in all that serves to dignify human nature. Her rightful
     place is among "the noble army of martyrs," for her life was
     undoubtedly very much shortened by her many cares and heavy
     responsibilities and excessive labors in behalf of the pitiable
     objects of her sympathy and regard.

                         Very truly yours,     WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.


     PARKER PILLSBURY, in a letter to Mrs. Stebbins says: "The
     anti-slavery conflict could never boast a braver, truer, abler
     advocate than Josephine Griffing. It was always an honor and
     inspiration to stand by her side, no matter how fierce the
     encounter. I have seen her when an infuriated mob assailed our
     Conventions, and dashed down doors, windows, seats, stoves,
     tables, everything that would yield to their demoniac rage, stand
     amid the ruins calm and unmoved, and with her gentle words of
     remonstrance shame the intruders, until one by one they shrank
     away, glad to get out of her sight.

     Her beautiful home hospitalities; her warm welcome ever extended
     to the faithful friends of freedom and humanity, were equal to
     her unshaken courage and self-control in public assemblies. We
     used to call that humble home in Litchfield, 'The Saint's Rest,'
     and such it was to many a fugitive slave, as well as soldier in
     his cause.

To the first demand for the enfranchisement of women in 1848, Mrs.
Griffing heartily responded, and in this reform she was ever untiring
in effort, wise in counsel, and eminent in public speech. In 1867 she
helped to organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District
of Columbia, of which she was president for years. She was also
Corresponding Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association,
and was ever considered the organizing power at Washington. She first
suggested the importance of annual conventions at the capital, in
order to influence Congressional action.

Mrs. Griffing's last appearance in public was at the May Anniversary
of the National Woman Suffrage Association, held in New York in 1871,
and so feeble was her condition that a screen was placed behind her to
enable the audience to hear her voice. At the close of the Convention
she went to the home of her childhood, in Hebron, Conn., hoping that
the bracing air of the New England hills would give her new life and
strength, until she could finish her work. But it was already
finished. She had taxed herself to the uttermost, beyond nature's
power to recuperate. In November she returned to Washington, and
enjoyed the sweet presence and tender care of her daughters until she
passed away on Feb. 18, 1872.


THE LADIES' NATIONAL COVENANT.

After the war was fairly inaugurated, the manufactories of the country
largely turned their attention to the production of material required
by the army, which, combined with the immense number of volunteers
from such avocations, and the rise in prices of all home manufactures,
created an immense import of foreign goods, which, pouring into our
country when gold was at the highest, brought to our doors a danger no
less formidable than that of the Rebellion. It was shown from official
returns, in 1863, that during a period of nine months, the imports, at
the port of New York alone, amounted to $160,000,000 in gold; equal,
including exchange, freight, insurance, etc., to twice that sum, while
our exports amounted to only $120,000,000 in paper.

This ruinous state of our trade brought on us the taunts of foreign
enemies, and roused the attention of the country to devise some method
of meeting the new danger; Congress temporarily raised duties fifty
per cent. in hopes of stemming the tide of importation. The patriotic
women of the nation, ever on the alert for methods of aiding the
country, early in 1864 called a meeting of the loyal women of
Washington, at which time an association, pledging women to the use of
home manufactures, was formed under the name of "The Ladies' National
Covenant," with offices in every State and Territory within the
national lines. Mrs. General Jas. Taylor was elected President; Mrs.
Stephen A. Douglas, Vice-President; Mrs. Rebecca Gillis and Miss
Virginia Smith, Recording Secretaries; with ten Corresponding
Secretaries, of whom Mrs. H. C. Ingersoll was the most active.

This association, formed for the purpose of encouraging domestic
manufactures, was composed at its first meeting of the wives of
members of the Cabinet and of Senators and Representatives, women of
fashion, popular authoresses, mothers who had lost their sons, and
wives who had lost their husbands. An Advisory and Organizing
Committee was appointed, consisting of women from each State and
Territory within the national line. An ADDRESS TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA
was issued, and a constitution consisting of eleven sections, together
with the following pledge, was adopted:


                              THE PLEDGE.

     For three years, or during the war, we pledge ourselves to each
     other and the country, to purchase no imported goods where those
     of American manufacture can be obtained, such as "dress goods of
     velvet, silks, grenadines, India crape, and imported organdies,
     India lace and broche shawls, fine wrought laces and
     embroideries, watches and precious stones, hair ornaments, fans,
     artificial flowers and feathers, carpets, furniture, silks and
     velvets, painted china, ormolu, bronze, marble, ornaments, and
     mirrors."

The emblem of this Covenant was a black or gilt bee, worn as a pin
fastening the national colors, upon the hair, arm, or bosom, as a
public recognition of membership. In August of the same year the
Secretary stated that orders for the emblem, the badge of the
Covenant, were received by the manufacturer of the pin from all parts
of the Union. A meeting was held in New York, rooms opened in Great
Jones Street, and the Covenant was in a fair way to assume large
proportions. When Lee's capitulation was announced the necessity for
the Covenant ended, and with peace, trade was allowed to drift into
its natural channels.


ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.

Foremost among the women who understood the political significance of
the great conflict, was Miss Dickinson, a young girl of Quaker
ancestry, who possessed remarkable oratorical power, a keen sense of
justice, and an intense earnestness of purpose. In the heated
discussions of Anti-Slavery Conventions, she had acquired a clear
comprehension of the province of laws and constitutions; of the
fundamental principles of governments, and the rights of man. Like a
meteor, she appeared suddenly in the political horizon, as if born for
the eventful times in which she lived, and inspired by the dangers
that threatened the life of the republic.

At the very beginning of the war her radical utterances were heard at
different points in her native State.[31] Her admirable speech on the
higher law, first made at Kennett Square, and the discussion that
followed, in which Miss Dickinson maintained her position with
remarkable clearness and coolness for one of her years, were a
surprise to all who listened. The flattering reports of this meeting
in several of the Philadelphia journals introduced her at once to the
public.

On the evening of February 27, 1861, she addressed eight hundred
people in Concert Hall, Philadelphia. This was her first appearance
before so large an assembly, and the first time she had the sole
responsibility of entertaining an audience for an entire evening. She
spoke two full hours extemporaneously, and the lecture was pronounced
a success, not only by the press, but by the many notables and
professional men present. Although it was considered a marvelous
performance for a young girl, Miss Dickinson herself was mortified, as
she said, with the length of her speech and its lack of point, order,
and arrangement.

Soon after, she entered the United States Mint, to labor from seven
o'clock in the morning to six at night. Although she was ever faithful
to her duties and skillful in everything she undertook, soon becoming
the most rapid adjuster in the Mint, her radical criticisms on the war
and its leaders cost her the loss of the place. At a meeting just
after the battle of Ball's Bluff, in summing up the record, after
exonerating Stone and Baker, she said, "Future history will show that
this battle was lost not through ignorance and incompetence, but
through the treason of the commanding general, George B. McClellan,
and time will vindicate the truth of my assertion." She was hissed all
over the house, though some cried, "Go on!" "Go on!" She repeated this
startling assertion three times, and each time was hissed.

When Gen. McClellan was running against Lincoln in 1864, after she had
achieved a world-wide reputation, she was sent by the Republican
Committee of Pennsylvania to this same town, to speak to the same
people, in the same hall. In again summing up the incidents of the
war, when she came to Ball's Bluff, she said, "I say now, as I said
three years ago, history will record that this battle was lost, not
through ignorance or incompetence, but through the treason of the
commanding general, George B. McClellan." "And time has vindicated
your assertion," was shouted all over the house.

It was the speech made in 1861, that cost her her place in the mint,
for while laboring there daily with her hands, her mind was not
inactive nor indifferent to the momentous events transpiring about
her. She kept a close watch of the progress of the war, and the policy
of the Republican leaders. When ex-Governor Pollock dismissed her, he
admitted that his reason was that Westchester speech, for at that time
McClellan was the idol of the nation.[32]

With remarkable prescience all through the war, and the period of
reconstruction, Miss Dickinson took the advance position. Wendell
Phillips used to say that "she was the young elephant sent forward to
try the bridges to see if they were safe for older ones to cross."
When wily politicians found that her criticisms were applauded by
immense audiences, they gained courage to follow her lead. As popular
thought was centering everywhere on national questions, Miss Dickinson
thought less of the special wrongs of women and negroes and more of
the causes of revolutions and the true basis of government; hence she
spoke chiefly on the political aspects of the war, and thus made
herself available in party politics at once.

In the intervals of public speaking, she made frequent visits to the
Government hospitals, and became a most welcome guest among our
soldiers. In long conversations with them, she learned their
individual histories, experiences, hardships, and sufferings; the
motives that prompted them to go into the army; what they saw there;
what they thought of war in their hours of solitude, away from the
camp and the battle-field. Thus she acquired an insight into the
soldier's life and feelings, and from these narratives drew her
materials for that deeply interesting lecture on hospital life, which
she delivered in many parts of the country.

This lecture, given in Concord, New Hampshire, in the autumn of 1862,
was the turning-point of her fortunes. In this speech she proved
slavery to be the cause of the war, that its continuance would result
in prolonged suffering to our soldiers, defeat to our armies, and the
downfall of the Republic. She related many touching incidents of her
experiences in hospital life, and drew such vivid pictures of the
horrors of both war and slavery, that by her pathos and logic, she
melted her audience to tears, and forced the most prejudiced minds to
accept her conclusions.

It was on this occasion that the Secretary of the State Central
Committee heard her for the first time. He remarked to a friend at the
close of the lecture, "If we can get this girl to make that speech all
through New Hampshire we can carry the Republican ticket in the coming
election." Fully appreciating her magnetic power over an audience, he
resolved at once, that if the State Committee refused to invite her,
he should do so on his own responsibility. But through his influence
she was invited by the Republican Committee, and on the first of March
commenced her regular campaign speeches. During the four weeks before
election she spoke twenty times, everywhere to crowded, enthusiastic
audiences. Her march through the State was a succession of triumphs,
and ended in a Republican victory.

The member in the first district having no faith that a woman could
influence politics, sent word to the Secretary, "Don't send that damn
woman down here to defeat my election." The Secretary replied, "We
have work enough for her to do in other districts without interfering
with you." But when the would-be honorable gentleman saw the furor she
created, he changed his mind, and inundated the Secretary with letters
to have her sent there. But the Secretary replied, "It is too late;
the programme is arranged and published throughout the State; you
would not have her when you could, and now you can not have her when
you will."

It is pleasant to record that this man, who had the moral hardihood to
send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble
girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly
Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that
the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was awarded to Anna
Dickinson. The Governor-elect made personal acknowledgment that her
eloquent speeches had secured his election. She was serenaded,
feasted, and feted, the recipient of many valuable presents, and
eulogized by the press and the people.

New Hampshire safe, all eyes were now turned to Connecticut. The
contest there was between Seymour and Buckingham. It was generally
conceded that, if Seymour was elected, Connecticut would give no more
money or troops for the war. The Republicans were completely
disheartened. They said nothing could prevent the Democrats from
carrying the State by four thousand, while the Democrats boasted that
they would carry it by ten thousand. Though the issue was one of such
vital importance, there seemed so little hope of success, that the
Republicans were disposed to give it up without making an effort. And
no resistance to this impending calamity was made until Anna Dickinson
went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life.
She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular
sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her
by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the
warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her
likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke
were so densely packed, that Republicans stayed away to make room for
the Democrats, and the women were shut out to give place to those who
could vote. There never was such enthusiasm over an orator in this
country. The period of her advent, the excited condition of the
people, her youth, beauty, and remarkable voice, and wonderful
magnetic power, all heightened the effect of her genius, and helped to
produce this result. Her name was on every lip; ministers preached
about her, prayed for her, as a second Joan of Arc, raised up by God
to save that State to the loyal party, and through it the nation to
freedom and humanity. As the election approached, the excitement was
intense; and when at last it was announced that the State was saved by
a few hundred votes, the joy and gratitude of the crowds knew no
bounds. They shouted and hurrahed for Anna Dickinson, serenaded her
with full bands of music, sent her books, flowers, and ornaments,
manifesting in every way their love and loyalty to this gifted girl,
who through so many years had bravely struggled with poverty to this
proud moment of success in her country's cause. Some leading gentlemen
of the State who had invited her there presented her a gold watch and
chain, a hundred dollars for every night she had spoken, and four
hundred for the last night before election, in Hartford. The comments
of the press, though most flattering, give the reader but a faint idea
of the enthusiasm of the people.[33]

Fresh from the victories in New Hampshire and Connecticut, she was
announced to speak in Cooper Institute, New York. That meeting, in
May, 1862, was the most splendid ovation to a woman's genius since
Fanny Kemble, in all the wealth of her youth, beauty, and wonderful
dramatic power, appeared on the American stage for the first time.
There never was such excitement over any meeting in New York; hundreds
went away unable even to get standing places in the lobbies and outer
halls. The platform was graced with the most distinguished men and
women in the country, and so crowded that the young orator had scarce
room to stand. There were clergymen, generals, admirals, judges,
lawyers, editors, the literati, and leaders of fashion, and all alike
ready to do homage to this simple girl, who moved them alternately to
laughter and tears, to bursts of applause and the most profound
silence.

Henry Ward Beecher, who presided, introduced the speaker in his
happiest manner. For nearly two hours she held that large audience
with intense interest and enthusiasm, and when she finished with a
beautiful peroration, the people seemed to take a long breath, as if
to find relief from the intensity of their emotions. Loud cries
followed for Mr. Beecher; but he arose, and with great feeling and
solemnity, said: "Let no man open his lips here to-night; music is the
only fitting accompaniment to the eloquent utterances we have heard."
The Hutchinsons closed with one of their soul-stirring ballads, and
the audience slowly dispersed, singing the John Brown song with
thrilling effect, as they marched into the street.[34]

After her remarkable success in New York, the Philadelphia Union
League invited her to speak in that city. The invitation, signed by
leading Republicans, she readily accepted. Judge Wm. D. Kelley
presided, and a most appreciative audience greeted her. In this
address, reviewing the incidents of the war, she criticised General
McClellan as usual, with great severity. Some of his personal friends,
filled with indignation, left the house, while a derisive laugh
followed them to the door. The Philadelphia journals vied with each
other in their eulogiums of her grace, beauty, and eloquence. The
marked attention she has always received in her native city has been
most grateful to her, and honorable to her fellow-citizens.

In July, 1862, the first move was made to enlist colored troops in
Pennsylvania. A meeting was called for that purpose in Philadelphia.
Judge Kelley, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Dickinson were there, and
made strong appeals to the people of that State to grant to the
colored man the honor of bearing arms in defence of his country. The
effort was successful. A splendid regiment was raised, and the first
duty they discharged was to serenade the young orator, who had spoken
so eloquently for their race all through the war.

In September a field-day was announced at Camp William Penn. General
Pleasanton reviewed the troops. It was a brilliant and interesting
occasion, as many were about to leave for the seat of war. At the
close of the day when the people began to disperse it was noised round
that Miss Dickinson was there; a cry was heard at once on all sides,
"A speech! a speech!" The moon was just rising, mingling its pale rays
with those of the setting sun, and throwing a soft, mysterious light
over the whole scene. The troops gathered round with bristling
bayonets and flags flying, the band was hushed to silence, and when
all was still, mounted on a gun-wagon, with General Pleasanton and his
staff on one side, General Wagner and his staff on the other, this
brave girl addressed "our boys in blue." She urged that justice and
equality might be secured to every citizen in the republic; that
slavery and war might end forever and peace be restored; that our
country might indeed be the land of the free and the home of the
brave.

As she stood there uttering words of warning and prophecy, it seemed
as if her lips had been touched with a live coal from the altar of
heaven. Her inspired words moved the hearts of our young soldiers to
deeds of daring, and gave fresh courage to those about her to bid
their loved ones go and die if need be for freedom and their country.
The hour, the mysterious light, the stillness, the novel surroundings,
the youth of the speaker, all gave a peculiar power to her words, and
made the scene one of the most thrilling and beautiful on the page of
history.

In January, 1864, she made her first address in Washington. Though she
now felt that her success as an orator was established, yet she
hesitated long before accepting this invitation.[35] To speak before
the President, Chief-Justice, Judges, Senators, Congressmen, Foreign
Diplomats, all the dignitaries and honorables of the Government was
one of the most trying ordeals in her experience. She had one of the
largest and most brilliant audiences ever assembled in the Capitol,
and was fully equal to the occasion. She made a profound impression,
and her speech was the topic of conversation for days afterward. At
the close of her address she was presented to many of the
distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and chief among them the
President. This was one of the grandest occasions of her life. She was
honored as no man ever had been before. The comments of the press[36]
must have been satisfactory to her highest ambition as well as to that
of her admiring countrywomen.

One of the most powerful and impressive appeals she ever made was in
the Convention of Southern Loyalists held in Philadelphia in
September, 1866. In this Convention there was a division of opinion
between the Border and the Gulf States. The latter wanted to
incorporate negro suffrage in their platform, as that was the only
means of success for the Liberal party at the South. The former,
manipulated by Northern politicians, opposed that measure, lest it
should defeat the Republican party in the pending elections at the
North. This stultification of principle, of radical public sentiment,
stirred the soul of Miss Dickinson, and she desired to speak. But a
rule that none but delegates should be allowed that privilege,
prevented her. However, as the Southern men had never heard a woman
speak in public, and felt great curiosity to hear her, they adjourned
the Convention, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole, and
invited her to address them.

An eye-witness[37] thus describes the scene: "As the young maiden
stepped forward to deliver a speech as denunciatory as was ever
listened to against the action of the Border States, on her right sat
Brownlow, on her left John Minor Botts with his lips tightly
compressed, and his face telling plainly that he remained there from
courtesy, and would remain a patient listener to the end. She began;
and for the first time since it met, the Convention was so still that
the faintest whisper could be heard."

She had not spoken long before she declared that Maryland had no
business in the Convention, but should have been with delegates that
came to welcome. There was vehement applause from the Border States.
"This is a direct insult," shouted a delegate from Maryland. She went
on in spite of interruptions, reviewing the conduct of the Border
States with scorn, and an eloquence never equalled in any of her
previous efforts, in favor of an open, manly declaration of the real
opinion of the Convention for justice to the colored Loyalist, not in
the courts only, but at the ballot-box. The speech was in Miss
Dickinson's noblest style throughout--bold, but tender, and often so
pathetic that she brought tears to every eye. Every word came from her
heart, and it went right to the hearts of all. Kentucky and Maryland
now listened as eagerly as Georgia and Alabama; Brownlow's iron
features and Botts' rigid face soon relaxed, and tears stood in the
old Virginian's eyes; while the noble Tennesseean moved his place, and
gazed at the inspired girl with an interest and wonderment which no
other orator had moved before. She had the audience in hand, as easily
as a mother holds her child, and like the child, this audience heard
her heart beat. It was a marvelous speech. Its greatness lay in its
manner and effect, as well as its argument. When she finished, one
after another of the Southern delegates came forward and pinned on her
dress the badges of their States until she wore the gifts of Alabama,
Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland.

And thus it was from time to time that this remarkable girl uttered
the highest thought in American politics in that crisis of our
nation's history. While in camp and hospital she spoke words of
tenderness and love to the sick and dying, she did not hesitate to
rebuke the incapacity and iniquity of those in high places. She was
among the first to distrust McClellan and Lincoln, and in a lecture,
entitled "My Policy," to unveil his successor, Andrew Johnson, to the
people. She saw the scepter of power grasped by the party of freedom,
and the first gun fired at Sumter in defence of slavery. She saw our
armies go forth to battle, the youth, the promise, the hope of the
nation--two millions strong--and saw them return with their ranks
thinned and broken, their flags tattered and stained, the maimed, the
halt and the blind, the weary and worn; and this, she said, is the
price of liberty. She saw the dawn of the glorious day of emancipation
when four million African slaves were set free, and that night of
gloom when the darkest page in American history was written in the
blood of its chief. Through the nation's agony was this young girl
born into a knowledge of her power; and she drew her inspiration from
the great events of her day.


THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.

MAMMOTH PETITION.

Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement,
suspended their Conventions during the war and gave their time and
thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political
significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as
the sure, quick way of cutting the gordion knot of the rebellion. To
this end they organized a National League, and rolled up a mammoth
petition, urging Congress to so amend the Constitution as to prohibit
the existence of slavery in the United States.

From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York, they sent out
their appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large;
tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were
scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings were held
every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely
discussed, approved or condemned. Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the
Freedman's Commission, then residing in New York, aided and encouraged
this movement from the beginning, frequently speaking in the public
meetings.

That this League did a timely educational work, is manifested by the
letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in
most of the Northern States, fully endorsing its action and
principles.[38] The clearness of thinking women on the cause of the
war; the true policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining
the principles of freedom, are worthy of consideration. With this
League, Abolitionists and Republicans heartily co-operated. In a
course of lectures secured for its benefit in Cooper Institute, we
find the names of Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, William D.
Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E. P. Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Theodore
D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, Dr. Bellows, and Mrs. Frances D. Gage. Many
letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its measures,
and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of emancipation
petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press, too, was
highly complimentary. The _New York Tribune_ said: "The women of the
Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their
efforts to one object, the most important which any society can aim
at, in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never
has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a
petition."

The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and
prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, the patriotism of the
women of the League, and yet these were the same women, who when
demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for
themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent,"
"fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own
claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire
the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican
party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted."
But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women
should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the
Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues
vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long
as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt _his sex_ above
her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand
rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress,
personal appearance, character, are subjects for ridicule and
detraction.

In March, 1863, an appeal[39] to the women of the Republic, was
published in the _New York Tribune_, and in tract form extensively
circulated with "a call"[40] for a National Convention in New York,
which assembled in Dr. Cheever's church May 14th. An immense audience,
mostly women, representing a large number of the States, crowded the
house at an early hour. Miss Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to
order and nominated Lucy Stone for President; the other officers[41]
of the Convention being chosen, Mrs. Stanton made the opening address,
and stated the objects of the meeting.

Miss Anthony having received large numbers of letters[42] which it
was impossible to read, said that the one word which had come up from
all quarters showed an earnestness of purpose on the part of women to
do everything in their power to aid the Government in the prosecution
of this war to the glorious end of freedom. The President in
introducing Angelina Grimké Weld, said:

     This lady, once a South Carolina slaveholder, not only gave
     freedom to all her slaves twenty years ago, but has spent the
     strength of her younger years in going up and down among the
     people, urging the Northern States to make their soil sacred to
     freedom, to so amend their laws and constitutions that slavery
     can find no protection within their borders.

     MRS. WELD said: I came here with no desire and no intention to
     speak; but my heart is full, my country is bleeding, my people
     are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am
     bound to tell the North, go on! go on! Never falter, never
     abandon the principles which you have adopted. I could not say
     this if we were now where we stood two years ago. I could not say
     thus when it was proclaimed in the Northern States that the Union
     was all that we sought. No, my friends, such a Union as we had
     then, God be praised that it has perished. Oh, never for one
     moment consent that such a Union should be re-established in our
     land. There was a time when I looked upon the Fathers of the
     Revolution with the deepest sorrow and the keenest reproach. I
     said to their shadows in another world, "Why did you leave this
     accursed system of slavery for us to suffer and die under? why
     did you not, with a stroke of the pen, determine--when you
     acquired your own independence--that the principles which you
     adopted in the Declaration of Independence should be a shield of
     protection to every man, whether he be slave or whether he be
     free?" But, my friends, the experience of sixty years has shown
     me that the fruit grows slowly. I look back and see that great
     Sower of the world, as he traveled the streets of Jerusalem and
     dropped the precious seed, "Do unto others as ye would that
     others should do unto you." I look at all the contests of
     different nations, and see that, whether it were the Patricians
     of Rome, England, France, or any part of Europe, every battle
     fought gained something to freedom. Our fathers, driven out by
     the oppression of England, came to this country and planted that
     little seed of liberty upon the soil of New England. When our
     Revolution took place, the seed was only in the process of
     sprouting. You must recollect that our Declaration of
     Independence was the very first National evidence of the great
     doctrine of brotherhood and equality. I verily believe that those
     who were the true lovers of liberty did all they could at that
     time. In their debates in the Convention they denounced
     slavery--they protested against the hypocrisy and inconsistency
     of a nation declaring such glorious truths, and then trampling
     them underfoot by enslaving the poor and oppressed, because he
     had a skin not colored like their own; as though a man's skin
     should make any difference in the recognition of his rights, any
     more than the color of his hair or of his eyes. This little blade
     sprouted as it were from the precious seeds that were planted by
     Jesus of Nazareth. But, my friends, if it took eighteen hundred
     years to bring forth the little blade which was seen in our
     Declaration, are we not unreasonable to suppose that more could
     have been done than has been done, looking at the imperfections
     of human nature, looking at the selfishness of man, looking at
     his desire for wealth and his greed for glory?

     Had the South yielded at that time to the freemen of the North,
     we should have had a free Government; but it was impossible to
     overcome the long and strong prejudices of the South in favor of
     slavery. I know what the South is. I lived there the best part of
     my life. I never could talk against slavery without making my
     friends angry--never. When they thought the day was far off, and
     there was no danger of emancipation, they were willing to admit
     it was an evil; but when God in His providence raised up in this
     country an Anti-slavery Society, protesting against the
     oppressions of the colored man, they began to feel that truth
     which is more powerful than arms--that truth which is the only
     banner under which we can successfully fight. They were
     comparatively quiet till they found, in the election of Mr.
     Lincoln, the scepter had actually departed from them. His
     election took place on the ground that slavery was not to be
     extended--that it must not pass into the Territories. This was
     what alarmed them. They saw that if the National Government
     should take one such step, it never would stop there; that this
     principle had never before been acknowledged by those who had any
     power in the nation.

     God be praised. Abolitionists never sought place or power. All
     they asked was freedom; all they wanted was that the white man
     should take his foot off the negro's neck. The South determined
     to resist the election of Mr. Lincoln. They determined if Fremont
     was elected, they would rebel. And this rebellion is like their
     own Republic, as they call it; it is founded upon slavery. As I
     asked one of my friends one day, "What are you rebelling for? The
     North never made any laws for you that they have not cheerfully
     obeyed themselves. What is the trouble between us?" Slavery,
     slavery is the trouble. Slavery is a "divine institution." My
     friends, it is a fact that the South has incorporated slavery
     into her religion; that is the most fearful thing in this
     rebellion. They are fighting, verily believing that they are
     doing God service. Most of them have never seen the North. They
     understand very little of the working of our institutions; but
     their politicians are stung to the quick by the prosperity of the
     North. They see that the institution which they have established
     can not make them wealthy, can not make them happy, can not make
     them respected in the world at large, and their motto is, "Rule
     or ruin."

     Before I close, I would like, however strange it may seem, to
     utter a protest against what Mrs. Stanton said of colonizing the
     aristocrats in Liberia. I can not consent to such a thing. Do you
     know that Liberia has never let a slave tread her soil?--that
     when, from the interior of the country, the slaves came there to
     seek shelter, and their heathen masters pursued them, she never
     surrendered one? She stands firmly on the platform of freedom to
     all. I am deeply interested in this colony of Liberia. I do not
     want it to be cursed with the aristocracy of the South, or any
     other aristocracy, and far less with the Copperheadism of the
     North. (Laughter). If these Southern aristocrats are to be
     colonized, Mrs. President, don't you think England is the best
     place for them? England is the country which has sympathized most
     deeply with them. She has allowed vessels to be built to prey
     upon our commerce; she has sent them arms and ammunition, and
     everything she could send through the West India Islands. Shall
     we send men to Liberia who are ready to tread the black man under
     their feet? No. God bless Liberia for what she has done, and what
     she is destined to do. (Applause).

     I am very glad to say here, that last summer I had the pleasure
     of entertaining several times, in our house, a Liberian who was
     well educated in England. He had graduated at Oxford College, and
     had a high position there. His health broke down, and he went to
     Liberia. "When I went to Liberia," said he, "I had a first-rate
     education, and I supposed, of course, I would be a very superior
     man there; but I soon found that, though I knew a great deal more
     Greek and Latin and mathematics than most of the men there, I was
     a child to them in the science of government and history. Why,"
     said he, "you have no idea of the progress of Liberia. The men
     who go there are freemen--citizens; the burdens of society are
     upon them; and they feel that they must begin to educate
     themselves, and they are self-educated men. The President of
     Liberia, Mr. Benson, was a slave about seven years ago on a
     plantation in this country. He went to Liberia. He was a man of
     uncommon talents. He educated himself to the duties which he
     found himself called upon to perform as a citizen. And when Mr.
     Benson visited England a year ago, he had a perfect ovation. The
     white ladies and gentlemen of England, those who were really
     anti-slavery in their feelings--who love liberty--followed him
     wherever he went. They opened their houses, they had their
     _soirees_, and they welcomed him by every kind of demonstration
     of their good wishes for Liberia."

     Now, Mrs. President, the great object that I had in view in
     rising, was to give you a representative from South Carolina.
     (Applause). I mourn exceedingly that she has taken the position
     she has. I once had a brother who, had he been there, would have
     stood by Judge Pettigrew in his protest against the action of the
     South. He, many years ago, during the time of nullification in
     1832, was in the Senate of South Carolina, and delivered an able
     address, in which he discussed these very points, and showed that
     the South had no right of secession; that, in becoming an
     integral part of the United States, they had themselves
     voluntarily surrendered that right. And he remarked, "If you
     persist in this contest, you will be like a girdled tree, which
     must perish and die. You can not stand." (Applause).

     THE PRESIDENT (Lucy Stone): Mrs. Weld thinks it would be too bad
     to send the Southern aristocrats and Northern copperheads to
     Liberia: I do not know but it would. I am equally sure that it
     would be too bad to send them among the laboring people of
     England, who are thoroughly, heartily, and wholly on the side of
     the loyal North. They ought not to be sent there. I would
     suggest, when they are fairly subdued, that we should send them
     to London to make a part of the staff of the London _Times_. I
     think they would do better there than anywhere else. (Laughter).

The Hutchinson Family being present, varied the proceedings with their
inspiring songs. Lucy Stone, in introducing them, said Gen. McClellan
was not willing they should sing on the other side of the Potomac, but
we are glad to hear them everywhere. Susan B. Anthony presented a
series of resolutions,[43] and said:

     There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be
     made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a
     war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us
     if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in
     freedom--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and
     West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.

     Instead of suppressing the real cause of the war, it should have
     been proclaimed, not only by the people, but by the President,
     Congress, Cabinet, and every military commander. Instead of
     President Lincoln's waiting two long years before calling to the
     side of the Government the four millions of allies whom we have
     had within the territory of rebeldom, it should have been the
     first decree he sent forth. Every hour's delay, every life
     sacrificed up to the proclamation that called the slave to
     freedom and to arms, was nothing less than downright murder by
     the Government. For by all the laws of common-sense--to say
     nothing of laws military or national--if the President, as
     Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, could have devised any
     possible means whereby he might hope to suppress the rebellion,
     without the sacrifice of the life of one loyal citizen, without
     the sacrifice of one dollar of the loyal North, it was clearly
     his duty to have done so. Every interest of the insurgents, every
     dollar of their property, every institution, however peculiar,
     every life in every rebel State, even, if necessary, should have
     been sacrificed, before one dollar or one man should have been
     drawn from the free States. How much more, then, was it the
     President's duty to confer freedom on the four million slaves,
     transform them into a peaceful army for the Union, cripple the
     rebellion, and establish justice, the only sure foundation of
     peace! I therefore hail the day when the Government shall
     recognize that it is a war for freedom. We talk about returning
     to the old Union--"the Union as it was," and "the Constitution as
     it is"--about "restoring our country to peace and prosperity--to
     the blessed conditions that existed before the war!" I ask you
     what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have we had? Since
     the first slave-ship sailed up the James River with its human
     cargo, and there, on the soil of the _Old_ Dominion, sold it to
     the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that pirate
     captain landed on the shores of Africa, and there kidnapped the
     first stalwart negro, and fastened the first manacle, the
     struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement
     of the terrible war in the midst of which we are to-day. Between
     the slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This
     is only a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the
     _old_ conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union
     that is a Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham.
     (Applause).

     By the Constitution as it is, the North has stood pledged to
     protect slavery in the States where it existed. We have been
     bound, in case of insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those
     struggling for liberty, but of the oppressors. It was politicians
     who made this pledge at the beginning, and who have renewed it
     from year to year to this day. These same men have had control of
     the churches, the Sabbath-schools, and all religious influences;
     and the women have been a party in complicity with slavery. They
     have made the large majority in all the different religious
     organizations throughout the country, and have without protest,
     fellowshiped the slave-holder as a Christian; accepted
     pro-slavery preaching from their pulpits; suffered the words
     "slavery a crime" to be expurgated from all the lessons taught
     their children, in defiance of the Golden Rule, "Do unto others
     as you would that others should do unto you." They have had no
     right to vote in their churches, and, like slaves, have meekly
     accepted whatever morals and religion the selfish interest of
     politics and trade dictated.

     Woman must now assume her God-given responsibilities, and make
     herself what she is clearly designed to be, the educator of the
     race. Let her no longer be the mere reflector, the echo of the
     worldly pride and ambition of man. (Applause). Had the women of
     the North studied to know and to teach their sons the law of
     justice to the black man, regardless of the frown or the smile of
     pro-slavery priest and politician, they would not now be called
     upon to offer the loved of their households to the bloody Moloch
     of war. And now, women of the North, I ask you to rise up with
     earnest, honest purpose, and go forward in the way of right,
     fearlessly, as independent human beings, responsible to God alone
     for the discharge of every duty, for the faithful use of every
     gift, the good Father has given you. Forget conventionalisms;
     forget what the world will say, whether you are in your place or
     out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best
     words, do your best works, looking to your own conscience for
     approval.

     Mrs. HOYT, of Wisconsin: Thus far this meeting has been conducted
     in such a way as would lead one to suppose that it was an
     anti-slavery convention. There are ladies here who have come
     hundreds of miles to attend a business meeting of the Loyal Women
     of the North; and good as anti-slavery conventions are, and
     anti-slavery speeches are, in their way, I think that here we
     should attend to our own business.

     Mrs. CHALKSTONE, of California: My speech shall be as brief as
     possible and I ask for an excuse for my broken language. Our
     field is very small, and God has given us character and abilities
     to follow it out. We do not need to stand at the ballot-boxes and
     cast our votes, neither to stand and plead as lawyers; but in our
     homes we have a great office. I consider women a great deal
     superior to men. (Laughter and applause). Men are physically
     strong, but women are morally better. I speak of pure women, good
     women. It is woman who keeps the world in the balance.

     I am from Germany, where my brothers all fought against the
     Government and tried to make us free, but were unsuccessful. My
     only son, seventeen years old, is in our great and noble army of
     the Union. He has fought in many of the battles here, and I only
     came from California to see him once more. I have not seen him
     yet; though I was down in the camp, I could not get any pass. But
     I am willing to lay down all this sacrifice for the cause of
     liberty. We foreigners know the preciousness of that great, noble
     gift a great deal better than you, because you never were in
     slavery, but we are born in it. Germany pines for freedom. In
     Germany we sacrificed our wealth and ornaments for it, and the
     women in this country ought to do the same. We can not fight in
     the battles, but we can do this, and it is all we can do. The
     speaker, before me, remarked that Abraham Lincoln was two years
     before he emancipated slaves. She thought it wrong. It took
     eighteen hundred years in Europe to emancipate the Jews, and they
     are not emancipated now. Among great and intelligent peoples like
     Germany and France, until 1814 no Jew had the right to go on the
     pavement; they had to go in the middle of the street, where the
     horses walked! It took more than two years to emancipate the
     people of the North from the idea that the negro was not a human
     being, and that he had the right to be a free man. A great many
     will find fault in the resolution that the negro shall be free
     and equal, because our equal not every human being can be; but
     free every human being has a right to be. He can only be equal in
     his rights. (Applause).

     Mrs. ROSE called for the reading of the resolutions, which after
     a spirited discussion, all except the fifth, were unanimously
     adopted.

     Mrs. HOYT, of Wisconsin, said: _Mrs. President_--I object to the
     passage of the fifth resolution, not because I object to the
     sentiment expressed; but I do not think it is the time to bring
     before this meeting, assembled for the purpose of devising the
     best ways and means by which women may properly assist the
     Government in its struggle against treason, anything which could
     in the least prejudice the interest in this cause which is so
     dear to us all. We all know that Woman's Rights as an _ism_ has
     not been received with entire favor by the women of the country,
     and I know that there are thousands of earnest, loyal, and able
     women who will not go into any movement of this kind, if this
     idea is made prominent. (Applause). I came here from Wisconsin
     hoping to meet the earnest women of the country. I hoped that
     nothing that would in any way damage the cause so dear to us all
     would be brought forward by any of the members. I object to this,
     because our object should be to maintain, as women properly may,
     the integrity of our Government; to vindicate its authority; to
     re-establish it upon a far more enduring basis. We can do this if
     we do not involve ourselves in any purely political matter, or
     any _ism_ obnoxious to the people. The one idea should be the
     maintenance of the authority of the Government as it is, and the
     integrity of the Republican idea. For this, women may properly
     work, and I hope this resolution will not pass.

     SARAH H. HALLECK, of Milton, N. Y.: I would make the suggestion
     that those who approve of this resolution can afford to give way,
     and allow that part of it which is objectionable to be stricken
     out. The negroes have suffered more than the women, and the
     women, perhaps, can afford to give them the preference. Let it
     stand as regards them, and blot out the word "woman." It may
     possibly be woman's place to suffer. At any rate, let her suffer,
     if, by that means, _man_kind may suffer less.

     A VOICE: You are too self-sacrificing.

     ERNESTINE L. ROSE: I always sympathize with those who seem to be
     in the minority. I know it requires a great deal of moral courage
     to object to anything that appears to have been favorably
     received. I know very well from long experience how it feels to
     stand in a minority of one; and I am glad that my friend on the
     other side (Mrs. Halleck) has already added one to make a
     minority of two, though that is by far too small to be
     comfortable. I, for one, object to the proposition to throw woman
     out of the race for freedom. (Applause). And do you know why?
     Because she needs freedom for the freedom of man. (Applause). Our
     ancestors made a great mistake in not recognizing woman in the
     rights of man. It has been justly stated that the negro at
     present suffers more than woman, but it can do him no injury to
     place woman in the same category with him. I, for one, object to
     having that term stricken out, for it can have no possible
     bearing against anything that we want to promote: we desire to
     promote human rights and human freedom. It can do no injury, but
     must do good, for it is a painful fact that woman under the law
     has been in the same category with the slave. Of late years she
     has had some small privileges conceded to her. Now, mind, I say
     _conceded_; for publicly it has not yet been recognized by the
     laws of the land that she has a right to an equality with man. In
     that resolution it simply states a fact, that in a republic based
     upon freedom, woman, as well as the negro, should be recognized
     as an equal with the whole human race. (Applause)

     ANGELINE G. WELD: _Mrs. President_--I rejoice exceedingly that
     that resolution should combine us with the negro. I feel that we
     have been with him; that the iron has entered into our souls.
     True, we have not felt the slave-holder's lash; true, we have not
     had our hands manacled, but our _hearts_ have been crushed. Was
     there a single institution in this country that would throw open
     its doors to the acknowledgment of woman's equality with man in
     the race for science and the languages, until Oberlin, Antioch,
     Lima, and a very few others opened their doors, twenty years ago?
     Have I not heard women say--I said thus to my own brother, as I
     used to receive from him instruction and reading: "Oh, brother,
     that I could go to college with you! that I could have the
     instruction you do! but I am crushed! I hear nothing, I know
     nothing, except in the fashionable circle." A teacher said to a
     young lady, who had been studying for several years, on the day
     she finished her course of instruction, "I thought you would be
     very glad that you were so soon to go home, so soon to leave your
     studies." She looked up, and said, "What was I made for? When I
     go home I shall live in a circle of fashion and folly. I was not
     made for embroidery and dancing; I was made a woman; but I can
     not be a true woman, a full-grown woman, in America."

     Now, my friends, I do not want to find fault with the past. I
     believe that men did for women the best that they knew how to do.
     They did not know their own rights; they did not recognize the
     rights of any man who had a black face. We can not wonder that,
     in their tenderness for woman, they wanted to shelter and protect
     her, and they made those laws from true, human, generous
     feelings. Woman was then too undeveloped to demand anything else.
     But woman is full-grown to-day, whether man knows it or not,
     equal to her rights, and equal to the responsibilities of the
     hour. I want to be identified with the negro; until he gets his
     rights, we never shall have ours. (Applause).

     SUSAN B. ANTHONY: This resolution brings in no question, no
     _ism_. It merely makes the assertion that in a true democracy, in
     a genuine republic, every citizen who lives under the government
     must have the right of representation. You remember the maxim,
     "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
     governed." This is the fundamental principle of democracy; and
     before our Government can be a true democracy--before our
     republic can be placed upon lasting and enduring foundations--the
     civil and political rights of every citizen must be practically
     established. This is the assertion of the resolution. It is a
     philosophical statement. It is not because women suffer, it is
     not because slaves suffer, it is not because of any individual
     rights or wrongs--it is the simple assertion of the great
     fundamental truth of democracy that was proclaimed by our
     Revolutionary fathers. I hope the discussion will no longer be
     continued as to the comparative rights or wrongs of one class or
     another. The question before us is: Is it possible that peace and
     union shall be established in this country; is it possible for
     this Government to be a true democracy, a genuine republic, while
     one-sixth or one-half of the people are disfranchised?

     MRS. HOYT: I do not object to the philosophy of these
     resolutions. I believe in the advancement of the human race, and
     certainly not in a retrograde movement of the Woman's Rights
     question; but at the same time I do insist that nothing that has
     become obnoxious to a portion of the people of the country shall
     be dragged into this meeting. (Applause). The women of the North
     were invited here to meet in convention, not to hold a Temperance
     meeting, not to hold an Anti-Slavery meeting, not to hold a
     Woman's Rights Convention, but to consult as to the best
     practical way for the advancement of the loyal cause. To my
     certain knowledge there are ladies in this house who have come
     hundreds of miles, who will withdraw from this convention, who
     will go home disappointed, and be thrown back on their own
     resources, and form other plans of organization; whereas they
     would much prefer to co-operate with the National Convention if
     this matter were not introduced. This movement must be sacred to
     the one object of assisting our Government. I would add one more
     remark, that though the women of the Revolution did help our
     Government in that early struggle, they did not find it necessary
     to set forth in any theoretical or clamorous way their right to
     equal suffrage or equal political position, though doubtless they
     believed, as much as any of us, in the advancement of woman.

     A LADY: I want to ask the lady who just spoke if the women of the
     Revolution found it necessary to form Loyal Leagues? We are not
     bound to do just as the women of the Revolution did. (Applause
     and laughter).

     LUCY N. COLEMAN, of Rochester, N. Y.: I wish to say, in the first
     place, something a little remote from the point, which I have in
     my mind just now. A peculiar sensitiveness seems to have come
     over some of the ladies here in reference to the anti-slavery
     spirit of the resolutions. It seems to me impossible that a
     company of women could stand upon this platform without catching
     something of the anti-slavery spirit, and without expressing, to
     some extent, their sympathy with the advancement of human rights.
     It is the Anti-Slavery women and the Woman's Rights women who
     called this meeting, and who have most effectually aided in this
     movement. Their hearts bleed to the very core that our nation is
     to-day suffering to its depths, and they came together to devise
     means whereby they could help the country in its great calamity.
     I respect the woman who opposed this resolution, for daring to
     say so much. She says that it is an Anti-Slavery Convention that
     is in session. So it is, and something more. (Applause). She says
     it is a Woman's Rights Convention. So it is, and even more than
     that; it is a World's Convention. (Applause). Another woman (I
     rejoice to hear that lisping, foreign tongue) says that our
     sphere is so narrow that we should be careful to keep within it.
     All honor to her, that she dared to say even that. I recognize
     for myself no narrow sphere. (Applause). Where you may work, my
     brother, I may work. I would willingly stand upon the
     battle-field, and would be glad to receive the balls in my
     person, if in that way I could do more for my country's good than
     in any other. I recognize no right of any man or of any woman to
     say that I should not stand there. Our sphere is _not_ narrow--it
     is broad.

     In reference to this resolution, Mrs. Halleck thinks it might be
     well to leave out woman. No, no. Do you remember, friends, long,
     long ago here in New York, an Anti-Slavery convention broke up in
     high dudgeon, because a woman was put upon a committee? But that
     Anti-Slavery Society, notwithstanding those persons who felt so
     sensitive withdrew from it, has lived thirty years, and to-day it
     has the honor of being credited as the cause of this war. Perhaps
     if the principle which was then at stake--that a woman had a
     right to be on a committee--had been waived, from the very fact
     that the principle of right was overruled, that Society would
     have failed. I would not yield one iota, one particle, to this
     clamor for compromise. Be it understood that it is a Woman's
     Rights matter; for the Woman's Rights women have the same right
     to dictate to a Loyal League that the Anti-Woman's Rights women
     have, and the side that is strongest will carry the resolution,
     of course. But do not withdraw it. Do not say, "We will take it
     away because it is objectionable."

     I want the people to understand that this Loyal League--because
     it is a Loyal League--must of necessity bring in Anti-Slavery and
     Woman's Rights. (Applause). Is it possible that any of you
     believe that there is such a being in this country to-day as a
     loyal man or woman who is not anti-slavery to the backbone?
     (Applause). Neither is there a loyal man or woman whose intellect
     is clear enough to take in a broad, large idea, who is not to the
     very core a Woman's Rights man or woman. (Applause).

     MRS. HOYT: As I have said before, I am not opposed to
     Anti-Slavery. I stand here an Abolitionist from the earliest
     childhood, and a stronger anti-slavery woman lives not on the
     soil of America. (Applause). I voted Yea on the anti-slavery
     resolution, and I would vote it ten times over. But, at the same
     time, in the West, which I represent, there is a very strong
     objection to Woman's Rights; in fact, this Woman's Rights matter
     is odious to some of us from the _manner_ in which it has been
     conducted; not that we object to the philosophy--we believe in
     the philosophy--but object to this matter being tacked on to a
     purely loyal convention.... I will make one more statement which
     bears upon the point which I have been trying to make. I have
     never before spoken except in private meetings, and therefore
     must ask the indulgence of the audience. The women of Madison,
     Wisconsin, feeling the necessity and importance of doing
     something more than women were doing to assist the Government in
     this struggle, organized a Ladies' Union League, which has been
     in operation some time, and is very efficient.

     A VOICE:--What are they doing? Please state.

     MRS. HOYT: In Madison we had a very large and flourishing
     "Soldiers' Aid Society." We were the headquarters for that part
     of the State. A great many ladies worked in our Aid Society, and
     assisted us, who utterly refused to join with the Loyal League,
     because, they said, it would damage the Aid Society. We
     recognized that fact, and kept it purely distinct as a Ladies'
     Loyal League, for the promotion of the loyal sentiment of the
     North, and to reach the soldiers in the field by the most direct
     and practical means which were in our power. We have a great many
     very flourishing Ladies' Loyal Leagues throughout the West, and
     we have kept them sacred from Anti-Slavery, Woman's Rights,
     Temperance, and everything else, good though they may be. In our
     League we have three objects in view. The first is, retrenchment
     in household expenses, to the end that the material resources of
     the Government may be, so far as possible, applied to the entire
     and thorough vindication of its authority. Second, to strengthen
     the loyal sentiment of the people at home, and instil a deeper
     love of the national flag. The third and most important object
     is, to write to the soldiers in the field, thus reaching nearly
     every private in the army, to encourage and stimulate him in the
     way that ladies know how to do. I state again, it is not an
     Anti-Slavery objection. I will vote for every Anti-Slavery
     movement in this Convention. I object to the Woman's Rights
     resolutions, and nothing else.

     ERNESTINE L. ROSE: It is exceedingly amusing to hear persons talk
     about throwing out Woman's Rights, when, if it had not been for
     Woman's Rights, that lady would not have had the courage to stand
     here and say what she did. (Applause). Pray, what means "loyal"?
     Loyal means to be true to one's highest conviction. Justice, like
     charity, begins at home. It is because we are loyal to truth,
     loyal to justice, loyal to right, loyal to humanity, that woman
     is included in that resolution. Now, what does this discussion
     mean? The lady acknowledges that it is not against Woman's Rights
     itself; she is _for_ Woman's Rights. We are here to endeavor to
     help the cause of human rights and human freedom. We ought not to
     be afraid. You may depend upon it, if there are any of those who
     are called copperheads--but I don't like to call names, for even
     a copperhead is better than no head at all--(laughter)--if there
     are any copperheads here, I am perfectly sure they will object to
     this whole Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us
     adjourn _sine die_. If we are loyal to our highest convictions,
     we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will
     find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let
     us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman
     with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to
     see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better
     than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly
     inconsistent if, because some women out in the West are opposed
     to the Woman's Rights movement--though at the same time they take
     advantage of it--that therefore we shall throw it out of this
     resolution.

     MRS. SPENCE, of New York: I didn't come to this meeting to
     participate--only to listen. I don't claim to be a Northerner or
     a Southerner; but I claim to be a human being, and to belong to
     the human family (Applause). I belong to no sect or creed of
     politics or religion; I stand as an individual, defending the
     rights of every one as far as I can see them. It seems to me we
     have met here to come to some unity of action. If we attempt to
     bring in religious, political, or moral questions, we all must of
     necessity differ. We came here hoping to be inspired by each
     other to lay some plan by which we can unite in practical action.
     I have not heard such a proposition made; but I anticipate that
     it will be. (Hear, hear). Then if we are to unite on some
     proposition which is to be presented, it seems to me that our
     resolutions should be practical and directed to the main
     business. Let the object of the meeting be unity of action and
     expression in behalf of what we feel to be the highest right, our
     highest idea of liberty.

     THE PRESIDENT (Lucy Stone): Every good cause can afford to be
     just. The lady from Wisconsin, who differs from some of us here,
     says she is an Anti-Slavery woman. We ought to believe her. She
     accepts the principles of the Woman's Rights movement, but she
     does not like the way in which it has been carried on. We ought
     to believe her. It is not, then, that she objects to the idea of
     the equality of women and negroes, but because she does not wish
     to have anything "tacked on" to the Loyal League, that to the
     mass of people does not seem to belong there. She seems to me to
     stand precisely in the position of those good people just at the
     close of the war of the Revolution. The people then, as now, had
     their hearts aching with the memory of their buried dead. They
     had had years of war from which they had garnered out sorrows as
     well as hopes; and when they came to establish a Union, they
     found that one black, unmitigated curse of slavery rooted in the
     soil. Some men said, "We can have no true Union where there is
     not justice to the negro. The black man is a human being, like
     us, with the same equal rights." They had given to the world the
     Declaration of Independence, grand and brave and beautiful. They
     said, "How can we form a true Union?" Some people representing
     the class that Mrs. Hoyt represents, answered, "Let us have a
     Union. We are weak; we have been beset for seven long years; do
     not let us meddle with the negro question. What we are for is a
     Union; let us have a Union at all hazards." There were earnest
     men, men of talent, who could speak well and earnestly, and they
     persuaded the others to silence. So they said nothing about
     slavery, and let the wretched monster live.

     To-day, over all our land, the unburied bones of our fathers and
     sons and brothers tell the sad mistake that those men made when
     long ago The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are
     not ours. The few rights that we have, have been wrung from the
     Legislature by t they left this one great wrong in the land. They
     could not accomplish good by passing over a wrong. If the right
     of one single human being is to be disregarded by us, we fail in
     our loyalty to the country. All over this land women have no
     political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not
     unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The
     babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. The
     few rights that we have, have been wrung from the Legislature by
     the Woman's Rights movement. We come to-day to say to those who
     are administering our Government and fighting our battles, "While
     you are going through this valley of humiliation, do not forget
     that you must be true alike to the women and the negroes." We can
     never be truly "loyal" if we leave them out. Leave them out, and
     we take the same backward step that our fathers took when they
     left out slavery. If justice to the negro and to woman is right,
     it can not hurt our loyalty to the country and the Union. If it
     is not right, let it go out of the way; but if it is right, there
     is no occasion that we should reject it, or ignore it. We make
     the statement that the Government derives its just powers from
     the consent of the governed, and that all human beings have equal
     rights. This is not an _ism_--it is simply an assertion that we
     shall be true to the highest truth.

     A MAN IN THE AUDIENCE: The question was asked, as I entered this
     house, "Is it right for women to meet here and intermeddle in our
     public affairs?" It is the greatest possible absurdity for women
     to stand on that platform and talk of loyalty to a Government in
     which nine-tenths of the politicians of the land say they have no
     right to interfere, and still oppose Woman's Rights. The very act
     of standing there is an endorsement of Woman's Rights.

     A VOICE: I believe this is a woman's meeting. Men have no right
     to speak here.

     THE GENTLEMAN CONTINUED: It is on woman more than on man that the
     real evils of this war settle. It is not the soldier on the
     battle-field that suffers most; it is the wife, the mother, the
     daughter. (Applause. Cries of "Question, question").

     A VOICE: You are not a woman, sit down.

     SUSAN B. ANTHONY: Some of us who sit upon this platform have many
     a time been clamored down, and told that we had no right to
     speak, and that we were out of our place in public meetings; far
     be it from us, when women assemble, and a man has a thought in
     his soul, burning for utterance, to retaliate upon him. (Laughter
     and applause).

     The resolution was then put to vote.

     A VOICE: Allow me to inquire if men have a right to vote on this
     question?

     THE PRESIDENT: I suppose men who are used to business know that
     they should _not_ vote here. We give them the privilege of
     speaking.

     The resolution was carried by a large majority.

     SUSAN B. ANTHONY: The resolution recommending the practical work,
     has not yet been prepared. We have a grand platform on which to
     stand, and I hope we shall be able to present a plan of work
     equally grand. But, Mrs. President, if we should fail in doing
     this, we shall not fail to enunciate the principles of democracy
     and republicanism which underlie the structure of a free
     government. When the heads and hearts of the women of the North
     are fully imbued with the true idea, their hands will find a way
     to secure its accomplishment.

     There is evidently very great earnestness on the part of all
     present to settle upon some practical work. I therefore ask that
     the women from every State of the Union, who are delegates here
     from Loyal Leagues and Aid Societies, shall retire, at the close
     of this meeting, to the lecture-room of this church, and there we
     will endeavor to fix upon the best possible plan we can gather
     from the counsels of the many. I hope this enthusiasm may be
     directed to good and legitimate ends, and not allowed to
     evaporate into thin air. I hope we shall aid greatly in the
     establishment of this Government on the everlasting foundation of
     justice to all.


BUSINESS MEETING.

The lecture-room was crowded with representatives from the different
States--Susan B. Anthony in the chair. There was a general expression
in favor of forming a Woman's Loyal National League, which ended in
the adoption of the following resolution:

     _Resolved_, That we, loyal women of the nation, assembled in
     convention in New York, this 14th day of May, 1863, do hereby
     pledge ourselves one to another in a Loyal League, to give
     support to the Government in so far as it makes the war for
     freedom.

This pledge was signed by nearly every woman present. Mrs. Stanton was
elected president unanimously, and Miss Anthony, Secretary. Many women
spoke ably and eloquently; women who had never before heard their own
voices in a public meeting, discussed nice points of law and
constitution in a manner that would have done credit to any
legislative assembly. A deep religious tone of loyalty to God and
Freedom pervaded the entire meeting. It was an occasion not soon to be
forgotten. Women of all ages were assembled there, from the matron of
threescore years and ten to the fair girl whose interest in the war
had brought to her a premature sadness and high resolve. But of all
who mourned the loss of husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers, no word
of fear, regret, or doubt was uttered. All declared themselves ready
for any sacrifice, and expressed an unwavering faith in the glorious
future of a true republic. The interest in the meeting kept up until
so late an hour that it was decided to adjourn, to meet the next
afternoon.


EVENING SESSION.

The evening session was held in Cooper Institute, Mrs. Stanton
presiding. An address to the President was read by Miss Anthony, which
was subsequently adopted and sent to him.

     _The Loyal Women of the Country to Abraham Lincoln, President of
     the United States._

     Having heard many complaints of the want of enthusiasm among
     Northern women in the war, we deemed it fitting to call a
     National Convention. From every free State, we have received the
     most hearty responses of interest in each onward step of the
     Government as it approaches the idea of a true republic. From the
     letters received, and the numbers assembled here to-day, we can
     with confidence address you in the name of the loyal women of the
     North.

     We come not to criticise or complain. Not for ourselves or our
     friends do we ask redress of specific grievances, or posts of
     honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere
     material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark
     hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge the loyal women
     of the Republic to freedom and our country. We come to strengthen
     you with earnest words of sympathy and encouragement. We come to
     thank you for your proclamation, in which the nineteenth century
     seems to echo back the Declaration of Seventy-six. Our fathers
     had a vision of the sublime idea of liberty, equality, and
     fraternity; but they failed to climb the heights that with
     anointed eyes they saw. To us, their children, belongs the work
     to build up the living reality of what they conceived and
     uttered.

     It is not our mission to criticise the past. Nations, like
     individuals, must blunder and repent. It is not wise to waste one
     energy in vain regret, but from each failure rise up with renewed
     conscience and courage for nobler action. The follies and faults
     of yesterday we cast aside as the old garments we have outgrown.
     Born anew to freedom, slave creeds and codes and constitutions
     must now all pass away. "For men do not put new wine into old
     bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and
     the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles, and
     both are preserved."

     Our special thanks are due to you, that by your Proclamation two
     millions of women are freed from the foulest bondage humanity
     ever suffered. Slavery for man is bad enough, but the refinements
     of cruelty must ever fall on the mothers of the oppressed race,
     defrauded of all the rights of the family relation, and violated
     in the most holy instincts of their nature. A mother's life is
     bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and
     ambition. But the slave-mother, in her degradation, rejoices not
     in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by
     experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the
     unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present, and future
     are all wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she
     wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows that the
     wine-press she now treads, unwatched, those tender feet must
     tread alone. For, by the law of slavery, "the child follows the
     condition of the mother."

     By your act, the family, that great conservator of national
     virtue and strength, has been restored to millions of humble
     homes, around whose altars coming generations shall magnify and
     bless the name of Abraham Lincoln. By a mere stroke of the pen
     you have emancipated millions from a condition of wholesale
     concubinage. We now ask you to finish the work by declaring that
     nowhere under our national flag shall the motherhood of any race
     plead in vain for justice and protection. So long as one slave
     breathes in this Republic, we drag the chain with him. God has so
     linked the race, man to man, that all must rise or fall together.
     Our history exemplifies this law. It was not enough that we at
     the North abolished slavery for ourselves, declared freedom of
     speech and the press, built up churches, colleges, and free
     schools, studied the science of morals, government, and economy,
     dignified labor, amassed wealth, whitened the sea with our
     commerce, and commanded the respect and admiration of the nations
     of the earth, so long as the South, by the natural proclivities
     of slavery, was sapping the very foundations of our national
     life....

     You are the first President ever borne on the shoulders of
     freedom into the position you now fill. Your predecessors owed
     their elevation to the slave oligarchy, and in serving slavery
     they did but obey their masters. In your election, Northern
     freemen threw off the yoke. And with you rests the responsibility
     that our necks shall never bow again. At no time in the annals of
     the nation has there been a more auspicious moment to retrieve
     the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to
     slavery. The Constitution has been repudiated, and the compact
     broken by the Southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the
     first gun on Sumter released the North from all constitutional
     obligations to slavery. It left the Government, for the first
     time in our history, free to carry out the Declaration of our
     Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact what we have ever
     claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

     "The Union as it was"--a compromise between barbarism and
     civilization--can never be restored, for the opposing principles
     of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life,
     and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is
     death. In obedience to this law, our Republic, divided and
     distracted by the collisions of caste and class, is tottering to
     its base, and can only be reconstructed on the sure foundations
     of impartial freedom to all men. The war in which we are involved
     is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step in the
     progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time
     for temporizing or diplomacy. In a radical upheaving, the people
     demand eternal principles to stand upon.

     Northern power and loyalty can never be measured until the
     purpose of the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm is
     ever based on a grand idea, and unity of action demands a
     definite end. At this time our greatest need is not in men or
     money, valiant generals or brilliant victories, but in a
     consistent policy, based on the principle that "all governments
     derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." And
     the nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our
     declaration of rights, nor under any laws, human or divine, by
     which _free_ men can be made slaves; and therefore that your
     pledge to the slaves is irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

     If it be true, as it is said, that Northern women lack enthusiasm
     in this war, the fault rests with those who have confused and
     confounded its policy. The page of history glows with incidents
     of self-sacrifice by woman in the hour of her country's danger.
     Fear not that the daughters of this Republic will count any
     sacrifice too great to insure the triumph of freedom. Let the men
     who wield the nation's power be wise, brave, and magnanimous, and
     its women will be prompt to meet the duties of the hour with
     devotion and heroism.

     When Fremont on the Western breeze proclaimed a day of jubilee to
     the bondmen within our gates, the women of the nation echoed back
     a loud Amen. When Hunter freed a million men, and gave them arms
     to fight our battles, justice and mercy crowned that act, and
     tyrants stood appalled. When Butler, in the chief city of the
     Southern despotism, hung a traitor, we felt a glow of pride; for
     that one act proved that we had a Government, and one man brave
     enough to administer its laws. And when Burnside would banish
     Vallandigham to the Dry Tortugas, let the sentence be approved,
     and the nation will ring with plaudits. Your Proclamation gives
     you immortality. Be just, and share your glory with men like
     these who wait to execute your will.

     In behalf of the Women's National Loyal League,

                              ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
     SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

     Rev. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL: Possibly there maybe nations,
     like individuals, that are without definite ideas or purposes.
     They sprang into being by accident, and they continue to live by
     the sufferance of circumstances. Our American Republic is not of
     this type. We were born to the heritage of one great idea; we
     were created by it and for it, and it is mightier than we; it
     must annihilate us, or it must establish us a nation as lasting
     as the ages.

     Our ante-revolutionary statesmen were dissatisfied with an
     inadequate, partial, unjust representation. The thought grew in
     them till it developed the broad principle of self-government by
     the people. They perceived and asserted that truth; they fought
     for it, and died or lived for it, as the case might be. So they
     constructed this great Republic, grounding it firmly upon a deep
     and wide democracy. Its frame-work was essentially democratic,
     but there were a few great beams and joists, and plenty of paint
     and mortar used, which were as purely aristocratic.

     We, here at the North, have been accustomed to look at the
     strength of the foundations, and of the consistent massive
     frame-work; they, at the South, admired the incongruous ornaments
     and decorations, and they did not forget any of the exceptional
     timbers. We were shocked when the great structure seemed ready to
     tumble about our ears; they expected it all the time, and were
     working for it, ready to perish in the general downfall, if that
     were inevitable. I have seen a drop of water spread over a small
     orifice in a layer of melting ice, which was brilliant red in
     color to me, but it was the intensest blue to my friend, who was
     standing at my side. The moral vision is quite as largely
     dependent upon the angle at which it receives its rays of
     reflected light. North and South represent the extremes of the
     moral spectrum. The equalizing of labor and capital, which is a
     beautiful violet to us, is a very angry red to them; and the
     soft-toned hues of their system of servitude are crimson with
     blood-guiltiness to ourselves. If we stood where the perfect and
     undivided sunbeams could fall upon us, we should see all men
     under the common radiance of that pure white light, of which
     Providence has an unlimited supply.

     No more unanimity of sentiment or principle existed among our own
     people in the war of the Revolution, than in this. Democracy,
     asserting its rights, brought on the conflict then, though
     aristocracy, goaded by the instinct of self-preservation and
     self-interest, joined hands and aided it to its consummation.
     Patriotism grew in the hearts of each, and held us together as a
     nation for about eighty years; but the subordinate antagonism,
     tortured by its unnatural alliance during all those years, now in
     turn strikes also for independence. Predominance, precedence,
     pre-eminence, might have satisfied it for a time; but, from the
     nature of our institutions, that was impossible. It encroached at
     every point, and was generally rewarded for its self-assertion;
     but it was inherently and constitutionally subordinate, and must
     have remained so forever in the federation of the United States.
     It struck for independence, and it did well! It did all it could
     do, if it would not die inanely. One must always admire that
     instinct of the grub which leads it to weave its own
     winding-sheet, and lie down fearlessly in its sepulcher,
     preparatory to its resurrection as a butterfly; but immeasurably
     more to be admired is the calculating courage of men who are
     ready to stake their all upon any issue--even upon one so
     mistaken, so false, so partial to one class and so unjust to
     another, as the cause of the slave-holders. Every earnest purpose
     must have its own baptism of blessings.

     We, the inheritors of a sublime truth, have been grievously
     wanting in faith in our heritage!--wanting in aim and purpose to
     maintain its integrity! No wonder the land is still washed with
     tears of the widowed and fatherless, and that stricken mothers
     refuse to be comforted. Give us a living principle to die for.
     "Make this a war for emancipation!" cries anti-slavery England,
     "and our sympathies will be with you!" They demand much; but,
     that demand granted, it yet falls infinitely below the real point
     at issue. It is immeasurably short of the great conflict which we
     are actually waging. It is one phase of it,--the most acute
     phase, undoubtedly; but not, therefore, the broadest and most
     momentous one. Slavery was the peculiar institution of the South;
     but we, as a nation, have an incomparably greater peculiar
     institution of our own. The one is only peculiarly exceptional to
     our general policy; the other is essentially and organically at
     war with it. It is the only thing which pointedly distinguishes
     us from a dozen other nations. The consent of the governed is the
     sole, legitimate authority of any government! This is the
     essential, peculiar creed of our republic. That principle is on
     one side of this war; and the old doctrine of might makes right,
     the necessary ground-work of all monarchies, is on the other. It
     is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal,
     man-respecting principles, which we call by the comprehensive
     term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting,
     class-favoring elements which we group together under that
     silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean
     that, it means nothing.

     Slavery is malignantly aristocratic, and seems therefore to
     absorb all other manifestations of the principle into itself. It
     is Pharaoh's lean kine, which devour all the others of their
     species, and yet are no better favored than before. But if
     slavery were dead to-day, aristocracy might still grind our
     republic to powder. Men may cease to be slaves, and yet not be
     enfranchised. Although they are no longer bondmen, yet they may
     be governed without their own consent. But when you deny the
     universal enfranchisement of our people, you deny the one
     distinctive principle of our Government, and the only essential,
     fore-ordained fact in the future of our national institutions. We
     do not at all comprehend this.

     There was one who builded wiser than he knew, Emerson says, and I
     think that result is not uncommon. The little Indian boy in the
     pleasant fable, who ran on eagerly in advance of his migrating
     tribe, to plant his single, three-cornered beech-nut in the
     center of a great prairie, scarcely foresaw the many acres of
     heavy timber which was to confront the white pioneer hundreds of
     years afterward, as the outgrowth of his childish deed. Many
     soldiers are fighting our battles upon a basis broader than they
     know. There are men who believe that they are solely engaged in
     putting down the rebellion; others are maintaining the disputed
     courage and honor of the "mudsills"; some are fighting to uphold
     our present Northern civilization and its institutions; and a
     handful have set out definitely to carry these into the South, to
     give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of
     himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to
     die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as
     antagonistic in the interpretation thereof as the decisions
     touching an ancient oracle, a disputed biblical text, or a knotty
     passage from our own venerated Constitution.

     If victory should come just as she is summoned by each class of
     our patriotic and brave Union volunteers, would she most favor
     the rebels or the Government? Look at some of her conflicting
     purposed achievements:

     1. To preserve slavery unharmed, without so much as the smell of
     fire upon its garments, when it shall emerge from the ordeal of
     war.

     2. To gratuitously establish slavery forever, by solemn and
     unchanging guarantees.

     3. To leave slav

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