CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

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CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

CRUSADERS
FOR FREEDOM

by

Henry Steele Cvmmager

ILLUSTRATED BY MIMI KORACH

Doubleday <6- Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York

T.TRBAKY CMF CONGRESS CATALOG CARI> NTTXMBER 6^1587-6

zQ6a BY HENRY SXEEUE

AT.T. BlOJbi'JL'S RESEHVETJ
IN -JTJHUS TXNTTTED SXA.TES OF
FIRST

To
STORM JAMESON

"Knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom

and the secret of freedom a brave heart,
not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset?

CONTENTS

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 13

Tom Paine
Thomas Erskine
William Lloyd Garrison
Elijah Love/ay
Wendell Phittips

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 37

Roger Williams
Puritans

Anne Hutchinson
William Penn
Thomas Jefferson

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 61

Wittiam Lloyd Garrison
Theodore Parker

8 CONTENTS

Levi Coffin

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Tubman
John Brown
Abraham Lincoln

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 85

Hans Christian Andersen
Richard Oastler
Lord Anthony Ashley
Charles Loring Brace
Jane Addams
UNICEF

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 113

Friedrich Froebel
Johann Pestalozzi
Bronson Mcott
Horace Mann
Domingo Sarmiento
Nicholas Svend Grundtvig
Christen Kold
Yang Chu Yen
Dr. Frank

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 149

Efczabeth Cody Stanton

CONTENTS 9

Lucretia Mott

Susan Anthony

Emma Wfflard

Mary Lyon

Elizabeth ElackweU

Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwett

Carrie Chapman Catt

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 173

The Hugtienots
Fridtjof Nansen
Israel

FAIR TRIAL 197

Magna Carta
Voltaire

John Quincy Adams
Emile Zola

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Eleanor Roosevelt

INDEX 235

We are the music-makers.
And. we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering "by lone sea-Breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams i
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems*

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire^ glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a. crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And overthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

What is the most important of all rights?

Well, that is a hard question. It is like asking what is the
most important part of school, the teachers or the pupils?
It is like asking what is the most important part of an auto-
mobile, the engine or the hody? The fact is that all rights
belong together and that you can't very well have some of
them without the others. No teachers no school; no pupils
no school either. No engine no car; no body no car
either.

Still, if somebody took you by the throat and pushed you
against a wall and made you say what right came first,
there is no doubt how you would respond. You would yelL
You would say, "Let me go. You can't make me tell." And
there you are: that is the first right the right to yell; the
right to speak up, or not to speak up if you don't want to;
the right to be heard.

It may not be the most important right, but it is tie first
right.

l6 CBUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Why? Very simply, because without it you can never
get any of the others. After all, if you can't make yourself
heard, if you can't speak up, you won't get any rights at
all. No use talking about the right to worship God in your
own way if you can't even pray without someone breathing
down your neck. No use talking about the right to an edu-
cation if your teacher can't call his soul his own and if you
can't read anything that the police haven't passed on first
No use talking about a fair trial if you can't have a lawyer
to help you or if you can't tell your own story in court.

Free speech and free press the right to be heard and the
right to hear this is the first right because all the others
depend upon it

So let us begin with this one.

Let us begin with Tom Paine, over in England, Not al-
ways in England; eventually he threw in his lot with the
Americans. But in England when he made his great fight
for the right to be heard

Poor Tom Paine! He wasn't much to look at, with his big
nose and his ears sticking out and his shoulders all hunched
up, and his clothes looking as though he had slept in them.
He wasn't much anyway. He was a failure at everything he
tried, one of those unfortunate people life had marked out
for a failure. He wasn't even allowed his full name. Every-
body says Thomas Jefferson, but nobody ever says Thomas
Paine; it's just plain Tom Paine. Everything he put his hand
to went wrong, somehow. He left school at thirteen, and
after that he educated himself on the run. He signed up as
a sailor but he never did like sailing, or the sea, and soon
gave that up. He was a corset maker, and he hated that
|ob-what young man wouldn't? He even got a job as tax
collector, but he couldn't for the life of him keep his rec-
ords straight and pretty soon he was out of that job too.
He was born and bred a Quaker, but he couldn't manage
to be a good Quaker, and what with one thing and another

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 17

he had to drop out of that church. ... No wonder Tom
Paine decided to leave England and try life in the New
World.

Somehow he had managed to meet Benjamin Franklin
while he was in England. The kindly Dr. Franklin gave him
letters to friends over in Philadelphia, saying that he was
an "ingenious, worthy young man/* So off Tom Paine went,
across the Atlantic, to America,

Maybe there was something in the air of the New World
that agreed with Mr. Paine. At any rate, as soon as he
landed in Philadelphia and that was at the close of the
year 1774 he began a new life. The Tom Paine who had
been a failure at everything was forgotten, back there in
England. Now there was a new Tom Paine a young man
who almost overnight became a great man.

Now how did that happen? It wasn't just the American
air that did it, though that helped. It was the times as well.
Tom Paine was one of those men you find a good many
of them in the pages of history who jog along being no-
bodies in ordinary times but come to life in time of trouble.
He was made for trouble. Give him a nice pleasant life in
a pleasant little village with a pleasant wife and children
and a pleasant dull job, and he would be just a pleasant
dull little man. But war, or revolution, or crisis, sent an
electric current right through him, from tip to toe.

When Tom Paine landed in Philadelphia in December
1774 th afr was fr^ of electrical currents. That very year
delegates from all parts of America had come to the City
of Brotherly Love to plan well, to plan a revolution. The
next spring Minutemen stood at Lexington Common and
Concord Bridge, up in Massachusetts, and "fired the shots
heard round the world." And with that the war was on
the war for American independence and for freedom.

What a time to be in America! For that matter, what a
time to be alive! It was all meat and drink for Tom Paine.

l8 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Now he was in his element War! Independence! The rights
of men! Every day Paine got more excited, and every day
he grew an inch or two.

But somehow everybody eke wasn't as excited about war
and independence as Mr. Paine. That would never do. He
was going to fight, all in good time, but first he had to win
Americans over to independence. He fought that fight with
his pen and what a pen! Others could use swords and guns
better than Tom Paine but nobody could use a pen better.
He made his pen into a whole battery of guns; he made it
into a whole army of swords. He sat down and wrote a
little book not nearly as long as this book but what a
book! Common Sense, he called it How silly, he said, that a
continent should belong to an island; common sense that it
should be independent How silly that kings should rule
over men; common sense that men should rule themselves*
. . * And then that stirring plea at the end:

O! ye tiiat love mankind. Every spot of the old world is over-
run with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the
globe. Europe regards her as a stranger, and England hath
given her warning to depart O! receive the fugitive, and
prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

What a book It swept over America like a prairie fire.
Soon everybody in America who could read was reading
Common Sense, and if they couldn't read they learned to
read just for that Soon everybody in England was reading
it too everybody who could read, and that wasn't a very
large number. And everybody who read it said, "Of course!
That is the common sense of the matter. Of course America
ought to be independent" In no time at all poor Tom Paine,
who had once made corsets, had made a revolution and a
new nation too. Not all by himself, of course: George Wash-
ington had something to do with it, and Thomas Jefferson,
and Patrick Henry, and many others, but in his way Tom
Paine did as much as any of them.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 10

It wasn't just a matter of writing Common Sense. It was
one thing to declare independence and another thing to
whip the British redcoats who came pouring over, shipload
after shipload. By now Paine was in Washington's army,
but that didn't mean that he stopped writing. Not at all
There he was, marching through the snows of a Northern
winter, the poor soldiers leaving bloody footprints when
they walked, and everybody frozen and starving while the
snow came down and the wind howled and the British
disported themselves in front of their warm fires in New
York City. So once again Tom Paine took his quill pen in
hand, and made a writing desk out of a drumhead, and
wrote away for dear life:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier
and the sunshine patriot will shrink from the service of their
country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and
thanks of yiiwn and woman.

He called his paper The Crisis. Tom Paine was made for
crises. All through the war he wrote one crisis paper after
another, until in the end Lord Cornwallis had to surrender,
there at Yorktown, with the redcoats playing "The World
Turned Upside Down" and Tom Paine writing, "The times
that try men s souls are over," Thanks to all who had fought
through those long hard years, and thanks to Tom Paine,
who had fought with sword and pen.

After that things were dull for Mr. Paine: He lived for
revolution and crisis. The Americans had had their Revolu-
tion and had won their rights. Perhaps there would be
other revolutions and other rights to win.

Sure enough there were. A few more years and the
French started a fire that swept across the whole of Europe,
flaming and burning for twenty-five years, and changing
the history of the world. The French people who had for
so long suffered and groaned under tyranny threw off the
burden of the ages. They got rid of king and queen, of

20 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

counts and marquises and all the rest Soon poor Louis XVI
had his head chopped off, and his queen Marie Antoinette
too. They weren't bad people, they just had the hard luck
to get in the way of a revolution. Soon the soldiers of
France were swinging down the roads to nearby countries
across the Rhine singing that new song from Marseilles:

Arise, ye sons of Liberty,
The day of glory has arrived!

It wasn't all glory; for that matter it wasn't all liberty either.
But that is another story.

You can imagine how excited Tom Paine was. He was in
England when word came that the people of Paris were
storming through the streets of their city, opening the gates
of the prisons and shouting for liberty, <c Where Liberty is
not, there is my country," said Paine, and over he went, to
Paris, to be in on the Revolution. The French were so
pleased to see him that they made him an honorary citizen.

Mr. Paine was already a citizen of the United States, but
he was delighted to be an honorary citizen of France as
well. Still and all, what he was really most interested in
right now was not France, What he was most interested in
now was England.

The Americans had had their Revolution and had won
their freedom. Now the French were having their Revolu-
tion too, freeing men from serfdom and ignorance and
giving them the rights of men. But what of England? What
of England?

What indeed? Over in England kings and princes, lords
and ladies, with their great palaces and country houses,
with hundreds of servants at their beck and call, with
money to waste and food to waste and lives to waste, were
lying awake nights wondering if it would be their turn
next. And over in England, too, hundreds of thousands of
poor fanners and miserable workingmen and humble
preachers and scribblers and lawyers were lying awake

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 21

nights wondering if maybe it would be their turn next
their turn at last to have enough to eat for themselves and
their children, and shelter from rain and snow, and enough
work to go around, and a chance to send their children to
school, and to worship as they wished, and to have some
say in the kind of government they had. A chance, in short,
at some of the rights that Americans had won for them-
selves and that the French were even now winning.

That was what Tom Paine was asking too. When would
his fellow Englishmen win some of the rights of men?
Back he came to England to see what he could do about
it. Back he went to his writing table, and his pen flew so
fast it almost burned through die paper and into the desk.
Then he wrote "Finis." And he called his book The Rights
of Man.

Just simply that: The Rights of Man.

The Rights of Man was another book like Common Sense
and The Crisis. It talked about men as men, not as rulers
and subjects. It said that men could govern themselves and
that all men had equal rights.

What dangerous ideasl What a dangerous fellow. He had
been dangerous in America, he had been dangerous in
France, but there was nothing the English could do about
that. Now he was dangerous in England, and there was
something they could do about that Put him down! Arrest
him and throw him in the Tower of London. Put his book
down! Arrest anyone who sold it or anyone who read it.
And as for the book itself: Burn it! Gather up all the copies
and make a big bonfire of them and burn them to ashes.
That would teach Tom Paine to come back to England
with his terrible ideas.

They tried to arrest Paine but he had already slipped
away, back to France again. Back to prison, as it turned
out, for the wheel of the French Revolution had taken an-
other turn, and now Tom Paine was much too peaceful
and mild for its leaders. The English tried to put him in

22 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

prison because he was too radical, and the French put him
in prison because he wasn't radical enough. It's certainly
hard to please everybody, thought Tom Paine.

But let us leave poor Paine sitting in his cell in the jail
in Paris wondering if maybe he shouldn't have stayed in
America after all. Let us leave Paine and go back to Eng-
land.

Back in England they were getting ready to fight France.
But somehow they had time for Tom Paine and his terrible
book anyway. Even the Prime Minister, William Pitt, had
time for that. If they couldn't get Mr Paine the French
had done that for them they could at least get his book.
Make an example of it! Teach people not to write books
like that teach them not to have ideas like that.

Back then to England, where the mighty William Pitt
has put Tom Paine and The Rights of Man on trial.

It is more than Tom Paine who is on trial.

It is more than his book which is on trial.

It is freedom of speech and freedom of the press which is
on trial.

All the great powers of England are determined to stamp
out these freedoms. Who dares stand up for freedom?

"I dare," said Thomas Ersldne.

There may have been greater lawyers in the history of
England than Thomas Ersldne lawyers who knew more
of the mysteries of the law, lawyers who could draw up
better wills or better contracts, or talk more learnedly about
bailments and torts.

But never was there a more eloquent lawyer.

Never was there a more courageous lawyer.

Thomas Ersldne was so eloquent that when he talked the
winds stopped blowing so they could hear him and then
carry his words around the world. He was so eloquent that
when he talked it was like hearing a whole symphony
orchestra.

FKEEDOM OF SPEECH 3

And he was just as courageous as he was eloquent.

He had the heart of a lion. Nothing could daunt him,
nothing could silence him. He would look a Lord High
Chancellor in the eye and say just what he believed. He
would call the Prime Minister of England and put him in
the witness box just like anybody else. He would defy the
King himself.

And all this eloquence and all this courage he gave to
the cause of freedom.

He was really a nobody to start with, Mr. Ersldne, even
though his father was an earl; not a nobody like Tom Paine,
but certainly not one of the great swells who ruled England
and Scotland in those days. He was a poor Scots boy, and
like Tom Paine he had enlisted in the navy and knocked
about the world, seeing all sorts of queer things and places,
and having all sorts of things happen to him. Once he was
even struck by lightning, and survived: it took more than
a bolt of lightning to kill Tom Erskine. He stumbled into
the law entirely by accident just happened to be in court
one day and was so fascinated by it all that he decided
then and there to be a lawyer himself. So off he went to
college, at twenty-fivehow embarrassing for him and
then to the study of law. When he was almost thirty he
was a full-fledged lawyer and ready to take cases if any-
body wanted him. For a long time nobody did. But then,
again quite by accident, he stumbled into his first case
and came out of it a famous man. For in it he dared to
attack one of the most powerful lords in the kingdom the
man who was in command of the British navy. Even you
know his name: it is Lord Sandwich. Yes, that is where the
lowly sandwich comes from: Lord Sandwich was so busy
playing cards that he couldn't even stop for dinner, so
they invented the sandwich for him, and named it after
him too* But that's all the good he ever did in the world.
Tom Erskine proved that it was Lord Sandwich's fault that

24 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

the ships of the royal navy were falling apart and the food
was mouldy and the sailors were deserting by the hundreds.

After that Tom Erskine had more cases than he knew
what to do with. But he didn't take just the cases of the
great and the rich, though these came pouring in on him.
He took the cases of the poor and the helpless. And what he
liked best were those cases in which the government was
trying to silence somebody or put down somebody.

Like Admiral Keppel, who was tried for losing a
battle.

Like John Stockdale, who was arrested and tried for
publishing a criticism of the House of Commons.

Like the poor publisher who had dared print an almanac
without permission.

Like the Quakers who were persecuted for their faith.

Like Tom Paine-and The Rights of Man.

Now the government had put Tom Paine on trial for his
life and his book too. And there was Mr. Erskine in his
long black silk robes and his white wig standing up to
speak for Mr. Paine*

There wasn't a great deal he could do about either Mr.
Paine or The Rights of Man. Mr. Paine wasn't there to
speak for himself. And as for The Rights of Man, the judge
and the jury were convinced that it was a very dangerous
book Thomas Erskine did his best He spoke of the rights
and die liberties of Englishmen-of the right to speak and
to read, aud of freedom for those who spoke up or those
who wanted to learn. He talked about freedom for ideas
that were dangerous as well as freedom for ideas that were
safe.

Here is a hard lesson to learn.

Safe ideas dorft really need freedom, because nobody
ever bothers about tihem. Nobody will ever question your
right to talk about the weather. Nobody will ever try to

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 2$

stop you from talking about a football game or a cricket
game. No judge will ever lock you up because you read the
comics or the sports page of the newspaper.

No, it is only dangerous ideas that need freedom. Or
ideas that some people think are dangerous. . . .

The jury and the judge thought that Mr. Paine's ideas
were dangerous. For when Erskine was through the jury
said "Guilty" and the judge said "Guilty."

If Tom Paine had been there they would have put him
in jailor maybe hanged him. But he wasn't there. He was
still in France writing another book.

That wasn't the end of The Rights of Man, not by any
means.

Flushed with victory, Mr. Pitt decided to punish every-
body who printed the hated book, and everybody who
read it, and everybody who dared express the ideas that
were in the book.

Then a reign of terror began.

John Frost was arrested and dragged off to jail because
he had published The Rights of Man.

The editors of a newspaper were arrested and sent to
jail because they had advertised The Rights of Man.

Up in Edinburgh, in Scotland, a small group of men
held a meeting to talk about the right to vote. In marched
an army of soldiers and swept them all off to jaiL

Back in London the members of a club to study politics
met and passed a resolution that "all government is insti-
tuted for the general good," and then went from bad to
worse by passing another resolution saying that every-
body had a right to an education. That was really too
much! Members of that club were arrested and so, too,
were the editors of the paper that dared to print the resolu-
tions.

Then there was a poor shoemaker named Thomas Hardy
(you will think everybody was named Thomas, and you are

26 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

almost right). He got above himself and organized a soci-
ety called the Friends of Freedom, and dared to make a
speech saying that the government of George III was
wicked and corrupt.

Who did Thomas Hardy think he was, anyway, to criti-
cize the government and the King of England?

He was arrested too.

Never had Mr. Erskine been so busy. Everybody came to
him for help, and he took all their cases. The other lawyers
were afraid, but not Thomas Erskine. All the judges in the
land couldn't scare him.

One by one the government brought all its victims to
trial. Lawyers for the government painted Mr. Frost and
Mr. Hardy and the others as desperate men, bent on revolu-
tion. You would suppose, to hear the lawyers talk, that they
all had horns on their heads and cloven hoofs. You would
imagine that they were all going around with daggers be-
tween their teeth and torches in their hands, ready to kill
and to burn.

But then Mr. Erskine stood up and his voice was now soft
and pleading, like a violin, now sweet and piercing, like a
flute, now mighty and thundering, like an organ when all
the stops are pulled out. He talked about freedom and what
it meant He talked about justice and how precious it was.
He talked about the rights of Englishmen, and how dearly
they had been won, down through the ages. He talked
about the rights of man.

The jurymen sat there and listened, and their hearts beat
twice as fast, and their eyes brightened, and they drew
hope and courage from him. And when Mr. Erskine was
through they stood up and said in a loud voice, "Not
guilty!" Time after time, case after case, "Not guilty!" The
publishers, the speakers, the rebels and reformers, were
not guilty! Not guilty, Your Honor! Not guilty, my lords.
Not guilty, O people of England!

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 7

The judges and the ministers gnashed their teeth in rage,
but all over England plain men and women lit bonfires to
celebrate Tom Ersldne and his victories.

Almost singlehanded he had stopped the reign of terror.

Almost singlehanded he had saved freedom of speech
and of the press in England.

Remember that poem by James Russell Lowell:

They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three!

In the right with two or three! Between them, Tom Paine
and Thomas Ersldne struck a mighty blow for freedom.
One of them wrote The Rights of Man. The other made it
possible for people to read it. Together they made it more
than a book, they made it a living force.

But of course no rights are ever won for all time. They
have to be won over again by each new generation of men.

You would think if there was one place in the world
where the rights of free speech and free press were safe it
was the United States.

That's where you would be wrong.

Look now to the city of Boston. It is a dark December
day in the year 1830, and a tall thin young man already
bald and old-looking-is sitting in a cellar room, writing
away by the light of a flickering lamp. He is William Lloyd
Garrison. He is writing a letter "To the Public," which he
is going to publish in the very first number of his new maga-
zine, the Liberator. As you can guess from the tide, it is
a magazine to stir up the people against slavery.

I am in earnest ... I will not excuse. ... I will not retreat
a single inch. . . . I WILL BE HEABD!

The first number came out on the first day of the new
year, and after that it came out every week Every week
Mr. Garrison spoke his mind, and every week he was heard.

28 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

How they hated him in the South. But they couldn't do
much about it there. . . . And how they hated him in Bos-
ton, too, for stirring up trouble.

You would have thought that he was not a quiet, peace-
ful, religious man but a firebrand, stirring up a revolution,
the way they talked about him.

Come to think of it, that is just what he was doing. He
was making a revolution. For what a revolution it would be,
to do away with slavery!

They tried to starve Garrison out

They tried to destroy his press.

They seized him and pulled him through the crooked
streets of Boston with a rope around his neck, as if they
were taking him to the gallows. That's what they wanted to
do, too.

But "I will be heard,** Garrison had said, and he was
heard, year after year. Nothing could silence him or his
paper, neither hostility nor poverty. In time Boston got used
to him. In time Boston came almost to admire him, he was
such a persistent fellow, so firm and so courageous. And
Boston liked courage. So Mr, Garrison went on publishing
his newspaper and speaking his mind.

Other editors who fought slavery weren't so lucky.

Look west and you will see what happened to a young
man out there who thought slavery wicked and was deter-
mined to say so.

The young man was Elijah Lovejoy. A good biblical name,
Elijah one you don't hear much any more. He had a good
religious upbringing, listening to his father preach every
Sunday, and reading the Bible every night until he knew
it by heart, and took it to heart, too. He had grown up in
Maine and gone to one of those little New England colleges
that have sent out so many young men to become great
men. Then, like thousands of others, Elijah heard the call
of the West There was nothing much for him to do in

FBEEDOM OF SPEECH 2Q

Maine, so he thought, while out west there was everything
to be done.

So off Elijah went, a young man of twenty-five, to the dis-
tant frontier of Missouri, to the bustling river town of St.
Louis. What a lively place it was fur trappers back from a
winter's hunting in the Rocky Mountains, and steamboats
puffing upstream, their decks loaded with bales of cotton
and black smoke pouring out of their smokestacks, the Ne-
gro stevedores running up and down the narrow gangplanks
loading and unloading and loading again for the down-
stream run. . . . Negro slaves everywhere, for Missouri was
one of the states where people still had slaves.

Young Mr. Lovejoy got himself a job on a St. Louis news-
paper, and in no time at all he became editor. That ought
to have satisfied him, but not at all. He got to worrying
about his soul what a worrier this young man was any-
way! and went back east to Princeton to study religion and
to become a minister. Then back to St Louis again; now
he could preach as well as edit a paper. Not that the two
were so very different, for Mr. Lovejoy was always preach-
ing, no matter what he did.

Picture him, then, bustling about St Louis and the coun-
tryside of Missouri and Illinois, just at the time when tall
lanky Abraham Lincoln was growing up in Illinois and won-
dering about slavery too. Lovejoy kept his eyes open as he
went about Missouri, and he didn't miss much. What he
saw mostly was slavery, because you see what you are look-
ing for. Lots of people who lived in Missouri or, for that
matter, in Alabama or Georgia, right in the middle of slav-
ery, didn't see it at all it was like a piece of furniture that
had always been there.

Yes, what Elijah Lovejoy saw was slavery. Slavery in Mis-
souri, slavery across the river in Kentucky, slavery every-
where in the South. Slaves up and down the great river,
working on the steamboats, along the levees, working for
other people never for themselves. Every day he read his

30 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Bible, and every week he read Mr. Garrison's newspaper,
the Liberator. Gradually he came to the conclusion that
slavery was wrong against religion and against morals.
Well, a good many people had come to that conclusion.
But Lovejoy was like Mr. Garrison back in Boston: he
thought he ought to do something about it.

But surely not here in Missouri, where all the best peo-
ple owned slaves! It would stir things up; it would make
trouble. So when Lovejoy began to talk about slavery there
were black looks and mutterings, and then his readers and
some of his parishioners began to say, "If you don't like it
here, why don't you go back where you came from? Why
do you come out here and make trouble? We don't mind
slavery why should you? 9 And soon the men who owned
the paper that Lovejoy edited took him aside and told him
that he must find something else to worry about something
nice and safe and far away like the Greeks or the Italians,
but not slavery. There was a mass meeting of the citizens of
St Louis just to discuss Mr. Lovejoy. They too thought that
Mr. Lovejoy should stop talking and writing about slavery.
Of course he had a right to speak his mind everybody had
a right to do that but not about slavery. Let him speak
his mind about other things. Free speech was all very well,
but it meant free speech about nice safe things that didn't
bother anybody, not about dangerous things that were
bound to stir up trouble.

But Mr. Lovejoy was a hard man to deal with. He wasn't
easily scared. When they came to Tifrn and told him to be
quiet or go away, he held a kind of mass meeting of his
own. Listen to him as he stands there, a tall straight young
man, telling the people of St. Louis what was the meaning
of freedom of speech:

The truth is, my fellow citizens, that if you give ground a
single inch, there is no stopping place. I deem it therefore my
duty to take my stand upon the Constitution. Here is firm
ground. . * . I do therefore as an American citizen, and a

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 31

Christian patriot, and in the name of Liberty and Law and
Religion, solemnly protest against all these attempts to frown
down the liberty of the press. ... I declare it to be my
fixed purpose to submit to no such dictation. And I am pre-
pared to abide the consequences. I have appealed to the laws
of my country. If they fail to protect me I appeal to God and
with Him I cheerfully rest my cause.

As it turned out, it didn't do Mr. Lovejoy much good
to appeal to the laws. One night a St. Louis mob decided
it would teach Mr. Lovejoy a lesson; it descended on his
shop, seized his printing press and scattered it around the
countryside. Lovejoy could take a hint, all right, and he de-
cided to leave St. Louis.

But he wasn't running away; he was made of sterner stuff
than that. He just moved across the river to the town of
Alton, in Illinois, and there he set up his newspaper all
over again and prepared to make things as uncomfortable
for the St. Louis slaveholders as he could. Soon he had a
new printing press and a new paper, and the citizens of
St. Louis were reading just what they had read before.

But somehow Mr. Lovejoy was meant for trouble. The
people of Alton, Illinois, turned out to be very much like
the people of St Louis, Missouri They believed in free
speech and a free press . . . but not when it meant stirring
up trouble. Why stir up trouble? So now it was an Illinois
mob that broke into the Lovejoy office and threw his press
into the muddy waters of the Mississippi. There, that would
take care of the troublesome Mr* Lovejoy!

Of course it did no such thing. There wasn't a more stub-
born man west of the Alleghenies than Elijah Lovejoy, and
in hardly any time at all he had himself a new press and
new type and was at it hammer and tongs every week
... It was more than the people of Alton could stand for.
All they wanted was peace and quiet; all they wanted was
to be left alone. Why cotddn*t Mr. Lovejoy write about
pleasant things, instead of writing about slavery all the time?

g2 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

What a nuisance this young man from Maine was, anyway.

So one hot day in the summer of 1837 there was another
mass meeting, and now it was the people of Alton, Illinois,
who told Mr. Lovejoy either to shut up or to shut up shop.
He had worn out his welcome if he ever had any. Now
would he please be quiet or go back home.

Neither, came Mr. Lovejoy's answer: neither. So that very
night a mob of Alton citizens descended on the Lovejoy
office and smashed it up and then decided to smash up
Lovejoy himself while they were at it. He came out and
faced them. "I am in your hands/* he said. "You can do
with me what God permits you to do." They left him and
went home.

Now it was a real contest of wills. The whole city was up
in arms the mayor, the townspeople, everybody said, "Go
home, Mr. Lovejoy, and leave us in peace/* But "I pledge
myself to continue my newspaper until death/* said Mr.
Lovejoy. "If I fall my grave shall be in Alton/' For the third
time he sent off for a new press. For the third time his
friends raised money and bought a press and sent it on
to him, down the long, winding Ohio River and up the
Mississippi River on one of those great puffing steamboats.
Mr. Lovejoy and his friends went down to the docks to
meet the boat and to unload the new press and carry it
to a warehouse, and there they stood guard over it as the
short November day turned to night

And that night the mob gathered again. This time it meant
business. This time it was going to silence that troublemaker
forever. The mob surrounded the warehouse and started
shooting. Then it advanced on the warehouse to set it afire.
Lovejoy rushed out to put out the fire; there was a shot,
and he fell dead. The rest of the defenders gave up and
went home, and the gleeful mob found the press and threw
it into the river to join its cousins already down at the
bottom of the waters.
It was quite a victory.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 33

That was the end of Elijah Lovejoy.

That was the end of his press.

That was the end of the agitation against slavery in Illi-
nois.

That would teach editors a lesson teach them not to in-
terfere with folks, not to write about unpleasant things, not
to make trouble.

No such thing. If that had really been the end of Elijah
Lovejoy, why do you think you would be reading about
him now?

Let's turn back to Boston, where we left William Lloyd
Garrison publishing the Liberator.

Like a thunderclap came the word that Elijah Lovejoy
had been killed defending the freedom of the press.

He was the first martyr to a free press in the history of the
country the first man to give his fife for the right to speak
out and the right to be heard.

No wonder Boston was aroused. Even those who didn't
care one way or the other about slavery cared about free
speech. What is more, they decided to do something to show
how much they cared. They decided to call a great meeting
in Faneuil Hall and pay tribute to the martyred Lovejoy.
But when they asked the mayor for permission to use the
hall he got cold feet and said no.

That looked as if Boston was as bad as Alton, Illinois
afraid of free speech. That would never do, said old John
Quincy Adams; he had been President of the United States,
and now he was in Congress fighting for the right of every-
body to send in petitions and have them read freedom of
speech in Congress, freedom of speech in Boston! That
would never do, said the Reverend William EHery Chan-
ning. He was Boston's most beloved minister, a saint if ever
there was one, and when he raised his gentle voice nobody
could resist him; after all you cant resist a saint

So the mayor gave in, and one wintry day in December

34 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

thousands of Bostonians crowded into ancient Faneuil Hall
to protest the murder of Elijah Lovejoy. It was a good place
to come to, Faneuil Hall, It had been built by a refugee from
tyranny who had found freedom in Boston the French
Huguenot Peter Faneuil. It was called the Cradle of Liberty,
and that was a good name for it, for it was here that Boston
had listened to Sam Adams and James Otis and other lead-
ers of the Revolution as they denounced the tyranny of
George III and spelled out the nature of American liberty.

Look at the scene this December day. There was old
John Quincy Adams sitting in the very middle of the plat-
form, a tiny little man: he was seventy years old now, but
still full of fire. And next to him gentle, frail William Ellery
Channing only a few more years to live, and all of them
devoted to good works. And thousands of men and women
crowded onto the floor and jammed into the galleries. And
hanging from the walls, looking down on the great crowds,
paintings of the Fathers of the Revolution.

Then came the speeches praising Lovejoy, and the reso-
lutions about free speech and free press. But not so fasti
Who was this working his way to the front? It was James
Austin. A first citizen, James Austin an overseer of Harvard
College and the attorney general of Massachusetts, and all
the other proper things you can think of. Now he got up
to speak and there was silence. He didn't hold with all this
nonsense about Lovejoy, he said, and he didn't hold with
all this talk about slavery either. If Mr. Lovejoy had just
kept quiet about slavery nothing would have happened to
him. As it was, said Mr. Austin, it was all Lovejoy's fault.
*He died as a fool dieth," said Attorney General James
Austin.

There was a stunned silence. Then up stood a young man
named Wendell Phillips. Like Mr. Austin, he was a mem-
ber of the first families you have heard of Phillips Exeter
and Phillips Ajodover academies and everybody knew him.
"Can you stand thunder?" said old President Adams to Mr.

FKEEDOM OF SPEECH 35

Channing. And thunder there was, and lightning too such
eloquence as had rarely been heard even in that famous
hall. At the height of his speech Wendell Phillips stopped
aad pointed to the long row of paintings hanging from the
walls of the galleries, paintings of the great patriots of the
past "I thought those pictured lips would have broken into
voice to rebuke the slanderer of die dead," he said. "For the
sentiments he had uttered, on soil consecrated to the pray-
ers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should
have yawned and swallowed him up."

A new hero had emerged, a new leader in the never end-
ing struggle for freedom. For almost fifty years Wendell
Phillips was to give his life to the cause of freedom free-
dom for the Negro slave, freedom for women, freedom for
workingmen, freedom of speech and of the press. He was a
rich young man, and he could have lived a life of ease, but
he chose instead a life of service to mankind. "Don't shilly-
shally, Wendell," his invalid wife would say to him as he
left for one of his speeches, "don't shilly-shally.** Never did
Wendell Phillips shilly-shally, never in a long life dedicated
to the rights of man.

So you see the mob in Alton, Illinois, didn't really win
after all. They killed Elijah Lovejoy, but they couldn't kill
the things he lived for and the things he died for. Nobody
remembers the members of that mob now. Nobody even re-
members Alton, now, except as the place where Elijah Love-
joy printed his paper and the place where he was killed. He
carried the torch of freedom, and when he died it was seized
by others before it could fall to the ground and flicker out
It was taken by Wendell Phillips, not braver but more elo-
quent. And Wendell Phillips carried on the fight that Love-
joy had begun. He lived to see the end of slavery. He
lived to become a great man in Boston, After he died Boston
pat up a statue to him, and Alton put up a statue to Elijah
Lovejoy.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Of all the rights that men have worked for and fought f or,
it is the right to worship God that has mattered most. There
are only two ideas that men have been willing to die for:
one is country, and the other is religion. But to fight and
die for your country can't really be called fighting for a
right; it is more like fighting to live. To die for religion,
though that is to die for an idea ... for a right.

But why in heaven's name should people have to die for
their religion? If there is one thing that is private, it is
religion. If there is one thing that doesn't really concern
other people, it is the way you pray, or the way you think
about God and about your own soul

The odd thing is that, although everybody wants his own
private religion, there are always some who won't let other
people have their private religion. *1 must worship God as
I please,** they say . , . and, "you must worship God as I
please, too. Religion is private for me, but not for you!

**You must worship our way, or we will punish you.

4O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

"You must believe what we believe or we will burn you
at the stake*

"You must say what we say, or we will tear your tongue
out of your mouth.

"You must go to our church, or we will tear down your
churches.

"You must bring up your children to worship the way
we worship, or we will take them away from you/*

All religions teach peace and kindness and mercy. Yet for
hundreds of years men have waged war and tortured and
burned and killed, all in the name of religion.

What a paradox!

But there have always been some who went right on be-
lieving that they had a right to worship as they wished
that religion was a private matter, and nobody could tell
them what they should believe. There have always been
some men yes, and women toowho would stand up for
their religion no matter what the cost. They were ready for
the hard looks and the hard words, they were ready to
be beaten and even tortured, they were ready to give up
everything they owned and everything they held dear, even
life itself, in order to worship God their own way.

The Pilgrims ... the Puritans . . . Roger Williams . . .
Lord Calvert and the Catholics . . . William Perm and the
Quakers . , . the Huguenots from France . . . Scots Presby-
terians from the Highlands . . . Jews from Portugal look
at them as they crowd onto the ships that will carry them
to America, where they can worship in peace.

But don't think that religious liberty is fust American,
It didn't even begin in America, It began in Holland,
before there was any America any English America, any-
way*

But it was in America that it was planted most deeply
and that it grew and spread.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 4!

Now why do you suppose that was?

Was it because Americans were so much wiser than other
people?

Was it because they were so much better than other peo-
ple?

No, of course not. People are pretty much the same every-
wheresome are wise and some are stupid, some are good
and some are bad.

The reason that Americans made such a success of re-
ligious freedom is really very simple. It was because they
had to.

After all, men and women of every faith came to America.
Those who first came to Virginia were members of the
Church of England. Those who went to Massachusetts Bay
were Puritans. Those who sailed for Maryland were Catho-
lics. To Pennsylvania went Quakers and Lutherans and
Brethren and others. North Carolina attracted the Highland
Scots, and they were, of course, Presbyterians. And Hugue-
nots from France (we shall hear more about them later)
and Jews from Portugal and Spain scattered all through the
colonies. If you were to paint a map of the colonies with
each religion in a different color it would look like a patch-
work quilt

Now suppose each one of these religious groups had said,
"Our religion is the right religion, and yours is all wrong. If
you worship our way, you will go to heaven, but if you
worship your way you are sure to go to hell. We don't want
you to go to hell, so we shall do you a favor and make you
worship our way."

Just suppose each of them had said that Puritans in Mas-
sachusetts and Baptists in Rhode Island and Quakers in
Pennsylvania and Presbyterians in North Carolina and all
the others as well . . , Everybody fighting everybody else.
Everyone at his neighbor's throat. There would have been
no government, not even any religion, for how can govern-
ment or religion flourish in the midst of hatred and war?

4^ CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

It is common sense to let people alone, common sense to
allow to others the same freedom you want for yourself.
And after all, America was a big country . . . much bigger
than any of the countries of the Old World. If you couldn't
stand the way other people worshiped, you could always go
off and settle down somewhere on the frontier and worship
the way you wanted to.

What good luck that America was so big!

Good luck for Roger Williams, certainly.

Some people are born to religion, just as some people are
born to music or to painting. You could no more keep
Roger Williams away from religion than you could keep
little Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart away from a piano or
young Benjamin West away from a canvas and a box of
paints. It was something that filled his whole life. And he
wouldn't take anything for granted, either; he wouldn't take
any ready-made religion. He had to make it himself. He
went to all the right schools to the old Charterhouse School
in London, to the ancient university of Cambridge along
the River Cam, and he studied all the right things so that
he became a learned man, but all the time what he was
thinking about was God and religion.

In due course of time Roger Williams became a preacher.
But of course he had to preach his own way.

Needless to say, there was no room for him in England,
not in the days when King James and Bang Charles sat on
the throne, back in the i6oos. They weren't going to stand
any nonsense about people having their own religion. There
was a perfectly good religion already-the Church of Eng-
land, it was called. It was good enough for the King, and
ft was good enough for all the lords and ladies, and it was
good enough for the bishops; certainly it was good enough
for plain men like Roger Williams. If you didn't like the
Church of England you'd better keep quiet about it, or
you'd end up in jail, or something worse.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 43

That is, you would unless you were clever enough to get
out. , . .

But where to go?

Some Englishmen who wouldn't join the Church of Eng-
land went off to Holland and settled in "the fair and beauti-
ful city of Leyden/* But after they had lived there ten or
twelve years they found that their children were growing
up Dutch instead of English what did they expect? and
were being drawn off into other religions. So these Pilgrims
for that is what they were called decided to go to the
"vast and unpeopled countries of America/* So in 1620 "they
left the goodly and pleasant city which had been their rest-
ing place; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked
not so much on those things but lifted up their eyes to the
heavens, their dearest country/* Off they went, across the
great ocean in the little cockleshell ship, the Mayflower, to
the sandy shores of Cape Cod, and founded the colony of
Plymouth,

There were only a hundred or so Pilgrims off to America
to find a place where they could worship in peace, but ten
years later there were a thousand who were ready to follow
them across the Atlantic, a thousand men and women and
children. And before they were through there were no less
than twenty thousand: ship after ship bobbing its way
across the ocean to the distant shores of Massachusetts Bay.
And of all of them we can say what the Pilgrim William
Bradford said:

Being past the vast ocean and a sea of troubles, they had
now no friends to welcome them, nor fans to entertain them
or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses, or towns,
to repair to, to seek for succor. And for the season it was win-
ter, and they that know the winters of that country know
them to be sharp and violent and subject to cruel and
fierce storms. What could they see but a hideous and
desokte wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And
what could now sustain them but the spirit of God and His
Grace?

44 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Roger Williams was one of those who "hungered and
thirsted after righteousness," All his life he sought right-
eousness . . . and never quite found it.

Most people are finders. Early in life they find what they
want, or maybe just want what they find. They find their
religion and it satisfies them. They find their work and stick
to it cheerfully enough. They find what they believe in poli-
tics, and after that they never give the matter another
thought They find what they like in painting or in music,
and then they say, "I don't know much about it, but I
know what I like."

But some people are born seekers. They spend all their
life seeking something. Oftentimes they don't know what it
is they are looking for some beauty, some goodness, some
knowledge. Some, like Christopher Columbus, are seekers
after new continents. Some, like the astronomer Galileo, are
seekers after new worlds in the skies. Some, like little Wolf-
gang Amadeus Mozart, are seekers after new beauty in mu-
sic. And some, like Roger Williams, are seekers after new
truths.

In 1630 he was just twenty-seven years old Roger Wil-
liams decided to follow the other Puritans to the New
World One dark December day he and his wife went
aboard the little ship with the big name, the Lion, and off
they sailed, up and down through the winter gales and
the winter waves for two months, before they made safe
harbor in Boston. Roger Williams began to preach at once.
Almost everybody was preaching in Massachusetts Bay in
those years, and those who weren't preaching were going
to church to listen to sermons: a wonder they found any
time to get any work done! TTien up to the little town north
of Boston with the biblical name of Salem-a few unpainted
frame houses huddled together on a sandy spit of land
sticking out into the ocean. It was a wonderful place for
sailing aiKi for fishing, but in Salem too everybody was so
busy writing sermons or preadbing them or listening to them

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 45

and talking about them that they really had very little time
for sailing and fishing. Not yet, anyway. The time was to
come when Salem would be the greatest sailing town in all
America, but that was still a long way off.

So there was Roger Williams, studying and preaching and
trying to find out what was the truth. In Salem everybody
liked him and admired him well, almost everybody but
down in Boston they took a very different view of it
all.

What was this they heard, down in Boston? What was
this Mr. Williams was saying?

He said that religion was a private matter.

He said that the government had control over the bodies
of men but not over their minds or their souls.

He said there were lots of things the governor and the
magistrates and the ministers down in Boston didn't under-
stand, and that they hadn't any right to force their ideas
on the people of the colony.

And then on top of that he said all the land belonged to
the Indians anyway, and the colonists ought to buy it from
them and pay them a proper price for it

No wonder the governor and the magistrates and the
ministers in Boston all shook their heads. This would never
do. This Roger Williams was upsetting everybody with his
newfangled ideas. He was disturbing the peace.

He must be silenced.

The Puritan Fathers were good and wise men, most of
them, but there was one lesson they still hadn't learned.
When King Charles of England had told them how they
should worship God, they had up and left for Massachusetts
Bay. Now they were telling everybody in Massachusetts Bay
how they should worship God. They had not yet learned
that what is sauce for tie goose is sauce for the gander.
They had not learned that it was just as wrong for them
to be intolerant toward others as it was for others to be
intolerant toward them. They had not learned the golden

46 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

rule of freedom that if you would be free you must allow
others to be free.

Roger Williams was getting ready to teach them that les-
son.

One day the judges and the ministers told Mr. Williams
to come down to Boston and explain himself. Nothing he
liked better tb*m thatl Down he came, and soon he and
the Boston ministers were at it, back and forth, one argu-
ment bang up against another argument.

In the end, of course, the Boston ministers had their way.
They said that Mr. Williams was preaching dangerous doc-
trines and disturbing the peace. So, out with him! If he
wanted to preach a lot of nonsense let him go somewhere
else and do it. Not in Salem. Not in Boston. Not in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It was January, the snow heavy on the ground and the
frost so tihick you could cut it with a knife, when they
banished Roger Williams from the Bay Colony. There was
some talk of shipping him back to England, but he got
wind of that and escaped in time. Off he went, then, over
the snows to Narragansett Bay, fifty miles to the south. Let
him tell it:

I was driven from my chamber to a winter's flight, exposed
to the miseries, poverties, wants, debts, hardships of sea and
land. ... I was sorely tossed for fourteen weeks in a bitter
winter season, not knowing what bread and bed did mean.

And he added words that mean as much today as the day he
wrote them:

Monstrous that God's children should persecute God's chil-
dren, and that they that hope to live together eternally with
Christ in the heavens should not suffer each other to live in
this common air together.

A pleasant land, this Narragansett Bay country, that is
now Rhode Island. A hundred green islands dot the spar-
kling blue waters, long sandy beaches invite you to play

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 47

and to swim, and fir trees crowd down almost to the wa-
ter's edge. If you go there today you will see a thousand
white sailboats rocking up and down in the waves, and the
shores lined with houses as thick together as the trees.

But when Roger Williams and a handful of his friends
fled across the frozen snow to the bay there was nothing
there at all nothing but a few Indian huts and a straggling
of Narragansett Indians.

Mr. Williams didn't mind that. He was out of the Mas-
sachusetts Bay Colony and safe, and besides he liked the
Indians. Now he could set up his own colony and his own
government. Pretty soon he was joined by others from Salem,
and even from BostonMistress Anne Hutchinson, for ex-
ample, and her husband and children and friends. She was
just as bold as Mr. Williams himself. And boldness was
worse in a woman than in a man, so she too was ban-
ished by the rulers of the Bay Colony. When she asked
why, the governor replied, "Say no more, the Court knows
wherefore and is satisfied. 9 * That wasn't much of an answer.

So Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson and their friends
set up the colony of Rhode Island the smallest of all the
colonies, but by no means the least important. Three things
about that colony made it something special in the history
of the world. The first was that Roger Williams treated the
Indians justly. He made peace with them, bought their land
from them at a fair price, and stayed friends with them.
The second was that Mr. Williams arranged for the settlers
to govern themselves all of them, not just the members of
a church. But it was the third thing that was the most im-
portant of all. Roger Williams not only believed in freedom
of religion for himself, he believed in it for others too. He
promised that everybody who settled in his colony of Rhode
Island would be allowed to worship just as he pleased.
. . , Really everybody, not just those who promised not to
make trouble and who agreed with Mr. Willams.

And over the years everybody did come other Baptists

48 CBUSABERS FOR FREEDOM

and Seekers like Roger Williams, Quakers who were hunted
out of the Bay Colony, Jews who built the first American
synagogue in Williams* colony. And the example that
Rhode Island set freedom for all to worship as they pleased
was like a flame that grew brighter and brighter with the
passing years and finally lit up the whole of the American
colonies.

Roger Williams was just getting his colony in Rhode Is-
land started when William Penn was born. And William
Penn got his colony of Pennsylvania under way while Roger
Williams was still alive to see it.

The two men were not really very much alike, but we
remember them for the same things. Both were Englishmen
who planted colonies in America. Both believed in religious
freedom and, what is more, practiced it

Admiral William Penn was a great swell. He lived in a
splendid house north of London, he owned farms in Eng-
land and Ireland, he had been knighted by a grateful King.
And this turned out to be important he was rich enough
to lend money to the King. You didn't think Kings ever
needed money, did you? In those days they did. They spent
so much money they were always poor. That didn't mean
that they had to go without lunch, or sell the family silver,
or anything; it just meant that they had to raise more money,
somehow or other. Like borrowing it from Admiral Penn.

Admiral Penn had a son, and he named him William too.
A fine boy he was, handsome, clever, high-spirited; how
proud the admiral was of his son, a chip off the old block,
he thought Young William was already a gentleman born;
now his father sent bun to Oxford to learn to be a scholar,
and to France to learn something of the great world of
society, and after that a little law, and then a tour with
the royal navy and a bit of soldiering, too, just for good
measure. Then he was taught to manage some of the family
farms, and in the winter he could be up in London with

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 49

the King. What a glittering life for a young man country
houses and city houses and titles and money, and beautiful
brocade and velvet suits and a sword hanging from his
belt, and the King to talk tol

Yes, but it didn't work out that way at all.

For young William had a mind of his own. He loved
and respected his father, and he tried his best to be a dutiful
son. But he couldn't go along with his father's ideas of high
society and clanking swords and all the rest of it No coun-
try estates for him, no fox hunting, no uniforms, no bro-
cades and velvets, no kings or lords or ladies. He had tried
all that when he was young, but now he had found another
life, sweeter by far than the life of the soldier or the courtier.
He had become a Quaker.

In the i6oos England was bursting with new religious
ideas. England had become Protestant, and when you start
protesting it is hard to stop. One little group after another
found its own religion and formed its own society. There
were the Puritans who wanted to purify things, and the
Separatists who wanted to separate from the existing
church, and the Gome-outers who wanted to come out of
the old society, and the Seekers who were looking for new
truth. And there were the Friends. People called them
Quakers, because they quaked and trembled before God.

Quakers believed that religion was a private matter. It
was an inner light that guided you. Religion didn't de-
pend on churches or preachers, they said, and it didn't de-
pend on the King or on the government. For if the King
could control religious faith, that would "enthrone man as
King over conscience." And of course only God was King
over the conscience of man.

Quakers wouldn't take oaths they wouldn't swear to any-
thing. That, they thought, was all wrong: after all, truth was
truth, and it didn't become more true just because you
swore to it

50 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Quakers wouldn't take off their hats for mennot even
for judges or kings. Only for God.

They thought all show was wrong-all fancy dress, all
luxury and waste, all parties and dances and balls. They
dressed in plain gray and brown, and lived as gray and
brown as they could.

They thought war was wrong very, very wrong and they
would have no part in fighting.

They loved peace and quiet and simplicity; they loved
truth and justice.

You would think all that was harmless enough, wouldn't
you? But really it was very dangerous. At least that's what
the King and the judges and the bishops all thought. Very
dangerous, indeed!

Suppose everyone had his own religion! What would hap-
pen to the Church?

Suppose no one would fight? How would the King fight
wars and win them?

Suppose nobody would dress up or give parties! Think
how dull life would be.

And what was all this about keeping your hat on in the
presence of the King! No King could be expected to stand
for that

So down with the Quakers, What they were preaching
was dangerous. Send them all to jail. If they wanted peace
and quiet they could have their fill of it there and even
keep their hats on, if they wanted!

To jail even with young William Penn. To be sure he
was the son of a famous father, but even that wouldn't
help him now. Teach him a lesson teach all these fine young
fellows a lesson!

That was a hard blow for the old admiral, you may be
sure. The admiral had fought for his King on the high seas,
and now his son said all that was wrong. The admiral had
fine houses and fine horses and fine silver and linen and

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 51

silks, and now his son said all must live simply, and he
wouldn't use any of these possessions. The admiral was a
friend of the King, and now his son wouldn't even take his
hat off to the King. The admiral had always been upright
and respectable, and now his son was thrown into jail just
like a criminal!

So there they were, two good men, the father weeping for
his son, and the son weeping for his father, and nothing to
do about it.

After a while poor old Admiral Perm died, grieving to
the last over his son,

And what of young William Penn now no longer so
young? He went his way, more of a Quaker every day.
Sometimes he was in jail, and sometimes he was out of jail,
but he was always preaching his religion, or writing books
about it, or helping his less fortunate Quaker friends out of
trouble. And- now, like the Pilgrims, he looked across the
sea to the New World that had been opened up, to America.

If Quakers couldn't worship in peace in England, per-
haps they would be allowed to worship in peace in America*

Now William Penn, and the Quakers, had a stroke of
good fortune.

King Charles II owed Admiral Penn a great deal of
money. And of course, now that the old admiral was dead,
the King owed it to his son William. But kings don't like to
pay back money any more than other people. And as for
William he didn't need the money. What would he do with
money, when all he wanted was the simple life? But then
he had a brilliant idea; even King Charles thought it was a
brilliant idea. Let the King give Mr, Penn land in America
instead of money. That wouldn't cost him a penny, and Wil-
liam Penn would have the land for his Quakers.

So King Charles made over an enormous area of land

o

right in the middle of his American colonies a beautiful

52 CKUSADEBS FOR FREEDOM

country, watered by rivers with melodious Indian names
like Susquehanna and Allegheny and Juniata, and covered
with dense forests. He called it Pennsylvania, which is Latin
for "Penn's woods/'

Pennsylvania! North from Chesapeake Bay to New York,
west from the Delaware across the great Allegheny Moun-
tains, almost to Lake Erie. What a princely domain! It was
as big as England, and bigger than many European states.
Imagine giving away England! Imagine giving away Hol-
land or Denmark!

Pennsylvania for the Quakers. What a wonderful way to
pay a debt.

Already William Penn was busy planning his new com-
monwealth. It was to be a model state a state based on
the Quaker ideas of justice and truth and love. It was to be
a refuge for Quakers, but not just for Quakers. It was to be
open to all men and women of all countries and all faiths.
It was to be a country where everyone would live in peace
with everyone else, even with the Indians. It was to be a
~Holy Experiment."

And that's just what it was, too. Penn himself sailed over
to his colony in 1682 with twenty-two ships all filled with
eager colonists. "The air,** he wrote, "is sweet and good,
the land fertile, and springs many and pleasant." And every
year more boats plowed through the waters of the Atlantic
and up the Delaware River to the bright new town which
Penn had laid out and named Philadelphia, which means
"City of Brotherly Love." On they came, from England,
from Scotland, from Wales, from Holland, from Germany,
flooding into this beautiful country where the air was sweet
and good because it was the air of peace, and where the
springs were pleasant because all alike could drink from
them, of whatever race, whatever tongue, whatever faith.
Roger Williams and William Penn were very great men.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 53

But the man who did most for freedom of religion was
probably Thomas Jefferson of Virginia*

Sometimes when you read history you come across men
who are monsters of wickedness. You come across con-
querors like the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro, who killed off
almost all the Indians in Peru. You come across kings like
Charles IX of France, who gave the order for the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, in which thirty or forty thousand un-
offending Protestants were killed. You come across dictators
like Hitler, who sent six million men and women to their
death because they were Jewish. It makes you wonder if
the human race is worth reading about

Then you come to a man like Thomas Jefferson, and you
know that it is.

If you read about Thomas Jefferson in a novel you
wouldn't believe in him. Nobody, you would say, nobody
could be that good and that wise and that great, all at
once. And you would almost be right

If Thomas Jefferson weren't true, he would be too good
to be true.

He was tall and handsome, he was freckled and smiling,
and his blue eyes looked out from under a mop of red
hair; even now after almost two hundred years it makes you
feel good just to look at a picture of him. He was strong
and quick, he could find his way through the forest like an
Indian, and he could ride his horse like a cavalier.

He was a farmer. So were most Americans of his day. But
he was probably the best farmer in Virginia, and maybe in
all America. He knew everything there was to know about
farming. He experimented with new crops, planted new
kinds of vines, brought in new kinds of sheep, tried new
kinds of plowing and fertilizing. He made his farm look like
a garden, and he made his garden look like a beautiful
painting,

He was an architect, and in time he came to be the best
architect in America. He built a beautiful house on top of a

54 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

mountain in the Blue Ridge, and called it Monticello, or
"Little Mountain. 7 * You can still see it there, one of the
loveliest houses ever built. He built the University of Vir-
ginia, too, first planning every detail, sitting there in Monti-
cello and watching it through a telescope to make sure that
it was all done right

He was a scholar. He collected books on all subjects and
in all languages; and he didn't just collect them, he read
them and used them. In the end he had the best library in
all America and he gave most of it to start the Library of
Congress in Washington, which is today the greatest library
in the world.

He was a scientist; he knew all about chemistry and
physics, botany and biology, geography and geology, and
he carried on experiments in the laboratory he had built
for himself at Monticello. Most of the great scientific socie-
ties in America and Europe were proud to have him as a
member, and most of the great scientists were his friends.

He was an inventor. He couldn't see anything without
trying to improve it. He invented a plow so good that all
Europe sang its praises. He invented doors that folded to
open and unfolded to close you can see them on tele-
phone booths today. He invented a special writing machine
that would make a copy of his letters as he wrote them,
and beds that pulled up to the ceiling, and all sorts of
things.

He was a lawyer. When he was young he practiced law in
the courts and won most of his cases. After a while he
stopped practicing law and instead wrote laws a good
many of the laws of his own state of Virginia.

He was a musician. He fiddled on his violin; he imported
workingmen from Italy just so they could play for him; he
said music was the dearest thing in his life.

He was an educator. He planned a whole new school
system for Virginia and then he planned one for all the
new states that were going to come into the Union Ohio

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 55

and Indiana and Illinois and the others. He planned the
University of Virginia, and built it, and laid out the
grounds, and selected the library and appointed the pro-
fessors and picked the students. It was Mr. Jefferson's
university.

He was a literary man. He wrote hundreds of important
papers and thousands of letters, and they are probably the
most interesting letters ever written in America, Now, more
than two hundred years after he was born, we are still
reading his letters just as if they were written to us.

But we have hardly even begun on Thomas Jefferson.
Look at all the things we have left out:

He wrote the Declaration of Independence. He wrote it
when he was thirty-three years old. You may not think that
is so remarkable, but your father and mother will; after all,
who else ever wrote a Declaration of Independence at
thirty-three? Or at any other age, for that matter?

He drew up the plans for the government of the vast
country west of the Allegheny Mountains that is, for the
states where most of you now live.

He was President Washington's Secretary of State.

He founded the Democratic party the first and the oldest
political party in the world.

He was Vice-President of the United States.

He was President of the United States for eight years
and he could have gone on being President for the rest of
his life had he wanted.

He doubled the size of the United States by buying all
the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky
Mountains. Then he sent Lewis and Clark across the Rocky
Mountains and on to the Pacific Ocean just so we could
keep our hand in all that territory too.

He lived to be the Grand Old Man of American politics
of American life for that matter the most beloved man in
the country.

He died on the Fourth of July 1826, exactly fifty years
after the signing of the Declaration of Independence!

56 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

A great American judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once
said, "Life is not doing a sum, life is painting a pic-
ture/*

It wasn't just the sums that Jefferson did that were im-
portant, though he did more sums than anybody else who
ever lived in America* It was the picture he painted that
was important

If you study the picture of life that Thomas Jefferson
painted and a big picture it is, covering sixty years of
work if you study it you will see that it is bathed in sun-
light.

As Thomas Jefferson looked out on his world he was
filled with wonder and excitement and happiness and hope.

He looked at nature and he found it beautiful.

He looked at his fellow men and he found them good
and kind and intelligent

He looked up to tie heavens and all their wonders, and
he saw that God had created a marvelous universe, and he
knew that man was one of the marvels of the universe.

"Providence,** he said in his Inaugural Address, "de-
lights in die happiness of man here, and his greater
happiness hereafter.**

Men were meant to be happy, to be good, and to be
wise* Men were meant to master themselves, and the world
that they lived in.

But there was one stern condition for all this. It was
what went along with life and happiness in the Declaration
of Independence. Remember? It was liberty.

Men would be happy when they were free.

Men would be good when they were free.

Men would be wise when they were free.

Men would master themselves and their world, but only
when they were free.

To Thomas Jefferson freedom was a religion. He gave his
life to fighting for freedom and to fighting against tyranny.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 57

*1 have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," he
said. And again:

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" He took that
for his motto.

Freedom. Freedom from slavery. Freedom from tyranny.
Freedom from superstition. Freedom from ignorance. Free-
dom of thought, of speech, of the press. Freedom of re-
ligion.

So now we come to this chapter of Thomas Jefferson's life
the chapter that tells what he did for freedom of religion*

When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he
meant that America should be independent all the way.
Independent in government. Independent in army and in
navy. Independent in trade and commerce, independent in
land, independent in schools. And independent in churches
and religion.

In England, of course, there was just one church just
one that the government recognized and supported. That
was called the Church of England. And the English had
brought the Church of England over to America and set it
up in some of the colonies among them in Jefferson's colony
of Virginia. They had made it the Church the only church
where you could get properly christened and properly
buried. According to them, you weren't even sure of your
name unless it had been given to you in the Church of
England, and you weren't at all sure of going to heaven
unless you had been buried from the Church of Eng-
land!

Independence meant that Americans would cut loose
from the Church of England fust as they cut loose from
England herself.

All very well to cut loose from England but surely not
from the Churchl Surely you do not suggest that Virginia
shouldn't have any church at all!

But that is just what Thomas Jefferson did suggest; that

58 CRTJSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

Virginia was not to have any church at all Virginia, mind
you. Let Virginians have all the churches they wanted.
Let every man in America have his own church. Let every
church stand on its own foundations Baptist, Presbyterian,
Episcopal, Quaker, and all the others. But let them all be
independent, just like the United States. No Virginia church,
no United States church.

No government has the right to make anybody support a
church or to put one before others. That is the way Jef-
ferson reasoned. That is the way his young friend James
Madison reasoned too Madison who worked with Jeffer-
son all his life, half like a brother, half like a son, and who
succeeded him in the White House,

It was while he was governor of Virginia that Jefferson
wrote the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia. But he
couldn't get it passed at once. There were months and
years of argument Wouldn't this destroy all religion?
Wouldn't it upset everything? Wouldn't it plunge Vir-
ginia into wickedness and ungodliness?

Of course not, said Jefferson. His bill wouldn't hurt re-
ligion; it would help religion. It would make the churches
stand on their own feet It would make religion a matter of
free choice.

Finally Jefferson won out, Jefferson and his friend Madi-
son. In 1786 his Bill for Religious Freedom became law,

It started off with a grand line: "Whereas . . . God hath
created the mind free."

And it closed with a great line, too: "Truth is great and
will prevail, if left to herself."

Jefferson was in France when his Bill for Religious Free-
dom finally passed. How he rejoiced. And how all Europe
rejoiced. Free men everywhere, in England and France,
Germany and Italy, hailed this law as one of the great land-
marks in the history of freedom.

FREEDOM OF HELIGION 59

So it was, too. Yet actually it was limited to the little
state of Virginia,

But look ahead just three years and see what is happen-
ing.

Now Americans had written a new Constitution, and
adopted it, and set up a new government. Now George
Washington was President of the United States. Now Jef-
ferson was back from France as his Secretary of State, and
now, too, his friend James Madison was in the new Con-
gress, writing the new laws.

He wasn't much to look at, "Jemmy" Madison, a little
man not much taller than most of you, modest and mild
and with a voice so low you could hardly hear hfm when
he talked. The littlest man in Congress, but the biggest one,
too. . . . The lowest voice and the voice that comes to us
most clearly down through all these years.

No sooner had Washington taken the oath as President,
and the Congress settled down to work, than up stood
Mr. Madison. He had a long paper in his hand, and he
started to read it. It was a Bill of Rights-a list of all the
rights that belonged to the American people, and that Con-
gress would have to protect and preserve. And the very
first one of them was this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

There you are. It was the same thing as the Virginia
law for religious freedom, only now it was national It
said: hands off religion, hands off the church. Religion is
a matter between man and God, and not a matter for the
state to meddle with.

And that's the way it stands in our Constitution today.

So what began with the Pilgrims over in Holland, and
with Roger Williams escaping across the snows to Narra-
gansett Bay, ended up with Jefferson's bill in Virginia and

60 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

with Madison's amendment to the Constitution, What be-
gan as an idea that was hunted from country to country
ended up as the great basic idea of a great nation.

And not of one nation alone. For this idea that every
man has a right to worship as he will, and that the state
must keep hands off has spread from country to country
and from continent to continent, and has become one of
the great ideas of the human race.

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY

Imagine owning somebody!

Imagine being owned by somebody!

You can't imagine it not really. You can read Uncle
Tom's Cabin, and feel sorry for poor old Uncle Tom, or for
Eliza crossing the frozen Olio River with her baby in her
arms, but you can't really know what it is like to be a
slave*

Yet millions and millions of men and women have been
slaves and so have boys and girls, too, for that matter-
even here in America. If you are a Negro some of your fore-
bears were slaves, and not too far back, either, for it is
only one hundred years ago that the United States put an
end to slavery.

Slavery is very old. It is as old as the first civilizations
in Babylonia and Assyria. In some ways it is older even
than freedom, for men were slaves before men had truly
learned to be free.

64 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Remember how Joseph and his brethren were sold into
slavery in Egypt?

Remember how the ancient Greeks made slaves of those
they captured in war? Why, one general he was named
Nicias owned a thousand slaves!

Remember how the Romans made slaves of Christians, and
of most of the other people they captured in their constant
wars?

All of these slaves were white men and women. But in
modern times it is mostly Negroes and Indians who have
been made slaves.

Slavery in America started when Christopher Columbus
discovered the islands of the Caribbean and planted the
Spanish flag on them. Almost the first thing the Spanish
conquerors did was to make slaves of the gentle Carib
Indians the ones who gave us the name Caribbean and
then drove them to the hopeless task of finding gold and
silver, hopeless because there was no gold and silver. . , .
The poor Carib Indians couldn't live under slavery. Many of
them were killed off by their brutal conquerors, others
languished away and died. Then the Spaniards committed
one of the great crimes of history. They kidnaped Negroes
from Africa and shipped them over to the Caribbean islands
to be slaves.

That is the way Negro slavery was first brought to
America.

One hot day in 1619 a Dutch ship sailed into the
waters of Chesapeake Bay and up the James River to the
tiny settlement of Jamestown, the very first English settle-
ment in America. That ship carried just about the worst
cargo that any ship ever brought to American shores.

It earned a cargo of Negro slaves.

Of course you can't really blame the Dutch ship for that.
If it hadn't been that ship it would have been another
one. In fact four years later an English ship named the

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 65

Treasurer came sailing in with another cargo of Negro
slaves.

Actually nobody seemed to mind very much. Everybody
knew about slavery, and almost everybody took it pretty
much for granted. It was convenient to have Negroes who
could work in the tobacco fields under the broiling sun, or
who were strong enough to cut down the trees that stood
in the fields, and haul them away. It was convenient to
have Negro women who could cook dinners over the hot
fires, and Negro children to do the chores around the farm.

Convenient, that is, for the white people who owned
them. Not so convenient perhaps for the Negro slaves.
But then nobody asked them, and if they had, the poor
Negroes would not have understood what they were talking
about.

So gradually more and more slaves were brought to
America. The slave traders who brought them made a
fortune. The skve dealers who sold them made a fortune.
The fanners and planters who bought them didn't make all
that much money, but they did pretty well for themselves,
having someone to do all the hard work. Everybody seemed
to profit from slavery except the slaves. Nobody cared
whether they profited or not

So slavery grew and slavery spread Every year thou-
sands of Negroes were brought in from Africa, or from the
islands of the West Indies, to do the hard work to raise
tobacco in Virginia, to make turpentine in the woods of
North Carolina, to cultivate the rice fields of South Carolina,
to cut the sugar cane of Louisiana. And one day, not long
after the United States became a nation, a young man
named Eli Whitney who was visiting down in Georgia
figured out a clever way to take the hundreds of little
seeds out of cotton bolls and thus make it possible to spin
the cotton into doth. Soon everybody was raising cotton.
And of course everybody needed slaves for that too.

66 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Didn't it worry the white masters to own Negro slaves?
Didn't they ever ask themselves why God should have
made white people to be masters and black people to be
slaves?

Didn't they read in their Bible that men should do unto
others as they would have others do unto them?

Didn't they read the Declaration of Independence which
said that "all men are created equal?"

Didn't they read the Bill of Rights? And did they think
it was meant only for them freedom of religion, freedom of
speech, fair trial, equal treatment before the law, and all
the rest of it just for white people?

The answer is that most of them never thought of these
things at all.

Almost everybody in the South simply took slavery for
granted, just as you take for granted that you have enough
to eat, even though most of the people of the world do not
have enough to eat; or just as you take for granted that you
go to school, even though most of the boys and girls of the
world don't have any school to go to.

Yes, the white people of the South took slavery for
granted. What's more, they came to think that slavery was
really a very good thing. It was a good thing for them, and
it was even a good thing for the slaves.

It took them out of Africa and civilized them.

It made Christians of them, and thus saved their souls.

It took care of them, fed them, clothed them, sheltered
them, and nursed them in childhood and in old age.

What a wonderful institution!

It is surprising that all the white people didn't blacken
their faces and become slaves themselves, it was such a
wonderful institution!

That's just what Abraham Lincoln once said. **Whenever
I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse
to see it tried on him.'*

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 67

Most masters treated their slaves kindly. After all, that
was not only the right thing to do, it was the sensible
thing to do, for slaves (like everybody else) worked better
when they were treated right But not everybody is kind,
and not everybody is sensible. There were always some
slaveowners who were in a great hurry to get rich and
who drove their poor slaves as hard as they could*

Even at its best, slavery was hard. It meant long hours of
work under the hot sun, and nothing to look forward to
even nothing but slavery all your life. And at its worst?
. . . Well, then it meant long hours of work, too, and such
food as your master gave you, and such rags as he let you
wear, and such cabins as he built for you. It meant a
whipping if you didn't work as hard as he thought you
should, or if you answered back, or if you ran away worse
than a whipping, then, the bloodhounds out after you and
the red-hot branding iron on your cheek if they caught
you. It meant husbands sold away from wives and wives
sold away from husbands, and mothers and children torn
apart.

Some white people in the South even some of the slave-
owners themselves saw all this. They saw that slavery
was wrong, that it was wrong for whites and blacks alike.
Thomas Jefferson, for instance: "I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just, 9 * he wrote. And when he
drew up a plan of government for the new states in the
West he wrote in a provision that there should be no slavery
in all that country. The Quakers, too, both north and
south, thought that slavery was hateful, and fought it with
all their might.

But how do you fight slavery?

Do you just sit back and wait for it to die out by
itself?
That was all very well in Massachusetts or in New York.

68 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

There it did die out by itself and in other Northern states
as well. It wasn't that Yankees and Yorkers were so good.
They were no better than anybody else. It was rather that
slavery simply didn't work well in their country. It didn't
pay to use slaves on the rocky farms of New England. It
didn't pay to use slaves in the factories of New York or
Pennsylvania. So one by one the states of the North set
their slaves free there weren't many of them, after all un-
til in the end there were no more slaves north of Maryland
or of the Ohio River.

But that didn't mean that the folks up north were going
to fight slavery. Nothing was further from their minds. That
was asking for trouble.

After aD, if Yankees didn't want slavery that was their
business.

And if Southerners did want slavery, that was their busi-
ness.

Nobody asked what die slaves wanted their business was
to be slaves.

Anybody who stirred up the slavery question was a
troublemaker. And you know what happens to trouble-
makers!

Elijah Lovejoy stirred up trouble with his newspaper in
Alton, Illinois, and they shot him dead.

When Prudence Crandall stirred up trouble in Con-
necticut by letting a little Negro girl come to her school,
they destroyed the school and Miss Crandall's home too.

When Quakers stirred up trouble in Philadelphia by hold-
ing a meeting against slavery in the new Pennsylvania Hall,
they burned down the hall.

When the headmaster of Noyes Academy up in New
Hampshire stirred up trouble by admitting some Negro
pupils to his school, the townspeople hitched a hundred
oxen to the steeple of his school and pulled it down.

When Thomas Garrett of Wilmington, Delaware, stirred

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 69

up trouble by helping Negroes escape from slavery, they
clapped him in jail and fined him ten thousand dollars.
And when William Lloyd Garrison stirred up trouble
with his Liberator newspaper, they put a rope around his
neck and tried to hang him.

William Lloyd Garrison was born to trouble as Roger
Williams was born to religion.

He had known trouble all his life. When he was a little
boy his father had run away from wife and children, and
his mother had gone to work to support them all. When he
was nine years old he went to work himself first for a
shoemaker, then in a carpenter's shop, then as printer's
"devil," which is what an apprentice in a printing shop
was called.

So far nothing very special about Garrison. After all, lots
of boys are poor and go to work.

No, William Lloyd Garrison didn't become interesting
until he got interested in something himself. And what
he got interested in was slavery.

Interestedl That isn't quite the word. He got slavery on
the brain. He spent all his waking hours thinking about
slavery, and when he went to sleep he dreamed about
slavery. He buttonholed everybody he saw and talked
about slavery, so that when his friends saw him coming
they hurried over to tihe other side of the street or ducked
into some shop, ... It was like an electric current that
was never turned off; it was like a fire that burned and
burned, and smoked and smoked.

Garrison talked about slavery, he made speeches about
it, he wrote about it. He said the same thing over and
over: slavery was against nature, slavery was against
Christianity, slavery was a sin and slaveholders were all
sinners.

In 1831 he founded his own newspaper to fight slavery

70 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

remember? He called it the Liberator, and the name tells
you how Garrison planned to fight slavery. He planned to
liberate the slaves.

I determined [he said] to lift up the standard of freedom in
the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the
birthplace of liberty. My standard is now unfurled, and long
may it float, till every bondman be set free.

What a tiresome young man, pounding away on this
one note, over and over, day in and day out, like a whip-
poorwill. But "I will be heard** he said, and he was heard.
They tried to stop his paper, but instead it caught on
and was read more widely every year. They tried to stop
him too they put him in jail and tried to lynch him but aU
in vain. You could no more stop William Lloyd Garrison
than you could stop thunder and lightning.

He started a society to fight slavery the American Anti-
slavery Society, he called it. How ridiculous. Nobody would
join such a society, anyway nobody but a lot of old women.
, . . But within ten years a quarter of a million people
had joined anti-slavery societies.

That was one way to figjht slavery by writing with such
fire that the words burned right through the newspaper
and into the minds and hearts of those who read them.

Theodore Parker had another way to fight slavery.

He, too, was a Massachusetts boy, born in the little town
of Lexington. It was his grandfather, Captain Parker, who
had stood on Lexington Common early on the morning of
the nineteenth of April 1775 and fired the first shots of the
Revolutionary War.

Theodore Parker always kept his grandfather's gun hang-
ing on the wall above the fireplace in his study.

An odd place for a gun in a minister's study.

For Theodore Parker was a preacher. He was not only a
preacher, he was the Great American Preacher, with capital

FKEEDOM FROM SLAVERY 7!

letters. That's what he was called, even in his lifetime. He
had the largest parish in Boston; he stood in his pulpit in
the Music Hall every Sunday morning and preached to
two thousand men and women who hung on every word
he said every word of his prayers and every word of his
sermons.

But that isn't why he was called The Great American
Preacher. It was because he took the whole nation for his
parish, and preached to the whole nation. Back and forth
he went, now in New York, now in Wisconsin, now up in
Maine, now in Pennsylvania, sitting in cold railway cars,
sleeping in strange hotel rooms, preaching in crowded halls
and churches: everybody in America, it seemed, wanted
to hear him. Well not quite everybody; let us say every-
body who hated slavery wanted to hear him. And those
who couldn't hear him hurried out to buy his sermons as
soon as they were printed, and then passed them around
for all their neighbors to read.

Out in Illinois a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln
read his sermons. Theodore Parker is my kind of Christian,*
he said. One thing that the Reverend Mr. Parker wrote
Lincoln remembered all his life: ^Democracy is self-govern-
ment over all the people, for all the people, by all the peo-
ple,"

What was it about Theodore Parker that made him the
best loved, and the best hated, preacher in America?

It was partly the kind of person he was; it was partly
what he stood for and what he did.

He was a farmer boy, and there was always something of
the country about him. He was simple and staunch and
sincere; no show, no pretense. He was terribly in earnest.
In everything he said and did you could tell that he was
generous and just.

He couldn't stand injustice, and he fought it all his life.

He fought for justice for workingmen in shops and fac-
tories*

72 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

He fought for justice for women who were denied the
rights of men.

He fought for justice for little children who had to work
instead of going to school.

He fought for justice for the poor, the helpless, and the
criminal he called them "the dangerous and perishing
classes'* of society.

He fought for justice for the slave.

How he fought! One migjity sermon after another from
that pulpit in the Music Hall, listing the wrongs of slavery
and calling on Christians to put an end to it. Presidents
read the sermons, and senators, and governors, and judges:
some of them loved Mr. Parker, some of them were afraid
of him, but all of them respected him and listened to him
when he spoke.

But that wasn't all, the sermons and the lectures and the
letters. The grandson of Captain Parker wasn't content with
that Every runaway slave who came to Boston headed for
Theodore Parker's house, there in Exeter Place. They were
fearful and hopeless, many of them, but courage streamed
out of Parker like light out of the sun. They knew that he
would protect them and that he would somehow hurry them
on to Canada where they would be safe. And he did. When-
ever the slaveholders came to Boston looking for their run-
away slaves, Mr. Parker would print a big poster and put
it up all over town:

CAUTION!!!
COLORED PEOPLE OF

BOSTON

KIDNAPPERS AND

SLAVE CATCHERS

PEOPLE OF

BOSTON
RALLY TO FREEDOM!

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 73

And rally they did, too, with the Reverend Mr. Parker at
their head. Imagine a minister organizing a vigilante com-
mittee to protect Negroes! Imagine a minister defying the
judges and the governors and the soldiers in order to save
Negro slaves.

You couldn't scare Mr. Parker.

Once at a big meeting in New York the speaker said, "If
Mr. Parker were here I would charge him with treason.**
"Oh, you would, would you?" said Mr. Parker, who was up
in the gallery, "Here I am, go ahead and charge me and let
me answer you/*

Once he was arrested for helping a slave escape. "Wonder-
ful/* he said, "just let them bring me to trial*** He wrote a
three-hundred-page defense, and the judge was so stag-
gered that he didn't dare bring Parker to trial, but called
the whole thing off.

Theodore Parker was a great scholar, one of the greatest in
the land. He was a preacher who loved peace. But more
than anything else he loved freedom. He gave his life to
preaching freedom for the slave.

That was another way to fight slavery.

There was a third way, the simplest of alL

That was to help the slave run away from slavery run
away to the North, to Canada, to freedom.

It meant getting across the magic line that separated
slavery from freedom.

Look at the map and you can trace that line. It ran along
the border of Pennsylvania, and along the Ohio River all the
way to where it flows into the Mississippi. On one side was
slavery, on the other side was freedom. Only a thin line, but
two worlds almost as different as the world of life and of
death.

How do you cross from one world to another if you are a
slave?

Well, mostly you don't. You just live and die a slave*

74 CRUSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

But some did. Some managed to run away and make
their way across that line and win their freedom.

But oh, it was hard. It was harder than breaking out of
jail.

Remember, a slave had no education. He couldn't read.
He certainly couldn't read a map. He knew no more about
roads and rivers and woods and mountains than you know
about the geography of the moon. Maybe less. How was he
to find his way through a strange country for one or two
hundred miles?

Remember, too, a slave had no rights. Certainly he had
no right to be out by himself wandering through the coun-
tryside, or walking along the roads or the streets of a town.
He had no right to be out at night at all and since that
was the only time he could be out, he had to keep in hiding
all the time.

And remember, if a slave ran away every man's hand
was against him, and everybody was after him.

His master would put a notice in all the papers:

WANTED
GEORGE

A RUNAWAY SLAVE.

HE IS 24 YEARS OLD, LIGHT COLORED

AND TALL. HE HAS ONLY FOUR FINGERS ON HIS

LEFT HAND. WHEN LAST SEEN HE WAS DRESSED

IN BLUE PANTALOONS AND A BLUE SHIRT

REWARD!!!

Everybody would be on the lookout for him. Everybody
would be eager to catch him and send him back to his
master to be branded on the cheek with the letter R for
Runaway. Or worse yet the bloodhounds would be out
after him, tracking him down in the woods or the swamp.

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 75

Only by running through a flowing stream could he throw
them off the scent.

How did a slave ever reach freedom? Yet thousands of
them did. Somehow they managed to follow the North
Star to Pennsylvania or Ohio or Indiana, and to freedom.

Southerners said that slaves were happy as the day is
long. Yet thousands of them braved death to run away to
freedom, but not one of them ever went the other way,
from freedom to slavery. Not one.

If you asked a runaway slave how he managed to escape
he would tell you that he took the Underground Railroad.

YouVe probably heard of the Underground in London.
That's what they call their subway, railroad cars running
on tracks in a network of underground tunnels.

The original Underground Railroad goes back to the
18303 just when the first real railroads were being built in
England and America. It didn't have any real tracks, or
any real engines or cars, or any real stations. And it cer-
tainly didn't run underground.

All the same, that was a good name for it: the Under-
ground Railroad.

Its tracks were dusty country roads that stretched from
the Ohio River northward toward the Great Lakes and
Canada, or from Maryland into Pennsylvania and New
York and Canada. Its engines were horses and its cars
were ordinary wagons. Its stations were farmhouses and
barns scattered about the countryside, known only to those
who worked for the Railroad. Its engineers and conductors
were courageous men and women who were willing to
risk their lives to rescue the slaves. And its passengers were
slaves.

How did it work?

Well, look at Levi Coffin, who helped make it work for
twenty-five years.

He was born in North Carolina that was skve country

76 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

of course. But he was a Quaker, and Quakers, you will re-
member, didn't hold with slavery. So, like many other
Quakers, Levi decided to go north, to get away from
slavery. And in 1826, when President Adams was in the
White House, he moved across the Ohio River to a little
town in Indiana called Newport.

His daytime work was running a store, and he ran it
well and made money and was respected by everyone in
his part of the state. His nighttime work was running a sta-
tion on the Underground Railroad.
Here's how it worked:

Picture to yourself a dark night, long past midnight, the
little town of Newport fast asleep. A hay wagon crunches
along the country road and pulls up at Levi Coffin's barn
it's not safe to go to the front door, someone might see
you. . . . There is a soft rat-tat-tat on the door, or maybe
some gravel thrown against the windowpanes. Levi and his
wife wake up instantly they are used to this or maybe
they have been warned, and are sitting up in the dark wait-
ing. A whispered password then "two bales of cotton" per-
haps, or "two barrels of apples" and the door is opened.
Two frightened Negroes tumble out of the back of the
wagon, brushing the hay out of their hair, their eyes big
with fear. "Come along,** says Levi, and takes them by the
hand, and the door closes, and the blinds are drawn, and
the only light comes from a log smoldering in the fireplace.
First a bowl of hot soup, for it can be cold crossing the
Ohio, even in the summer. Then quickly up the stairs to
the attic, or out to the barn, and under the hay. Then the
wagon will drive off to a nearby farm, for if it is standing
there in the morning the neighbors will be curious and
the slave catchers too.

For next day the slave catchers will be in town, looking
for the runaways. But they won't know where to look, and
no one will tell them. In a few days the coast is clear; then
Levi Coffin will hitch up his carriage and put his two run-

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 77

aways in the back and cover them over with parcels of
merchandise, and off he will go, eight or ten miles into the
country to the next station on the Underground Railroad.
And so on and on and on, from station to station, follow-
ing the North Star, to freedom.

Sometimes it was easy enough, especially in the summer.
Sometimes in the winter it was touch and go. Then the
snow would show the pursuers the tracks of the wagon
wheels; then the poor runaways would arrive so frozen that
they couldn't walk, and Levi would have to keep them hid-
den away in his warehouse or his barn for weeks until
they were well enough to go on.

One of the runaways who came to Levi Coffin one winter
night was named Eliza Harris. Running through the night
with her pursuers hot on her trail, and a baby in her arms,
she had crossed the Ohio River on the ice and found her way
to Levi Coffin's house. Mr. Coffin told that story to a
preacher's wife named Harriet Beedher Stowe, in nearby
Cincinnati And Harriet Beecher Stowe told it to the whole
world in one of the most exciting books ever written: t/ncfe
Tom's Cabin.

When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe at
the White House he said to her, "So this is the little woman
who made the Civil War."

For twenty-five years Levi Coffin ran his station on the
Underground Railroad, and in all that time he never lost
a passenger.

Neither did Harriet Tubman.

If you were asked to name some of the great women of
history you would say Joan of Arc . . . and Queen Eliza-
beth . . . and Florence Nightingale . . . and Eleanor
Roosevelt * * , Certainly you would never say Harriet Tub-
man. You never even heard of her. Scarcely anybody has
ever heard of her.

Yet she is one of the great women of history*

78 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

She was born a slave, on a Maryland plantation, and
given the fancy name of Araminta, which she later changed
to plain Harriet. She grew up as strong as any man, able to
do a man's work plowing in the fields, or a woman's work
cooking in the kitchen. But she could never work hard
enough for the brutal overseer who ran the plantation, and
once in a fit of temper he threw an iron horseshoe at her
and almost killed her. She got well, in time, but after that
she was never quite the same: she would fall into a trance,
she would go right out of this world and into another
world of her imagination where she would see visions and
hear voices just like Joan of Arc.

When Harriet was twenty-five or thirty it wasn't easy
for slaves to keep track of their age she ran away to nearby
Pennsylvania. Good for her! But she wasn't content with
that. In one of her visions God told her to go back to Mary-
land and find her father and mother, her brothers and sisters,
and lead them to freedom. And she did.

That was her lifework, to go into the South and guide
skves back across the magic line to the land of freedom.
Again and again she made her way deep into Maryland and
Virginia she had a kind of sixth sense about direction, and
besides, so she always thought, God guided her. She was
clever and shrewd, and could fool almost anyone. Who
would ever suspect her of any mischief, this slave woman
with a turban wound around her head, and a red bandana
at her neck, shuffling along so simple and so innocent? If
they did she knew how to throw them off the scent. She
knew all the hiding places, all the woods and swamps and
abandoned barns, in the whole countryside. In the winter
months she worked up in Philadelphia, cooking and wash-
ing to make money. Then when spring came she was off to
the South again. She brought out her parents, driving them
herself in an ancient oxcart She brought out whole families,
eight and ten at a time. Sometimes die had to fight to get
her slaves away and once in New York of all places she

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 79

rescued a runaway slave from a mob and dragged him
through the streets of the town to the riverbank where she
pushed him into a boat that carried him off to safety.

Old John Brown remember him in that poem "Old John
Brown, Osawatomie Brown?" said that Harriet Tubman
* was the most man that I ever met with." He ought to know.
He was quite a man himself. He was the man who attacked
Harper's Ferry-with just a handful of Negroes. He was the
man whose body 'lies a-mould*ring in the grave His soul
goes marching on,"

Harriet Tubman was the Moses of her people, leading
them out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land.

Suppose you could save just one person, save one child
from drowning, save one old lady from a burning house,
give light to one man who was blind. Think how proud
and happy you would be: it would be something to remem-
ber all your life.

Harriet Tubman saved three hundred lives. She led three
hundred slaves across the magic line to freedom.

That's still another way to fight slavery the way of Levi
Coffin and Harriet Tubman.

But none of these ways of fighting slavery really hurt
slavery very much. William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore
Parker could blast away against slavery, and Levi Coffin
and Harriet Tubman could rescue runaways, but slavery
was still there. Every year the number of slaves increased
three million in 1850, four million in 1860.

How would it ever end?

In February 1861 Abraham Lincoln was on his way to
Washington to be President of the United States. He
stopped off at Philadelphia to make a speech about the
Declaration of Independence. What did it mean? he asked.
It meant, he said, that "weights should be lifted from the

80 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

shoulders of all men . . . that att should have an equal
chance/*

All men? Black as well as white? Slave as well as free?
. . . Were they to have an equal chance? Why, they hadn't
any chance at all.

Yes, all men. Anyhow, that was what Lincoln hoped
would happen. He didn't expect it to happen right away,
but he expected that it would happen sometime. He had
always hated slavery, this Illinois lawyer, hated what it
did to the masters as well as to the slaves, to white people
as well as to black. But he wasn't like Garrison or Theodore
Parker; he didn't think all slaveholders were sinners. After
all, he had been born in the South himself, and so had his
wife, and he knew slaveowners who were just as good and
kind as their Northern cousins. And he wasn't like Levi
Coffin, either; he couldn't flout the law to help slaves run
away; after all, he was a lawyer and had a duty to uphold
the law. Besides, he didn't think it did much good to help
an individual slave run away: slavery was still there.

If you are Abraham Lincoln, how do you fight slavery?

Tf all earthly power were given me," Lincoln said, "I
should not know what to do about slavery." Now he was
President of the United States. He didn't have all earthly
power nobody ever had thatbut he had more power than
anyone else.

But as soon as Lincoln became President he had a war
on his hands. For now the South had left the Union and
set up on her own as the Confederate States of America.
She had her own Constitution and her own capital city
and her own flag. And now she was fighting for independ-
ence.

All along a thousand miles, from the city of Washington
west along the Potomac River, across the mountains, west-
ward to the Mississippi River and even beyond it out
onto the prairie lands of the Far West, soldiers in Union
blue are fighting soldiers in Confederate gray.

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 8l

What are they fighting for, these men and boys in gray?

They are fighting to be independent They are fighting
to keep their way of life a life where white people are al-
lowed to own slaves without anybody criticizing them or
trying to take their slaves away from them,

Listen to them as they march along, the Stars and Bars
of the Confederate flag fluttering in the breeze:

In Dixie Land we'll take our stand,
To live and die in Dixie . . .

And what are the men and boys in blue fighting for?

They are fighting for the Union fighting to keep this
land one country instead of two. And they are fighting for
freedom. Listen to them, as they tramp along the dusty
roads of Virginia or Tennessee:

Yes, we'll rdSy round the flag, boys,

We'll ratty once again,

Shouting the battle-cry of FREEDOM!

Could Lincoln make the war for Union a war for freedom
too?

Yes, he could, and he did.

Skves didn't actually fight in the Confederate Army, but
they did almost everything else but fight They took the
place of soldiers back on the plantations, and they took the
place of soldiers in the army, too, driving the wagons, car-
ing for the horses, building roads, and doing a hundred
other useful things.

So slaves were helping to fight a war to break up the
Union and keep slavery! Surely, thought Lincoln, that was
reason enough to put an end to slavery.

Besides, by now almost everybody took for granted that
slavery would have to go. The English took it for granted;
they had got rid of slavery in their West Indian islands
thirty years earlier. Most of Europe took it for granted;
they hadn't permitted slavery for a hundred years. More

82 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

and more of the people of the North took it for granted.
And more and more of those soldiers in blue, too, marching
along shouting the battle cry of freedom.

Lincoln was thinking of all these when he decided that
slavery would have to go. But most of all he was think-
ing of the slaves themselves.

He was thinking of the tens of thousands who had al-
ready escaped and gone north: you couldn't round them
up and send them back to slavery! He was thinking of the
tens of thousands of slaves who had joined the Union
armies and were fighting for the Union cause, wearing uni-
forms that were just as blue as those worn by white soldiers.
You couldn't send them back to slavery either. And he was
thinking of the millions of men and women and children
who were still slaves: it was time they were free. "God," he
said, "has decided this question in favor of the slaves/*

And on the first day of the new year, 1863, Lincoln
published a proclamation saying that hereafter all the
slaves in the South would be free.

It was called the Emancipation Proclamation. That is
why Lincoln is known as the Great Emancipator.

Of course the proclamation wouldn't mean anything un-
less the Union won the war.

In the end the Union did win the war.

The Confederates surrendered, there at Appomattox
Court House in Virginia, and put away their weapons and
folded away their flags, and went home. And slavery was
no more.

So it was given to Abraham Lincoln to do one of the
great deeds of history.

Who would have thought it?

Who would have thought it of little Abe, growing up
in a log cabin out there on the frontier?

Who would have thought it of the boy Abraham, his
mother dead, his father a ne'er-do-well?

FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY 83

Who would have thought it of young Lincoln, splitting
rails out there on the Illinois prairie, keeping store, poling
a raft down the sluggish Illinois River, swapping stories
with the boys sitting around the country store?

Who would have thought it of lawyer Lincoln, not much
of a lawyer eitherno proper schooling, no law training,
mostly just his native wit?

Who would have thought it of Congressman Lincoln?
Yes, he got to Congress, but for only one term, and then he
was sent home by the voters.

Who would have thought it even of President Lincoln?
Nobody knew just how he got to be President instead of
one of the governors or senators or great men of the East

Who would have thought it of tall, gangling Mr. Lincoln,
his face all wrinkles and cheekbone, his hair never rightly
combed, his arms too long and his legs too long, his voice
all crackly; poor Mr. Lincoln, so plain, so awkward, so
countrified that it was hard not to laugh at Tifrn when you
saw him.

Who would have thought that it would be Abraham
Lincoln who would put an end to the greatest wrong in
history?

Now all the Negroes in America were free.

No more whipping, no more branding irons. No more
separation of mothers and children. No more need to run
away.

But freedom is a gradual thing.

It isn't something that happens all at once, and over
with like being asleep and waking up. It is something
that happens slowly, over a long time, like growing up. It
doesn't come just from the outside, as when you take a
blindfold off your eyes and can see. It comes from the in-
side, too, as when you start using your eyes to see things
that you never noticed before.

The first step in freedom is of course to strike off the

84 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

shackles that make you a slave. But that is only the first
step. After that there is still a long way to real freedom.
Real freedom means not only that your body is free; it
means that your mind and your soul are free too.

The Negroes still had to win that land of freedom.

They had to win the right to make a living. They had to
win the right to an education. They had to win the right
to vote and to hold office. They had to win the rights that
free men had always taken for granted.

Even now, one hundred years after Lincoln gave them
freedom, they do not have all these rights.

Even now as they toil slowly up the hard path of freedom
there are some who try to delay them or to stop themjust
as one hundred years ago there were some who tried to
keep them slaves. Those people say, "Stop and rest, you
have gone far enough." Or they say, "Don't try to go so
fast; take it easy; there is time enougji." Or they say, "You
have gone as far as you can. The air is too thin up there on
the high plateau of freedom. You can't breathe it. Stop!"

But people who believe in freedom know that if you stop
to keep others from climbing the heights of freedom you
keep yourself from climbing too. They know that those who
withhold freedom from others withhold it from themselves
as well. They know that freedom is like happiness; the more
of it you give to others the more you have for your-
self.

Twenty-five hundred years ago a great Athenian orator,
Pericles, said that "the secret of happiness is freedom, and
the secret of freedom is a brave heart."

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

If you were to make a list of the great discoveries of history,
what would you put down? The discovery of America?
Certainly. The discovery of the law of gravitythe law that
whatever goes up must come down? Yes, that too. The dis-
covery of electricity? Of course. The discovery of ether and
novocain to take away pain? Probably. The discovery of
outer space? Well, that's still going on.

One thing that you would never think to put down is the
discovery of children.

How can you discover children? Children are always
there. They have always been there.

That's just the point. Children are always there, so no-
body thought much about them. But gravity was always
there, too, and electricity, and outer space. And for that
matter, America, But they all had to be discovered.

We know who discovered America, and who discovered
the law of gravity and the uses of electricity and of ether.

88 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

But we can't say who discovered children. In a sense every-
body did. About the time of the American Revolution and
of Jefferson a new discovery of children was announced
almost every day.

You have sometimes watched a pot of oatmeal or of corn
meal coming to a boil on the stove. For a time all is quiet.
Then there is a little eruption here and there each like a
tiny volcano. Then the eruptions break out all over, and the
whole pot boils and bubbles.

Philosophers decided to think about children for a
change, instead of about grownups. Religious people started
to worry about children's souls, and to set up special Sun-
day schools for them. Statesmen and reformers got anxious
about children's health they shouldn't be allowed to work
long hours in factories. Teachers discovered that children
had minds as well as bodies, and that their minds had to
be fed too. Painters woke up to the fact that children were
beautiful and that everybody wanted pictures of them.
And storytellers turned to writing stories about children
and for children.

Like Hans Christian Andersen.

Except that Hans Christian Andersen didn't have to dis-
cover children* There had never been a time when he
hadn't known about them. What he did was to help other
people discover them.

He grew up in the old town of Odense, in Denmark; not
at all a bad place to grow up, with its soldiers in bright red
uniforms at the castle, and a great church whose beSs rang
away at all hours of the day, and a little pond with white
ducks on it. He lived in a house so tiny you could almost
put it in your pocket, and his parents were so poor that
they never knew whether there would be supper that night
or not, but he was happy enough, little Hans. He had a
patch of garden at the back of the house as big as a hand-
kerchief, with a single mulberry tree, and he could sit out

THE BIGHTS OF CHILDREN 89

there in the summer and imagine that he was in an immense
forest. He had a pair of scissors and paper and he cut out
paper dolls and kings and queens and soldiers and animals
and made a whole world for himself, and he made himself
a stage and acted out the most elaborate plays plays that
he made up himself. His father worked away cheerfully
enough at his shoemaker's bench, when he had any work,
and when he hadn't he told little Hans stories or read to
him from The Arabian Nights, and his mother, who couldn't
read, took care of hi and loved hi dearly.

When he was only fourteen years old Hans Christian
went off to the capital of Denmark, the lovely city of Copen-
hagen with its dozens of church spires covered over with
green copper, and its gleaming blue canals, and with real
kings and queens and princes. He was going to be a singer
... he was going to be an actor ... he was going to write
plays, . . . My, all the things he was going to do and be.
A fortuneteller had read his palm before he left home and
said that someday he would be a great man and that when
he came back home all Odense would be lit up in his honor.
He believed that too: he could believe almost anything,
and what is more he could make other people believe almost
anything.

Such an ugly little boy the original of the ugly duckling
in his famous story so awkward and gangling and bony,
and so ignorant, too. People didn't know whether to laugh
at him or to cry when he burst in on them and told them
his many plans and hopes. In the end they all helped him,
though helped him to go to school, and to find work, and
to travel and to make something of himself. They thought
that in time he would stop being so queer and become a
respectable young man.

But he never did, not really. He grew up to be one of the
most famous men in the world, and the part of fr that
was famous was respectable enough. He dined with kings
and with princes, he visited at country houses, he traveled

go CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

in Germany and Italy and England and Spain, and wher-
ever he went there were festivities and celebrations in his
honor, even in Odense, just as the fortuneteller had said.
But all the time the more real part of him went right on
being queer went right on living in a world of the imagina-
tion, a world that he created in his books and his
stories.

What a world it was! A world where knives and forks
talked to each other just as people do; where the moon
stooped and peered into an attic window; where a lily sat
down on a piano stool and played the piano; where fir trees
longed to be Christmas trees, and then longed to be back
in their cool dark woods again. It was a world where the
brave tin soldier could fall in love with the beautiful paper
doll; where shadows turn into men and marry princesses;
where dogs had eyes as big as the Round Tower of Copen-
hagen, and where the tiny Thumbelina could fly off to
Africa on the back of a swallow!

It is more real than the real world, this world of child-
hood that Hans Christian Andersen discovered or made.
It is the world of the Chinese nightingale who sang so
beautifully that Death itself gave up and went away from the
dying emperor; of the steadfast tin soldier who went rushing
down the dark canal and was swallowed by a fish and then
found once more by his owners; of the little mermaid who
turned into a human being for love of her prince you can
see her sitting on a rock out in the harbor of Copenhagen
even now. It is the world of the little match girl who warmed
her hands on her matches and dreamed herself right into
heaven; of the vain little girl with the red shoes; of the
prince and the peasant boy who followed the lovely sound
of a bell all through the world and finally met in a meadow
high up in the hifis; of the ugly duckling who turned into
the beautiful swan. . . .

Hans Christian Andersen made everybody see that the
world of childhood was just as real as the world of grown-

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN Ql

ups. It wasn't that children were always happy in Hans
Christian Andersen's world. Not at all. The poor little match
girl froze to death, and the brave tin soldier ended up in
the furnace, and the proud darning needle was broken into
small pieces, and the poor mermaid lost her prince and was
turned into foam. No, Hans Christian Andersen loved chil-
dren too much to pretend that the world was always rosy
and that, no matter what happened, everyone lived happily
ever after. He loved them enough to tell them the truth. But
it was their truth, about their world, and in their language.
That is what is so important

Hans Christian Andersen's discovery of children was
good for the children, good for everybody.

But that wasn't true of all discoveries.

Little Hans Christian had grown up in a country town.
The f atiher worked at his bench at home, and the neighbors
all knew each other, and even when times were hard chil-
dren weren't expected to suffer or to work.

But with the growth of cities and the coming of factories
everything changed. And as far as children were concerned
everything changed for the worse. Oh, much worse!

For there was another discovery of children. Alas, it was
a very different kind of discovery.

That was the discovery that children could work in shops
and factories, in mills and in mines, just as well as grown
men and much, much more cheaply!

What a wonderful idea: to let children work instead of
men. You wouldn't have to pay them but half as much as
you paid their fathers. You could treat them any way you
wanted to, because they were too little and too timid to
answer back, or to stand up for themselves; sometimes the
poor little things were almost too little to stand up at all If
they didn't do their work properly you could whip them or
knock them about They would never go out on strike
against you; they would never make trouble for you. If

Q2 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

one of them should fall asleep and catch his hand in the
machinery, or lose the use of his legs from standing ankle
deep in water all day, you could send him home for the
town to take care of, and get another child to take his place:
there were always more children.

It certainly was a wonderful discovery this discovery
that children could work in factories and mines instead of
men. Of course it wasn't so wonderful for the children.

One day in the early iSoos a farmer named Richard
Oastler visited some factories in the industrial city of Leeds,
up in the north of England. What he saw horrified him.
Little boys and girls of six and seven years old, standing
up at the spindles twelve hours a day, six days a week,
winter and summer alike. No time for school. No time for
play. No time even for meals the little things ate what was
in their tin pails whenever they had a moment, while the
wheels whirled and the machinery jangled in their ears. It
was slavery, said Mr. Oastler it was worse than slavery.
Even slaves were better taken care of than that. Once he
visited a factory with a planter from the West Indies who
owned slaves himself. "I always thought myself disgraced
by owning black slaves/* the planter said, "but I never
thought it was possible for any human being to be so cruel
as to make a child of nine work twelve hours a day.**

Soon Mr. Oastler got a banker friend, Thomas Sadler,
interested in this child slavery. Together they went to the
British Parliament They stood up in the House of Com-
mons and made speeches about conditions in the factories
up north about little boys and girls working all day in
cotton mills and in pottery works. But nobody paid much
attention to them, except to shake their heads at this inter-
ference with business. What! said the respectable members
of Parliament What! Interfere with the sacred right of fac-
tory owners to hire anybody they wanted? What! Interfere
with the sacred right of parents to put their children out to

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 93

work if they wanted? Why, that would be interfering with
the way God had ordered things. Besides, if the children
didn't work they would fall into bad ways. They would
idle away their time on play or, worse yet, they would get
into mischief. No, no, much better to let them work better
for everybody, better even for the children. In fact, they
added, weren't the children lucky to have work at all? And
they went off to their dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire
pudding, with brandy and cigars.

But Richard Oastler and Tom Sadler kept everlastingly
at it. Finally they got Parliament to pay some attention to
what they said. That was in 1832. That year they got
Parliament to appoint eight or ten of its members to see if
things were really as bad as these tiresome men said they
were.

Alas, they were worse. One by one the victims of child
slavery came before the committee of Parliament and told
their tales of woe. By now they were old men and women
of twenty or twenty-five, broken and deformed by their
long hours of work when they were children, and now
thrown on the ash heap as useless. In the end the whole
sickening story was spread before the people of England
and of the whole world.

It was a story of children working from ten to fifteen
hours a day in pottery factories so ladies who must have
tea wouldn't have to pay too much for their dainty teacups.
Of boys working fourteen hours a day in hot, stifling cotton
mills no fresh air, no rest periods, no time to eat, beaten
if anything went wrong so mill owners could send cottons
off to India at a handsome profit to themselves. Of children
standing all day in water up to their knees combing out
fleece so the rich could have their nice woolen blankets.
Here was one boy of seven, from a mill in the city of Hud-
dersfield; he got up in the dark and staggered to the mill
a mile or so away. There he worked from five in the morn-
ing until seven or eight at night, with all of thirty minutes

94 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

off for dinner, such as it was. When he got home he was
too tired to eat supper, too tired even to talk to his mother.
For that matter she was too tired to talk to him either, for
she had worked just as hard and just as many hours.

Or here were children down in the mineslittle tots of
five or six, sitting down in the dark, opening and closing
doors, or chasing away the rats. Older and stronger children
all of seven or eight years old, girls as well as boys, mind
you crawled on their hands and knees dragging little carts
with coal through narrow black tunnels in the underground
mines. Safety? That was their lookout. If something hap-
pened to one of them you could always go to the orphanages
and get more poor boys or girls; the town was always glad
to have them off their hands.

Or here were the chimney sweeps, hundreds and hun-
dreds of them, and all of them little no matter how old
they were. England, in that day, was heated by coal fires in
fireplaces, and that meant that the chimneys got clogged
up with coal dust. The chimney sweeps and only little
children were small enough for the job, or children whose
growth had been properly stunted would wriggle up the
chimneys and sweep down the thick coal dust. Of course
the dust got in their eyes, and sometimes blinded them. It
got into their lungs, and many of them died of lung diseases.
And sometimes the chimneys were still hot and the little
fellows got burned. Too bad. But chimneys had to be swept
how else could people stay warm and comfortable in their
houses?

No, Negro slavery was not as bad as this!

Lord Anthony Ashley listened to all of these stories with
horror.

He was one of the greatest lords in all England. His
father owned half of the county of Dorset; his grandfather
was the Duke of Marlborougk He was so rich he couldn't
keep track of his lands or his money. He had gone to the

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 95

famous Harrow School, and then on to Oxford; he was
handsome and distinguished; he had married a beautiful
wife, a great lady.

What a happy man, you might say. Not a care in the
world.

Well, he was happy enough in his way, but he had
plenty of cares; after all, being happy and being carefree
are not quite the same thing. The reason he had so many
cares is that he took on himself the cares of his whole
society.

Young Lord Ashley had what is called noblesse oblige.
There's no good English term for that, so you might as
well learn the French. It means that those who are power-
ful and fortunate have an obligation to those who are weak
and unfortunate a special obligation that they must take
on.

That's what Lord Ashley thoughtthat lie was so rich
and so powerful and so fortunate that he had a special
obligation to the poor: to children working in factories; to
pauper children in their miserable 'ragged schools"; to
women working long hours in mills; to miners working in
dangerous places below the ground; to the insane who had
none to care for them; and to many others.

Too bad more young men like Lord Ashley didn't have
a sense of noblesse obUge.

When Lord Ashley heard about the children in the fac-
tories and mines he was terribly shocked. But he did not
say, as you or I would say now, "It must all be stopped.**
He wanted to stop it all right, but he knew that that was
impossible. You had to go at these things gradually, you
had to win the public over to your side. So Lord Ashley
introduced a law that no child under nine should be al-
lowed to work, and that no one under eighteen should
work more than ten hours a day.

You would have thought that everybody would have
voted for Lord Ashle/s law, but no such thing. There was

96 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

a tremendous fight. The mill owners said they couldn't
possibly make any money unless they could keep children
on the job twelve hours a day. The miners said that they
would have to close down their mines if they didn't have
little children to pull the coal along the tunnels: men were
too big for the job and you certainly couldn't expect the
mine owners to enlarge the tunnels! And many men who
sympathized with the children thought that it was danger-
ous to interfere with business at all. Things had to take their
course. In time everything would come out all right per-
haps in a hundred years or so.

But now the working people of England were aroused.
The little children of the industrial towns got together and
serenaded members of Parliament when they came to see
for themselves:

We witt have the Ten Hour Bitt
That we wiU, that we witt,
Else the land shall ne'er be still,
Never still, never stiJU

Imagine marching and singing for the right to work only
ten hours a day!

For Elizabeth Barrett Browning she was Robert Brown-
ing's wife, and just as much of a poet as he was the land
was "never stilT because there was always the sound of
children crying:

Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And they cannot stop their tears. . . .

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

It was hard to resist all that talk and all that singing, but
Parliament wasn't going to give in all the way. So they
thought up a brilliant compromise. "Let's draw the line at
thirteen," they said, "not at eighteen. Thirteen is the real

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 97

dividing line." As one dignified member of Parliament said:
"Nature has drawn a sharp line at the age of thirteen* At
that age childhood ceases, and the body becomes capable
of enduring long labor." Think of that, all you children of
thirteen or fourteen* So Parliament drew the line at thirteen
under that only eight hours a day, after that not more
than twelve. There! That was a good days work for the
Parliament anyway.

Gradually things got better. Lord Ashley's bill was just
the first of many bills to cut down the hours that children
had to work. Finally there were laws that children had to
go to school every day; that little children couldn't work
in mills at all; that girls couldn't work in mines; that little
boys weren't to be used as chimney sweeps. And somehow
the spindles turned out their cotton, and the mines gave
up their coal, and the fires burned in the fireplaces. So
maybe it never had been necessary to use the labor of
children, after all.

Children have rights that was the lesson that the Eng-
lish learned, thanks to men like Richard Oasder and Lord
Anthony Ashley. They have a right to play. They have a
right to health. They have a right to be protected against
abuse. They have a right to go to school They have the
right to be children*

Charles Loring Brace was another young man who had
a sense of noblesse oblige. He too, lie Lord Ashley, had
been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Not quite as big
a spoon as Lord Ashley's, to be sure; after all, this was
America, and there were no lords or dukes or castles or
farms as big as all of Connecticut. But young Charles had
money; along about 1840 he went to Yale College; he
traveled abroad. He took a walking trip through England
with Frederick Law Olmsted, who later built parks all over
America so children would have some place to play. Charles
wondered what to do with himself. One thing that he did

98 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

with himself was to travel all the way to Hungary, where
he somehow got mixed up in a revolution, and was put in
jail, and had to be pried loose by the American minister
and sent back home to his own country. As you can see,
Mr. Brace was an impetuous young man.

Actually he took part in a revolution back in his own
country too, but it wasn't called that. It was a revolution to
save children.

Don't think it was just in England that little children
worked in factories, standing by the looms or the spinning
wheels ten or twelve hours a day. No, even in America,
even in New England, where the good people were so wor-
ried about Negro slavery, they let children work harder
than slave children worked in the cotton fields of the South.
Even in great cities like Boston and New York and Phila-
delphia, where you would have thought there were enough
men to do all the work, they used little children in tie
factories, because they were cheapen Why, in 1832, when
Richard Oastler and Lord Ashley were working so hard
for the children of old England, two out of every five fac-
tory workers in New England were children under sixteen
years old! Not until ten years later did Massachusetts get
around to fixing the working day of children in factories at
ten hours.

Later on a New England poet wrote a verse about them:

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

No, even a rich country like the United States didn't take
care of its children very well.

Look at New York. It was already the biggest city in the
country, and growing bigger every day. It was like a grow-
ing boy whose clothes were never big enough for him, his
arms sticking out from his sleeves > his legs too long for his

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 99

pants. New York's clothes didn't fit, and there was no way
even to patch them up. New York just couldn't build
enough houses, just couldn't put up enough schools, just
couldn't make room for enough playgrounds, no matter how
hard it tried. And it didn't really try very hard. Every day,
it seemed, new shiploads of immigrants would steam into
Castle Garden in New York Harbor, and a thousand new-
comers would stream down the gangplanks and into the
city Irish and Germans and Norwegians and Dutch, old
men with bundles on their backs and women with babies in
their arms and two or three tousle-headed youngsters tag-
ging along behind, their eyes as big as half dollars as they
looked about them at the New World.

Most of those youngsters were just like you. Their fathers
found jobs, and their mothers kept house, and they went
to school and grew up, just as you are growing up, to be
about as nice as any children could be: anyway, that's
what their parents thought Most of them but not all. For
many of the newcomers couldn't make a go of it The
father died, or ran away, or took to drink . . . the mother
fell ill ... the family was broken and scattered. And the
children? Well, the boys took to the streets and sometimes
the girls too. There they were, the little street Arabs as they
were called, thousands of them. Some of them sold news-
papers, some of them carried shoeboxes and polished boots
that was really a necessity in the muddy streets of New
York City. Some of them begged, some of them were little
pickpockets. They ran around during the day, trying to
earn a few pennies or to find something to eat; at night
they slept in hallways or under the stairs, or broke into
stores, or sometimes just curled up in a doorway like the
little match girl in Hans Christian Andersen's story. They
didn't belong anywhere. Nobody bothered with them or
cared what happened to them unless they got in trouble
of course. They grew up as best they could, and if they

1OO CRUSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

didn't grow up well, there were always others to take their
place, so they were never missed.

Now we come back to Charles Loring Brace, that young
man so eager to do good. He thought of being a preacher,
and he even studied at a divinity school, but in the end he
decided that preaching was too tame for him. Then he
discovered the street Arabs of New York. He was only
twenty-five himself at the time not too much older than
the boys themselves.

What was to be done for these homeless boys? First Mr.
Brace got all his friends together and set up a society the
Children's Aid Society, the first of its kind in the country.
He got clergymen interested in his work, and reformers
and generous women who wanted to do something practi-
cal, and they all pitched in and helped. That was in 1853.
The next year young Mr. Brace set up a lodging house for
newsboys and for other boys too; a place where they could
get a bath and a bed and a supper and breakfast free. It
went on for years and years, growing bigger all the time;
in twenty years it had given lodging at one time or another
to one hundred thousand boys: that's a lot of boys to need
a place to sleep! But that was just the beginning. A night's
lodging was all very well, but it didn't really go very far
in taking care of homeless boys.

Next Mr. Brace set up special schools for the boys eve-
ning schools where they could learn their letters and be
warm at the same time; industrial schools where they could
learn a trade. Then he had the happy idea of summer
camps for these city waifs. Youve heard of the Fresh Air
Fund your parents probably give money to it which sends
city children out to the country for two or three weeks a
year. It was Charles Brace who started that, and of course
it caught on and grew, like all good ideas.

Then came an even better idea. New York, and other big
cities, had too many boys and girls with nothing to do but
get into mischief. But out west there were never enough

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 1O1

children. You can't really have too many children on the
farm: there are always chores for them, and there is always
food enough. Why not send these city boys to the farms?
The idea caught on and spread Eight or ten thousand of
the street Arabs ended up as farm boys in Ohio or Michi-
gan or Illinois.

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for
humanity/' Horace Mann had said. Surely, as Charles Lor-
ing Brace looked back on his life, he was not ashamed to
die.

Now turn to Chicago.

Chicago in 1890 was pretty much what New York City
had been in 1850.

It was the fastest-growing city in America, and perhaps
in the world. "Hog Butcher to the World," the poet Carl
Sandburg called it, and it was that, and more too, with its
flaming steel milk and its hundreds of railroad trains pull-
ing in from all over the country, and the giant Great Lakes
steamers filled with iron ore or with grain at the harbor.
Everybody in the world knew about Chicago, and every-
body in the world, it seemed, wanted to go there: Italians
and Poles and Russians and Irish and Swedes and Bohe-
mians. Why, there never was such a mixture; walking down
Chicago's Halsted Street, you would think you were in the
Tower of BabeL

And everybody so busy that there was no time for chil-
dren, unless they could work too*

The little town of Cedarville was only a few miles from
Chicago, but it was in another world of peace, quiet, beauty,
comfort at least for little Jane Addams. Her fatter was the
first citizen of the town even Abraham Lincoln knew hfm
and respected himand her home was the biggest and the
finest house in town, and her garden had the tallest trees
and the loveliest flowers. Yet even for little Jane life was

102 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

not as perfect as you might suppose. She was pigeon-toed,
and her spine was not quite straight, so she held her head
on one side, and that made her very self-conscious. Nobody
really noticed it, of course, but poor little Jane thought
that everybody did. She didn't feel sorry for herself, though;
she just felt sorry that her beloved father should have such
a plain little girl. When they were out walking together she
took care to stay behind a few steps so no one would no-
tice hen

All that didn't matter, in the end. She grew up a pretty
young lady, and went off to college, and then because
she had plenty of money off to Europe to see if the rest of
the world was like Cedarville, Illinois. YouVe heard what
it's like to go abroad! Perhaps you'll go abroad yourself
someday. Most travelers visit museums, cathedrals, palaces,
the opera, famous restaurants, cafes on the boulevards,
beauty spots in the Alps or on the Riviera . . . but not
Jane! What she wanted to see in Europe was something
very different indeed. She wanted to see "how the other
half lived" the slums, the ghettos in which the Jews were
herded, the factories and working quarters, the hospitals
and schools and orphanages. She knew that life wasn't all
beauty and romance and she wasn't going to have it fed to
her on a silver spoon* She herself wrote, with some sharp-
ness, of "the sweet dessert in the morning, and the assump-
tion that the sheltered girl has nothing to do with the
bitter poverty which is all about her . . . which peers at
her in the form of heavy-laden market women and under-
paid street laborers." Imagine a little girl from Cedarville
worrying about the heavy-laden market women and the
underpaid laborers! How many girls who go over to Europe
today do you think worry about things like that?

How hard life was for the poor; how drab and dreary;
how filled with sadness and disappointment and heartbreak.
What could she do to help? The same question, you see,

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 1O3

that Lord Ashley asked, and Charles Brace . . * and the
same noblesse oblige.

Then it was that Jane Addams had something like a vi-
sion. You can't do things for people you have to do things
with people. You can't be a Lady Bountiful, dispensing a
bit of charity here and there and waiting for people to be
grateful to you. You have to go and share their Eves with
them, as an equal to suffer with them and rejoice with
them.

Why not buy a house in the midst of the slums and
settle down and live with the poor?

So back to Chicago she went Not to the great Chicago
along the shore of Lake Michigan with its palaces and
mansions and boulevards and carriages and parks. No, to
Halsted Street, near the stockyards-to Halsted Street where
the Italians and the Poles and the Bohemians lived in tene-
ments and back alleys and basement hovels to Halsted
Street, with its saloons on every corner, and its noises that
never stopped, day or night, and its stenches that struck
the nostrils like a blow. ... In 1889 Jane Addams found
just the house a great old barn of a house which had seen
better days and belonged to a lady named Mrs. Hull
Miss Addams bought it and kept the name: Hull House.

A name is what you make it. Nobody would ever have
heard of the Hull family if it hadn't been for Jane Addams.
But now Hull House is known everywhere in the world.
Perhaps the only house that is known as well is the White
House. It took lots of Presidents to make the White House
famous, but Jane Addams made Hull House famous all by
herself.

Jane Addams began very simply, by just being there, in
Hull House: taking care of people . . . listening to them
when they told their troubles . . . helping them out of their
troubles . . . giving them a warm supper when they were
hungry . . . finding money for them when they were penni-

1O4 CRT7SABERS FOR FREEDOM

less * . . going to court for them when they were in trouble
with the law . . . finding work for a young man who had
been fired from his job . . , picking up children who were
playing hooky and sending them back to school . . . patch-
ing up quarrels between husbands and wives or between
fathers and sons . . . sending a nurse around to an old
woman who was ill . * helping a young mother with her
first baby*

What an endless round of work. That first year two thou-
sand people came to Hull House every week, and most of
them, it seemed, were in trouble. And all of them wanted
to talk with Miss Addams.

Jane Addams quickly learned that it was not much use
helping out in emergencies; there were always more emer-
gencies. Not much use healing wounds or drying up tears;
there were always more wounds and more tears. No, the
thing to do was to put a stop to what caused the wounds
and the tears.

But how? Well, first things first The place to begin was
Hull House. And whom to begin with? Why, children of
coarse. Babies. Boys and girls. Young men and women.

First, then, a nursery for babies, so their mothers could
have a little rest now and then, or go shopping or visiting.
Hen a kindergarten how much we all owe to old Frie-
drich Froebel-to take the little children out of the dank
cellars or away horn the steaming washtubs. Then a boys'
dbb to take the boys off the dangerous streets and give
them a playground for games and a room where they could
pfey checkers or dominoes, or monkey around with ham-
raeas and saws. An art dass where youngsters could learn
to draw and paint and model in day and in stone: aston-
ishing how many artists came out of these Hull House
classes, A music class, ai*d the pianos and the violins were
going afl hoars of the day. Daacoag dasses ... and even
faaflet: how griefs! the little ItaBaa girls were! And after
a while a sraamer camp up cm Lake Michigan where chil-

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 10$

dren from the slums could learn to swim and play baseball
in the fields or cowboys and Indians in the woods.

All for the young. That might have been Jane Addams*
motto all for the young. She wrote many books how she
found time is one of the mysteries of her life and one of
them was called The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.
The spirit of youth is alive anywhere, even on Halsted
Street; it will flame anywhere, even in the slums of the
great cities. Let us cherish it, Miss Addams said, for it is
die most precious thing in the world.

But all of this was still just binding up the wounds. How
to stop the wounds from happening m the first place!

And besides, if there was this much to do just on Halsted
Street, think of all there was to do in the vast city of Chi-
cago. Think of all there was to do in the big state of
Illinois, Think of all there was to do all over America. AH
the children who had no place to play; all the mothers who
had no time for their children; all the fathers who had no
work at all; all the immigrants without friends in a strange
land think of all the misery all over America.

So Jane Addams turned to the larger task of preventing
evil instead of trying to cure it after it had happened.
Boys and girls in trouble with the law, which neither un-
derstood them nor cared for them but treated them just
as if they were real criminals. What to do tax them? Why,
stop treating them like criminals. Treat them like chfidnai
instead. Set up special courts just to take care of tbem
courts which would act like a friend, not an enemy. And
Miss Addams got Illinois to set up the first juvenile courts
in the world the first courts that were just for chil-
dren.

Boys and girls working ten hours a day in shops and
factories, tostead of going to school No wonder they weren't
happy; no wonder they got into trouble. Miss Addaias

1O6 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

down to Springfield and talked the lawmakers there into
passing a law that would put an end to the labor of children
in factories the first one that really had any teeth in it
and that meant business.

Women working night as well as day, long hours in fac-
tories, with the machinery whirring in their ears and the
lights glaring into their eyes. Long hours in restaurants,
running back and forth from tables to kitchen and back;
long hours in office buildings, washing floors and cleaning
up after all the businessmen were home in their comfortable
beds. But women should be home with their families, not
off working for a living at night. And Jane Addams pushed
through a bill making it against the law for women to
work at night A judge in long black robes said, "You
can't do that! Women can work any time of the day or
night that they want" -just like those men in England who
said that children should be allowed to work as long as
they wanted. But in the end Miss Addams had her way
as she usually did and mothers could stay home with their
children.

lie schools of Chicago were in a bad way old buildings,
poor teachers, no libraries, no playgrounds, even; the chil-
dren could play m the streets or in alleys or not at all. In
the Hufl House district there were tibree thousand more
children than there were seats in schoolrooms. What hap-
pened to the children? asked Miss Addams. She got herself
elected to the school board and for years worked for better
schools.

Gaifcage collectors didn't bother with poor districts like
Halsfced Street, and the garbage piled up on the street and
the sidewalks until you couH hardly walk around it Miss
Addams protested, and the politicians just laughed at her.
So site got herself elected garbage inspector. Every morning
she was up at six o'clock following the garbage wagon
aramd tbe streets and alleys to make sore that the job was

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 1&J

done properly. For the first time in history Halsted Street
was cleaned up.

Wonderful Jane Addams, working away so simply and
quietly there at Hull House. It was no longer just one house,
for over the years it had grown and grown. By 1920 it was
a whole village of houses fifteen or twenty of them, each
one as busy as a beehive. A hundred thousand boys and
girls and men and women went through its doors every
year to draw, to paint, to dance, to play the piano, to learn
how to take care of babies or to sew or to read* Professors
from universities and social workers and judges came and
lived at Hull House for months at a time in order to learn
what Jane Addams learned how to work with people and
live with people; many of them went off and started other
houses like Hull House in other cities. Now all the wodd
knew about Hull House, and no clever visitor from Europe
or Asia thought that he had seen America unless he had
visited Hull House and talked with Jane Addams.

If she had time to talk with him.

She might be tending a baby, or reading to sosae dbfl-
dren, or encouragoig a little Italian boy to pky the violin.
. . , Or she might be writing a speech for a meeting in
London, or telling some congressman how he should vote,
or writing a letter to the Resident of the United States.
And you can be sure that the President read it He not
only read it; he probably did what Miss Addams asfed ton
to do.

For example Miss Addams wrote President Taft that
children were the responsibility of the whole country and
that there ought to be someone in Washington who would
see to it that the rights of children were taken care of every-
where in the country. And President Taft set up a Children's
Bureau, and the lady he invited to take dbaige of ft was
Julia Lathrop, who had wodced or twenty yeais with Jaa
Addams in Hull House.

1O8 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

There were two other things that were close to the heart
of Jane Addams, One was the rights of women; the other
was peace. In her mind the two were really one, like two
sides of a penny.

The great war of 1914-18 came as a terrible shock to Miss
Addams. How could human beings turn into savages this
way? How could they go about tearing down the civiliza-
tion that they had built up over the centuries?

It wouldn't have happened, she thought, if women had
been in charge.

Women thought first of their children. After all, children
didn't make wars. Why should they be the ones to suffer?
Men made wars, and they didn't stop to think of children.
When they dropped bombs on cities they didn't stop to
think that the bombs could kill little children along with
grownups. When they put a ring of ships around a country
so no food could get in, they didn't stop to think of the
children who would starve to death.

But women would think of these things first

AH the last years of her life Jane Addams spent working
to save the helpless victims of war working for the League
of Nations, working for peace. She thought that the best
way to make sure of peace was to see to it that women were
able to vote, everywhere. Women would vote against war-
that she was sure of. Give the women the vote; organize
them aB into one great peace society. Then maybe wars
would stop.

She lived to see women win the vote in the United States
and in most other countries. She lived to see the women of
America and Europe and India band together for peace.

She lived to win the Nobel prize for peace the greatest
erf all prizes.

She died before World War n swept over the world,
Idffiag wcmea and difldnm by the millions*
Perhaps that was pist as well

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 1OQ

Children everywhere. Sick children. Crippled children.
Blind children. Starving children. Motherless children.
Children without homes. Children wandering along the
dusty roads with nowhere to go. Children alone and lost.

Babies wrapped in rags, lying on the ground, crying for
food. Little children toddling around in the ruins searching
for scraps of food or sitting by the wayside crying their
eyes out. Older children hungry and desperate, striking out
blindly for themselves, hoping to find food before they
starved to death.

World War II swept over Europe over country after
country, wiping out cities, smashing up houses, destroying
churches and schools, killing millions of fathers and moth-
ers, leaving millions of children by themselves. Tte war
swept over the densely packed countries of AsiaChina
and Japan and Burma and the Philippines and others,
wrecking and smashing and burning and killing, leaving
millions of children by themselves. There had never been
such ruin in all history. Never, in all history, so many chil-
dren lost. Little things who should have been playing in
the sun but who were too weak to play . * , chfldien who
should have been at school but there were no schools . . .
boys and girls who might have worked in fields or helped
with the chores at home but there were no seeds to plant
in the fields and no homes where they could do the chores.

All ruined by war. All swept away by war.

In Europe alone thirty million children without food or
clothing. Thirty million children close to starvation. Thirty
million children weak and sickly, easy prey to smallpox and
measles and tuberculosis.

Who would save the children?

Who could resist the cry of the children?

Everybody wanted to help* . . buthow?

UNICEF. Those letters mean United Nations Intent
tional Children's EnK^rgeney Pond, kit no matter, UNK3EF
is enough. It canies its own magic. la Italy children think

11O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

it means a cow because it brings milk. In Greece it means
wheat because it brings bread. In India and Burma it means
a gentle nurse, because it brings medicines and health. You
know it, of course, here in America, in England, in Den-
mark, in countries all over the world * . . it means those
Iwety brigjht Christmas cards printed by internationally fa-
mous artists. It means trick or treat, on Halloween, with
all the treat going to the children.

Once the world had waked up to the plight of the chil-
dren, everybody wanted to help. Governments voted money;
people bought Christmas cards; contributions came pouring
in money and food and clothes and medicine and toys
and games and books all the things that were needed.

Soon ships loaded with food sailed out from American
ports. Hiey sped across the Atlantic to the battered city of
Hamburg and unloaded food for German children who
were starving, and lor Polish and Austrian children. They
sped through the Straits of Gibraltar to the ancient lands
along the Mediterranean, Italy and Greece and Algiers and
Tunisia and Turkey, unloading food and clothing and medi-
cine for the children. Soon planes winged their way out
from great airports of London and Paris and Copenhagen,
flying to the stricken children. They carried medicines and
vitamins and cod-liver oil and shark oil, too, which was
thirty times as goodr-and they carried teams of doctors and
nurses to rescue the children who were weak and sick and

Everywhere you looked, there in war-torn Europe, there
was UNICEF and with it other workeacs from the new
United Nations who knew how to get farming started up
again, and how to get pure water, and how to build houses
schools-rail working together in the greatest rescue
eration in lastofy. Itoy nBffion children . . .
Back in the United Stales and Canada the factories
day and night to make the powdered Tnflfc and

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 111

powdered eggs, and in Denmark and Sweden the labora-
tories worked day and night to provide the vitamins and
the pills and the medicines. And off went the doctors and
the nurses with their pills and vaccinations and injections
off to Poland and Italy and Greece and the Arab lands
and they pulled the dying children back to life, and made
the sick children well and the weak children strong. They
went off like armies, these doctors and nurses, to fight the
diseases that had crept up on tihe children just as the jungle
creeps up on the land if it is not held back to fight malaria,
which is spread by mosquitoes, and scurvy, which comes
from not having fresh fruit or vegetables, and typhoid,
which comes from bad water, and all the other diseases that
were about to get the upper hand.

It was like a great battle the battle against hunger and
disease and UNICEF won. That first year many little chil-
dren died, but then the tide turned and the children were
saved. They got their powdered milk, and after a time the
cows came back on the farm and they could get real milk.
They got their powdered eggs, and after a time the chickens
were scratching in the yards, and they could have real
eggs. They got their vitamins and their cod-liver oil, they
got their vaccinations and their pills, they got their strength
back. Gradually life picked up again: families came to-
gether, towns were rebuilt, there was food enough to go
around, and wood and coal for heat, and blankets for the
cold nights. The schools were rebuilt and UNICEF sent
over schoolboofcs and food for school lunches.

That was in Europe. There were still millions of children
in Asia and in Africa children who had always been hun-
gry and cold and neglected, even in time of peace, and
who were worse off now than ever. UNICEF moved in on
them too, with food and with blankets and with vitamins
and medicines UNICEF with other teams from tihe United
Nations: men and women working away to wipe oat dis-
ease, to irrigate land, to save cattle, to bring in electricity,

112 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM:

to do all the things that would bring more food and better
health to backward peoples.

New hope for the children of the world.

Think of that next time you buy a UNICEF Christmas
card*

THE RIGHT TO LEARN

One of the most important of all the discoveries about
children was that they had a right to an education,

Of course in one way children had always had some
kind of education. They had always been tau^it something
otherwise they wouldn't have lasted vary long. Boys had
learned to hunt and fish and swim and build fires and fight;
girls had learned to cook and sew and take care of babies.

But when we say education we mean something more
than this. We mean schools and teachers and books and
study, and training and discipline.

Of course education, too, had been going on for a teog
time. But there are two things you can say about educa-
tion during all the hundreds and hundreds of years from
its beginnings in ancient Greece and Judea to Just the
other day. One is that very few people got any education
at alL Poor people didn't need an education: what good
would it do them to learn to read or write? Girls didn't
need an education: learning would be wasted oa girls. No,

Il6 CRXTSADERS FOR FREEDOM

education was for the rich and the great, or for those who
were going to be rabbis or priests and who had to know
how to read.

And the second thing you can say about education is
that mostly it wasn't much fun; neither for the children
nor the teachers. Most teachers looked on children as little
limbs of Satan; and most children looked on their teachers
as their natural enemies. School was a kind of warfare be-
tween teachers and pupils. And no wonder. Drill, drill,
drill; Latin and Greek; memorize and repeat, and a rap on
the knuckles if you got it wrong.

So the world of children was pretty well divided between
the great mass of children who didn't have a chance to
learn anything and the handful of children who were made
to learn things which they didn't enjoy and which weren't
much use to them anyway.

Now if we are going to follow this discovery, that chil-
dren have a right to learn, we will be racing all over the
world: Germany and Chile and Denmark and Massachu-
setts and China it makes you dizzy just to think of it

Let us start in Germany, right in the center of Germany,
in the ancient state of Ituringia, all hills and pine forests.
And let us start with a young f eBow named Friedrich Froe-
beL His father didn't think he was very bright, so it was his
older brother who was sent to the university, while at the
age of sixteen Friedrich went to work as a fosrester, in the
thick Tkuringian forests. Best thing that could have hap-
pened to him, too, f or it meant that he learned to know na-
toe* Hiis was half of what he most needed to know in his
lifetime.

Hie other half was children.

Some people seem bom never to understand children.
Yorid tfcfair, to listen to theoa, that they had sever been
children themselves. AH they can think of is: Oh, stop that

THE RIGHT TO LEARN

noise! why don't you go out and play? stop asking so many
questions! wash your hands! comb your hair! don't slouch!
sit up straight! don't answer back! don't speak until you are
spoken to! ... And some people are born to understand
children* Hans Christian Andersen, for example, who all
his life thought and imagined things just the way children
thought and imagined. Or Lewis Carroll in England, a
fussy little old bachelor who lived with his Alice and his
Red Queen and his Mad Hatter in his own Wonderland,
Or Bronson Alcott over in America but we shall meet *
later.

Now here is Friedrich Froebel, a German born at the very
end of the American Revolution who fell in love with
nature and with children. Almost by accident he got a
chance to teach, and after that he was never the same. **I
was as pleased as a fish in water," he said, and for h the
water turned out to be the water of life. The first thing he
did was to go off to the little Swiss village of Yverdon, where
a teacher named Johann Pestalozzi was running a veiy curi-
ous kind of school You wouldn't fhfnlr it at all curious, be-
cause it is just what you are used to, but everybody in
Switzerland thought it was curious, and almost everybody
in Germany, too, except Friedrich FroebeL

What was curious about it was that Pestalozzi realty
liked children and that children realty liked him. He liked
teaching, and they liked learning.

And now here was young Friedrich Froebel to belp old
Pestalozzi and to work out some ideas of his own, too. Be-
tween the two of them, the Swiss and the German, they
made a revolution in education. It was the most peaceful
revolution you ever heard of, but it was a revolution all
the same.

What Pestalozzi and Froebel said was realty very simple:
children are people too. Children have rights. Let them
learn naturally, not by having things hammered into them,
Let them talk if they want to BO sifence in the classroom,

Il8 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

or standing in the corner because they talked out of turn.
Let them learn because they enjoy learning no punish-
ments because they don't know their lessons. Let them work
things out for themselves, with their minds, and with their
hands. Let them learn to use scissors and needle, hammer
and saw. Take them out into the country and let them see
how flowers and trees grow and how the birds build their
nests and how the fish dart under the rocks in the streams.

Out of all this came a wonderful invention. It was
FroebeFs invention.

Froebel called it a kindergarten.

lie kindergarten was just what its name says a chil-
dren's garden, a garden where each child would have his
own little piece of ground to take care of. He could plant
flowers and vegetables, water them, pull up the weeds,
keep his garden tidy and beautiful. And he would learn
lessons directly from nature. In the wintertime when he
wasn't out in his garden he could learn to draw flowers
and trees, or to cut out pictures of animals and birds, and
then to spell their names and learn about their habits.
Learning would be made into a game which teachers and
children played together.

The Idndergarten caught on, and soon everybody was
talking about it. Soon visitors came flooding down to the
little town of Blankenburg to see Herr FroebeFs kindergar-
ten. They saw that the children were healthy and happy,
and that &ey were learning faster than at old-fashioned
schools. Other teachers started teaching by the new kin-
dergarten method, and SOCHI tbe fame of the kindergarten
went aB o?ver the world

Anew idea in education!

Yes, indeed they are.
So one day SWedrfch Fioebel read in the paper that the
government had put a stop to all kindergartens.

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 119

Surely that was a mistake! Why should the government
be afraid of little children playing in their gardens?

But it wasn't a mistake at all. The government really
meant it. After all, they said, if you start with new ideas in
school, who knows where you will end? Why, people might
get in the habit of having new ideas, and nothing could be
more dangerous than that. So let's stop all new ideas before
they really get started.

Ah, but the government was too late. The kindergarten
idea was already started!

Ideas are like wind. They blow around the world. There
is no telling where they will go or who will breathe them
into his lungs.

Over in America, Bronson Alcott felt the winds of new
ideas about children and education blowing on his cheek
and filling his lungs.

You know Bronson Alcott You may not think that you
know him, but you do, all right He is the atiber of the
Little Women the father of Jo aod Beth aad Amy and
Meg. And everybody in the world knows them.

Did you think they weren't real people, or that their
father wasn't a real father? He was real all right, Bronson
Alcott. He was one of the kindest and gentlest men you
ever heard of; only a girl who had grown tip in a happy
household could have written Little Women.

But what an odd man he was, Mr. Alcott, absent-minded
and simple-minded; he always seemed to be thmking of
something else > far away. You couldn't trust him with any
money because he would give it away to anybody who
asked for it or needed it, sod that was hard on his wife
and children because they seeded it too. You couHa't
trust hfm to take care of himself either; oaaee wbea a
mob had gathered to rescue a runaway slave, and the
soWiears stood at the coartl0use door with their bayonets
pointed, Mr. Alcott just walked up the steps ajad pushed

12O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

the bayonets aside with his umbrella and said, **Why are
we not within?" and went in.

He believed that everything should be simple really
simple just plain living and high thinking, and when he
said plain living you have no idea how plain plain could
be. He set up a little community in a farmhouse that he
called Fraidands, not far from Boston, and everybody
there lived plainly: whether they went in for high thinking
is another matter. No meat, no sugar, no tea or coffee, no
milk or butter, not even salt or pepper; all of those things
were luxuries, thought Mr. Alcott. His daughter Louisa May
remembered what they had to eat: "unleavened bread,
porridge and water for breakfast; bread, vegetables and
water for dinner; bread, fruit and water for supper." How
would you like meals like that?

But Bronson Alcott was not such a simpleton as you might
think After all, everybody respected him, even men like
Hieodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, In some ways
he was more sensible than almost anyone else. He didn't
tale things for granted, but worked them out for himself*
He didn't take f or granted that everything had already
been thought of, but was quite sure that some new ideas
were just as good as old ones, and maybe better. He
wouldn't accept the notion that all men are naturally bad;
oa the contrary, he thought that all men ware naturally
good, and that tf you trusted them and were fair to them
they would not disappoint you.

And all that went for chikfam too.

Just about the time Friedrich Froebel was opening his
fcfodeiggfftm over in Blanfcedburg, Bronson Alcott started
the same kind of school in Boston. It was called the Temple
Sdbool, because it was held in a room in the old Masonic

What a school this Tsmpfe School was: there had never
been anything quite like it in America before. It didn't
eves look like a scix>olrooi3>-pictures up OR the walk, and

THE RIGHT TO LEARN

statues of gods and goddesses from Greek myths along the
floor, and curtains at the windows, and chairs around in a
circle instead of stiff desks lined up like an army. And it
didn't sound like a schoolroom either. All the old ways of
teaching were wrong, said Mr, Alcott; let's wipe the slate
clean and start over again. Children were naturally good,
not bad: just trust them to be good and they would. Then
away with all punishments, away with the sharp voice and
standing in corners, with the ruler and the whip! WeD, not
quite oH punishments; if a child was naughty Mr. Alcott
made him punish the teacher, and that, you may believe,
made the child ashamed , , , Learning was natural, as natu-
ral as walking or swimming, so don't make a chore of it, just
let it come naturally. No drill, no memorizing, no drudgery;
instead, conversations and songs and stories not just from
the teacher but from the children too. And just as in
Froebef s school, the children were to learn with their hands
as well as with their heads; there was to be picture drawing
and modeling in clay and working with wood and with
doth, cutting and sewing and painting. And wfaee the
weather was good, walks in the park studying nature at first
hand.

It was all too good to be true, and of course it coukhrt
last. It wasn't the government, as over in Thurin^a* that
dosed down Mr. Alcott's Temple School, but it was much
the same thing. It was people who said, Tliis wffl never do
imagine education being fcinr So they took their children
out of Mr. Alcotfs school and sent them to schools where
they would really learn something, like how to spell "anti-

or to say "Amo, amas,

and where they would be rapped over the knuckles if they
got ft wrong.

Of course in the end it was Friednch Froebel and Broa-
son Alcott who had the last WOT& Now there are kinder-
gartens everywhere, BOW every school is as pleasant as the
Temple School If it is not it Wight to be.

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Bronson Alcott wasn't the only man in Boston who was
thinking about children and about education, any more
than Friedrich Froebel was the only man in Thuringia who
was trying to do something for children. There was one
big difference between Boston and Thuringia, however,
and that was that in Boston the government was on the
side of the children. And of education.

Boston had such a long tradition of education that some
people think Boston invented it. If Pittsburgh is the steel
city and Detroit is the automobile city and Minneapolis is
the flour city, Boston is certainly the education city. For
three hundred years, now, Boston has manufactured and
exported brains the way other cities manufacture and ex-
port automobiles or steeL

It all started when Boston itself started, back in the
1630$. Here is how one of the Fathers of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony tells it:

After God had carried us safe to New England, and we bad
builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood,
reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the
civil government, one of the things we longed for, and looked
after, was to advance Learning, and perpetuate it to Poster-
ity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the churches,
when our present Ministers shall lie in the dust*

Almost the first thing the Puritans did when they came to
Boston was to set up a school it is still going, too, the
Boston Latin School; maybe some of you are students there
right now. And the very next year they set up a college
and nanied it after John Harvard, who left it his library
aad a bit of money: that's one way to be immortal!
But the Puritan Fathers knew what nobody much in
England or France seemed to understand: that you can't
really build a roof before you have the f oundations and
the walk And you can't have a learned ministry unless
you start by teaching children their ABGs, and a bit more.

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 123

So in 1647 the Puritans passed a law that every town in
the colony had to keep a school for its children, so that
"learning may not be buried in the graves of our fathers.**
Well, that's not so much, you say, and perhaps not by your
standards. But nobody else had thought of it It was the
first law of its kind anywhere in the world. That's much.

What a love of learning in the Bay Colony; yes, and in
the other New England colonies too. Look over New Eng-
land, and what you see is schools, academies, colleges.
Why, when the Revolution broke out New England had
more colleges than Old England. And New En^and was
probably the only region in the world where almost every-
body could read the Bible and the newspapers, and where
almost everybody could speak up in public meeting, and
make sense.

But somehow, after the Revolution, things got bogged
down.

Education went backward instead of forward.

The towns began to feel poor, and stopped supporting
their schools. They crowded their children into miserable,
ramshackle buildings, cold in the winter, hot in tibe sina-
mer, with leaky roofs and drafty windows, and far play-
grounds only a muddy yard. When they hired teachers
they got the cheapest they could find old women wk>
had no other way to stay oat of the poorhouse, or down-
and-out men who knew nothing about teaching and cared
less. Worst of all, the towns didnt even enforce the kws
about going to school Thousands of Bttfe boys and giiis
who should have been at school ware working ten
twelve hours a day in factories instead.

What had happened to education in New England?

That's what Horace Mam asfced himself . What has hap-
pened?

But he asked another question, fcxx What are you going
to do about it?

124 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Meet Horace Mann.

He is another of those people who believed in children.

But he was not in the least like Bronson Alcott.

He was as tough as an oak tree and as resolute as a ship
driving through the waves. A tall, slender man with an
immense forehead and burning eyes; when he made up
his mind to something, he did it. At the age of nineteen he
made up his mind to go to college he had been a working-
man since he was ten and he learned enough in six months
to get into the sophomore class at Brown University, and
then in time he graduated at the head of his class. He made
up his mind to many the daughter of the president of his
college, and he did, too. He made up his mind to study
law and go into politics, and before he was through he was
a senator down in Washington.

But all of these things counted for nothing when he
made up his mind to save the schools of his state of Mas-
sachusetts. When he was through you wouldn't have rec-
ognized them as the same schools; for that matter you
would hardly have recognized Massachusetts as the same
state. And before he was through he had changed not
oofy tie schools of Massachusetts but of the whole United
States, and of many other countries in the world as
well

He was that kind of man, the kind who knows what has
to be done and then drives toward it Nothing could stop
him. Nothing could discourage him. Nothing could turn
him aside. Nothing could frighten TITTH. He was like a gen-
eral oHnmanding an army, firm and patient and brave, and
defcennined to win at whatever cost. He was the George
Washington of American education.

In iSjjyHofaoe Mann got a new job,

The state of Massachusetts had finally decided that some-
thing ought to be done about its schools. But just what
ought to be done nobody seemed to know. So they set up

THE RIGHT TO LEARN

a Board of Education, and the governor asked Horace
Mann to be in charge of it The pay? Very poor. The
duties? Well, everything anybody could think of.

Not much of a job for one of the leading lawyers of the
state. Not much of a job for a state senator. But Mr. Mann
didn't hesitate for a moment

"Be ashamed to die," he once said, "until you have won
some victory for humanity/' Here was his chance to win a
victory for humanity*

For humanityl Not just for the children.

Horace Mann was interested in children all right But
he* was interested in them chiefly because they were gring
to grow up and be citizens and voters. How could they be
good citizens or good voters if they didn't have a proper
education?

Horace Mann saw what Thomas Jefferson had seen fifty
years earlier that the United States was trying a new ex-
periment in the world and that education was part of it
It was an experiment in self-government Everywhere else
in the world people were ruled by emperors aad kings,
by generals and admirals, or by the rich and the wellborn.
Education wasn't so important in these countries: just
educate the kings and the generals and the rich, and
the rest of mankind wouldn't need edacation. But in
America it was the people who were the rulers. Itey
were expected to run all their affairs. Ifcey were expected
to elect governors and judges and presidents; they were
even expected to be gofvemors and judges and presidents!
Everybody took for |pranted that the rates in the OH
World had an education, tibe kings aad kaxb and bishops.
Why not take for granted tfcat the rdbs in the New World
should have an education* too-the farmers and woddng-
wen and shopkeepers?

Education for citizens that's what Horace Mann was
aboot day and mg& Education so

126 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

would work. Education so the Republic would survive.
After all, as he wrote, "the children of this people will soon
possess the rights of men, whether they possess the charac-
ter of men or not." That is, they would grow up to vote
and to hold office, even if they didn't have any education.
So better see to it that they did have an education.

With Horace Mann at the helm things really got going.

Back and forth, across the state from Boston to the Berk-
shires, he went, stopping at all the cities and the country
villages too, inspecting the schools, explaining to the people
why it was to their advantage to have better schools. He per-
suaded the towns to vote more money for teachers; he saw
to it that the schools were neat and clean and well heated
and well run; he got high schools going in all parts of the
state. He had been born in a town that took the name of
Franklin because old Benjamin Franklin had given it a
libraiy, and when he was a boy he had read just about
every book in that library. Now he set up libraries in the
schools so other children could have the chance that had
meant so much to bnr>-

Then he had a brilliant idea. One reason so much of the
teaching was so bad was that most of the town fathers who
hired the teachers took for granted that anybody could
teach: all you needed was someone who knew just a little
more than the children. And as for knowing how to teach,
why, there was no trick to it: just beat it into them. But
Horace Mann had studied under some of these teachers,
aBd he knew how silly that theory was. You had to learn
liow to teach just as you had to learn how to do every-
thing else-cook or make furniture or practice law. So he
set up schools to train teachers, the first in America. He
called them normal schools, which was the French name
for them, but pretty sJHy when you oome to think of it, so
we fast caH them teachers' colleges.

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 1557

So much for Massachusetts, then. Things were looking
up there. But Horace Mann was thinking of more than his
own state, of more even than New England. He was think-
ing of the children of the whole country children who
would grow up to be voters and who would be running the
country in another fifteen or twenty years. How to reach
them?

Not everybody could hear Mr. Mann when he talked,
but everybody could read what he wrote. So each year he
sat down at his desk in Boston and wrote out a report oa
education. Each report was really a book bigger than the
book you are reading now. And it wasn't just a report cm
what he had done during the year; it was far more than
that It was a discussion of what ought to be done about
education, everywhere.

Never had there been such a discussion of schools and of
education as in Horace Mann's reports twelve of them,
before he was through What should schools teach? How
should they be run? How do you get teachers and train
them for teaching? How can schools help make good citi-
zens? How do American schools compare with French and
German and English schools? These weise the things Mr.
Mann wrote about in his reports.

Everybody read them-everybody who counted, anyway.
And almost everybody who read them sat down asd wrote
Mr. Mann a letter. Why, tbey had to pit oa extra postmen
every time Mr* Mann sent out case of his reports! THe^e is
what our schools are like in Ohio," they wiote, or "Here is
our pircbfem ia Virginia," or *How can we get the people
of our town interested in dieir schools?" car *H0w do yen
get a library started?" And so many of them es*ded: "Won't
you come out and teffl us what to do?*

It was not only in America that men and women read
Horace Mann's reports. Hiey read thsem all over die workl
They still

128 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

One day there was a knock on the door of Mr. Mann's
house in East Newton, just outside Boston. When Mrs.
Mann opened the door, there was a swarthy man with
black hair and a black mustache. His name, he said, was
Domingo Sanniento, and he had come over from England
just to talk with Mr. Mann. From England with that ac-
cent? Well, really from Chile. From Chile? Well, really
from the Argentine, but it was all very complicated. . . .
Anyway he had read Mr. Mann's reports over in England
and he couldn't go home until he had seen him.

That was the beginning of one of the important friend-
ships in history.

For Domingo Sanniento was no ordinary man. He was
the Thomas Jefferson of his country of the great country
at the other end of the South American continent named
Argentina.

Domingo Sanniento was born in the Argentine, in the
little country village of San Juan, nestling in the foothills
of the snow-capped Andes. He was a village boy, just like
a hundred thousand other village boys in a hundred thou-
sand other little villages where nothing ever happened ex-
cept the church bells ringing for early mass, or the winds
blowing dust in from the pampas, or the wild cowboys
riding into town and turning everything topsy-turvy. But
something happened to him: maybe it was reading Benja-
min Franklin's Autobiographyin Spanish of course and
woadering if he couldn't grow up to be like Mr. Franklin.
T felt I was Franklin and why not? I was as poor as he,
studied as hard as he, and managed to follow in his foot-
steps*** So said young Domingo.

He didn't really follow in Franklin's f ootsteps as much
as in Jefferson's. But then Jeffeason didn't write an auto-
biography, so Domingo didn't know about >>*ni> not until
much later osn, anyway.

What an ardent young man he was. He started imitating

THE RIGHT TO LEARN

Franklin by getting himself involved in a revolution. Hiat
was easy, in the Argentine; there was almost always a
dictator in power in Buenos Aires, and almost always a
number of little local dictators lording it over some province
or other and almost always some kind of revolution. The
difference between Franklin's revolution and Sarmiento's
is that Franklin won and Sarmiento lost Quite a difference.
The wonder is they didn't put young Sarmiento up against
a stone wall and shoot him. Instead they told hi to get
out of the country. Over the Andes, and into Chile: that's
the place for you. Good riddance!

It was just about the best thing that ever happened to
Domingo Sarmiento.

For it was in Chile that Senor Sarmiento really found
his lif ework a work that turned out to be very much like
Horace Mann's lifework. He started to teach; he wrote
books on teaching; he set up a school for teachers. Pretty
soon the government of Chile, which was much mose sensi-
ble than the government in the Argentine, made fiim Minis-
ter of Education-much the same kind of job that Horace
Mann took on. Senor Sarmiento knew that the Europe of
his day was swirling with new educatiraal ideas, so off he
went to Europe to learn for himself: Switzerland, Ger-
many, France talking with people like Froebel and with
that odd man who had invented the normal school, named
Victor Cousin. Then, before he went home, Sarmiento
crossed the Channel to England to see if be could learn
anything there.

Hie most important rising that happeoed to him in Eng-
land was that he read Horace Mann's reports CHI education.
He was so excited that he went to Boston Just to see Mr,
Mann.

You doift usually get so esdted about a bodk that ytra
go dear across an ocean Just to talk to the author* Bt thea
you aren't Domingo Sarmiento either.

130 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

In a way the United States went to Sarmiento*s head,
and he never got over it. He went back to Chile to carry
through many of the reforms he had seen abroad, and he
did, too. Then there was another turn of the wheel of for-
tune in the Argentine, and now they wanted the famous
Sarmiento back home. So there he was, Minister of Educa-
tion, with power to do almost all the things he wanted to do.
But it wasn't easy. The Argentine was so far behind every-
thing had to be done from the ground up. In no time at
all Sarmiento had built hundreds of new schools, and
trained teachers, and set up libraries, and opened up col-
leges: it was a real revolution. And as for Sarmiento, he
was so successful that they wouldn't leave him alone but
took him away from his schools and sent him back to the
United States as ambassador,

Horace Mann was dead now, but there were others carry-
ing on his great work, and Ambassador Sarmiento spent
most of his time learning about American schools. He saw
how the new states in the American West started off with
schools and colleges, and he saw how all the millions of
immigrants pouring in from Europe were made into Ameri-
cans by the American schools. That was what the Argentine
needed schools and colleges in the new states out on the
pampas and millions of immigrants who would be made
into Argentinians. * . . And then there was still another
spin of the wheel of fortune, and well, remember what
we said about Sarmiento being like Thomas Jefferson? Now
he found himself President of the Argentine, just as Jeff er-
soo was President of the United States. He thought of all
that Horace Maim had done, and he thought of all that
Jefferson had done, and he knew that this was his chance
to make tibe Argentine the United States of South America.
He did many things, as President, but mostly he was an
educator President Mostly he did things for the children
and tibe young people so that the Argentine could catch up
with the countries of the OH Wodd and with the United
States,

THE RIGHT TO tEARN

Now over to Denmark, CHI the other side of tie worid
from the Argentine.

Poor little Denmark! Somehow she had got mixed up in
the war that raged over all Europe, and on the losing side!
Here she is in 1815, at the end of her tether. Her terri-
tory is torn in two and what is left is almost too small to
bother with. Her capital has been bombarded. Her treasury
is empty. Her people are poor and, what is worse, they are
in despair.

How save Denmark from going under?

That was what the young clergyman* Nicholas Svend
Grundtvig, asked himself. And as nobody else had an an-
swer, he found one. As nobody else seemed ready to save
Denmark, he undertook to do it himself.

Or at least to call on the Danish people to do it them-
selves. When you call on people to do things they usually
respond. But first there has to be someone with the vision
to see what needs to be done.

Save Denmark by religion! And Pastor Grundtvig started
a religious revival, speaking to his countrymen in warm,
simple language thftt they could understand arvi calling:

AT O O J O

them back to the churches. Save Denmark by remembering
its glorious past after all, it had a longer Mstory than al-
most any other country. And historian Grundtvig wrote its
history in words which everybody could read and which
stirred every Dane with pride in his country's history. Save
Denmark by telling the story erf its myths and legends, the
wonderful story of Norse mythology, of gods and goddesses
like Odin and Thor and Freya, You know them well because
they gave us the names of our days: Odin's day, or Wednes-
day; "Tfaqgrs day, or Hmrsday; Fieya's day, or Friday. * . .
Save Denmark by songs and music, and poet Gnmdtvig
the greatest of ail Danish poets wrote lovely and HvriBing
songs that everybody codd sing, and that sang themselves
into the hearts of the people.
Above aH save Denmark by education!

132 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

What do you mean, by education? Denmark already had
schools, and all Danish children were supposed to go to
them and learn their letters. What more do you need than
that?

"A great deal more," said schoolmaster Grundtvig, "a
great deal more indeed. Your schools are all very weU for
teaching the ABCs, and the multiplication tables, and such
matters, but these are not enough. They are all right to
begin with, but we must do more than begin, we must go
on and on. Education isn't something that stops when you
are ten or twelve years old; education is for We."

You see, Grundtvig was saying much the same thing
that Friedrich Froebel was saying in Germany and Bronson
Alcott in Boston and Domingo Sarmiento in Chile and the
Argentine: old-fashioned education wasn't enough. But
Grundtvig came up with a really new idea. There aren't
many new ideas in history, so pay attention to this one.

Education didn't need to end when you had finished
school You could go back and start again, in a different
kind of schooL

He called it the Folk High School

Not at all like the high schools you know, or like any
schools that you know. Really more like the summer camps
that some churches run nowadays.

The Folk High School was meant for youngsters of seven-
teen or eighteen, By that time they had been out of school
for five or six years, or even more in some cases, and prob-
ably forgotten most of the things they had ever learned.
And pretty soon they would marry and settle down for
life oaa some farm or in some village, and that would be the
end of them. Catch them, while they were still young and
full of Hfe and hope, said Grundtvig. Give them something
to think about, these peasant boys and girls who might
otherwise turn into drudges. Bring them together in the
winter months, when work on the farm was slack, and let
them study together and work together and sing and play

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 133

together. Let them read the Bible for themselves, and dis-
cuss it among themselves. Tell them stories from Danish
history and from Norse mythology and let them get inter-
ested in the past. Teach them how to read music and get
them in the habit of singing: what a comfort that would
be in the years ahead. And teach them practical things,
too: teach the boys up-to-date methods of farming; teach
the girls how to cook and bake and sew and keep house.
Give them the habits of thinking and talking and reading
and a sense of self-respect. Open their eyes to the world
about them, open their minds to the world of learning, open
their hearts to the world of their fellow men. Let them come
to know the richness of life.

What an exciting idea what an exciting program* But
Bishop Grundtvig yes, he was a bishop nowwas far too
busy to cany it out himself. He let his young friend Christen
Kold do that.

Grundtvig was a remarkable man, perhaps the most re-
markable man Denmark ever produced.

But Christen Kold was pretty remarkable too.

He was the son of a shoemaker, and his father wanted
him to be a shoemaker too, but that didn't work at aH He
was so clumsy that he couldn't even hammer a nail into a
shoe without hitting his fingers, and he spoiled enoag;h
leather to make shoes for a whole army, anyway a Danish
army. No, what Christen wanted was to be a teadb^^-nevar
anything but that He began to teach when he was only
fifteen, and he did well enougjh, too. But he couldn't get a
regular teaching Job, because die men who sat in big offices
bade in the capital and ran aH the schools said that be was
too much of a dreamer. He might lead the young people
astray! Just like Friadrich Froebel and his kindergartens.

It certainty is comforting, the way afl the men who sit
in big offices, with titles in front of their names and gold
braid CHI their uniforms, worry about children being led
astray!

134 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

True enough, Christen Kold did have a lot of odd ideas.

^ ^_

Curiously, they were almost the same ideas that Froebel

had in Germany and that Bronson Alcott had in Massachu-
setts and that other people had all over the world, so maybe
they weren't so odd after all. Why should education be a
matter of learning things ^y heart"? Really the heart didn't
have much to do with it; it was more like learning by
machine. Why should children hate school? Why should
the teacher and the pupils be at war with each other? Why
not make school pleasant by playing games, and telling
stories, and helping with the work, just as mothers did with
their children at home?

Anyway you can see why those officials in the capital
wouldn't give Christen Kold a job!

Then young Christen got a chance to go to Syria as a
tutor imagine, way out there almost at the other end of
the world and off he went. After a while he got tired of
that, just as you would, and wanted to go home again. He
had money enough to get on a boat to Italy, and there he
bought himself a little go-cart and piled all his belong-
ings into it and started to walk back home to Denmark He
did it too over mountains and across rushing rivers and
along valleys and through busy towns, hundreds and hun-
dreds of miles across Austria and Germany, to Denmark,
My, how glad he was to get home again.

When he got home he read about Grundtvig's idea for
Fat Higjh Schools. Just the thing, he thought, just what he
had always wanted to do. So he hurried off to talk with the
gfleat man, and to get his blessing, which Gnmdtvig was
quite ready to give. Then he borrowed some money and
seated a house in the little town of RysKnge, and in 1^50,
smack in the middle of the century, he opened the first
Danish Folk High School At first only one student turned
p. Please, God, Kold prayed, let there be at feast three so
I can go on with it And on opening day fifteen more came
in, and his high sebooi was launched* and with it

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 135

one of the great experiments in the history of education.
That's the way most things start: one man with an idea
and with courage.

Soon Folk High Schools were popping up all over Denmark.
Every young man and woman in the country, it seemed,
wanted to go to the Folk High School. Almost overnight
the Danish peasant was changed. He stopped being a peas-
ant and became a citizen. He got interested in religion, in
schools, and in politics. He became a better farmer in time
the best fanner in the world and a better woddngman,
too, because he was a better man. Within a few years Den-
mark had come to life, Denmark had had a revolution.

How to save Denmark? Why, Denmark was saved. Den-
mark was prosperous. Denmark was democratic. Denmark
had the best schools anywhere. Feel sorry for Denmark?
Nonsense. Everybody envied Denmark . . . And the Folk
High School? It spread to Norway and Sweden and Fin-
land and Germany > and to many other countries in Europe,
It spread even to Asia.

Denmark lifted itself by its bootstraps.

But perhaps there wasn't so much to lift A Httfe country,
a mere handful of people . . . why, forty or fifty Folk High
Schools did the job for four or five thousand students each
year.

Suppose you had four or five mSUon students to thfnfr
about?

Suppose you had four or five hundred imZEon people to
worry about? All of them a thousand years behind the
times. All of them poor. Almost none of them able to read
a page or to write his name.

How do you go about educating that many people?

If Yang Chu Yen had thought of that he Bright never
have started Ms revolution. But he didn't not at the be-
ginning, anyway.

It aH began rather by accident, this Yang Chn. Yea Mass

136 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Education Movement that was to make such a stir not
only in China but all over the continent of Asia and in the
island countries of the Pacific.

It began when young "Jimmy* Yen the students at Yale
College had called hi Jimmy and the name stuck went
over to France with the YMCA right after the First World
War, back in 1918. He had had the good luck to get over to
America for an education, Jimmy Yen, and now he wanted
to see if he couldn't do something for his fellow countrymen.
There were a couple of hundred thousand of them over in
France, brought all the way from China to take the place
of soldiers who were fighting in the trenches. They were
called "coolies,* which means peasants and workingmen,
and they were simple and poor and ignorant, doing what
they were told to do, and feeling pretty lost, so far from
home and from their wives and their children.

One day one of the coolies came to Jimmy Yen: please,
would he write a letter for him, a letter to his wife? Need-
less to say, coolies couldn't write only scholars like Jimmy
Yen could write. And no wonderl Chinese is probably the
hardest language in the world to write: you have to know
thirty or forty thousand separate syllables or signs to write
it properly. It's hard enough to learn the twenty-six letters
of our alphabet, and how to put them together to make
words, and how to spell all the words rigiht; even now you
sometimes make mistakes. Suppose you had to learn forty
thousand different signs, or words, before you could read
and write!

No wooder the coolies came to Jimmy Yesa and asked
him to write their letters fear them.

Mr, Yea wrote the letters, afl right, and then so many of
his ttHrntrymen came to him that evea if be had sat up all
nigfrt every night writing letters he couldn't poss&ly have
finished them aDL

Ha had a better idea. Why not teach the coolies to write
their own fetters?

THE BIGHT TO LEARN 137

Was it reatty necessary to learn all forty thousand of the
signs or syllables in order to read and write? Couldn't the
Chinese alphabet no, that's the wrong word couldn't
those Chinese signs be simplified, so that even coolies could
learn to write their own letters?

What a sensible idea, and how odd that no one had
thought of it before!

James Yen set himself to simplify the Chinese language,
and after a while he got it down to only one thousand
syllables. Even one thousand is bad enough, heaven knows,
but if you work at it you can learn one thousand different
signs for words: actually you recognize that many yourself
without bothering to spell each one out each time; you
don't really have to spell out e-a-c-h to get each, or t-i-m-e
to read time. If you look at a word often enough or long
enough you get used to it, just as you get used to a face,
so you don't have to stop and make sure that the eyes and
the nose and the mouth all go together.

So James Yen taugjht some of the coolies to read and to
write, and as soon as one of them had learned he would
go off and teach two or three o his friends. And then they
would go off and teach their friends. It was like a chain
letter, or a chain reaction. Soon there weane hundreds of
coolies over in France who w^e writing their own letters.

If you could do that with the Chinese in France, why
couldn't you do it with the Chinese in China?

So in 1920 Yang Chu Year-better give him his Chinese
name back again now went home to China with bis big
idea and his big heart, and started a revolution. He didn't
mean to start a revolution, bat that's just what he did all
the same. For once the Chinese peasants were able to lead
and write, they would be able to do almost anything; oeee
the Chinese peasants coold read and write, things would
never be the same in China again.

138 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

But what a lot for Mr, Yen to do before he could get

started*

Have you ever thought of all the preparation that has
gone on just to teach you to read? The hundreds of years
of working out an alphabet Inventing a printing press.
Working out the right spellings for words, and the right
grammar, Making dictionaries and spelling books and read-
ing books. Training teachers and setting up schools and
libraries. All just so you can read!

And in China? Nothing. No alphabet, no dictionaries, no
readers, no schools, no teachers.

Nobody had ever thought of teaching Chinese peasant
boys and girls to read. Reading was for scholars, as in
Europe, hundreds of years ago, when if you were lucky
you would learn to read and write in Latin. Reading
wasn't for peasants. And reading certainly wasn't for girls.

Dr. Yen (for he was called that, now) had to select his
thousand words; then write his own readers and spellers
ainl get them printed; then build the schools and train the
teachers. Even then he wasn't finished, for he had to go
out and persuade tibe Chinese peasants that they ought to
let their children go to school instead of working in the
rice fields. What was still harder, he had to persuade them
to go to school themselves.

But he did. Dr. Yen was quite a persuader. Before he was
through he persuaded miHions of peasants in many coun-
tries that they ought to go to school; he persuaded learned
professors to go out and live in mud huts with their pupils;
he persuaded tibe Chinese government to buy land for its
peasants; he persuaded tibe United States Congress to give
fofm twenty-seven million dollars for his work. They wanted
to give Mm more, and lie had to persuade them not to do
that!

Dr. Yea started in the province of Hunan, almost in the
middle of China, and he started by going right out to one
of tibe viSages a&d living in a mud hut fust Mfce the villagers.

O O S O

THE RIGHT TO LEARN 139

For he had already learned what Pastor Grundtvig and
Christen Kold had learned: that you have to start with the
people themselves, by going out and living with them. That
is what Dr. Yen did and his wife, too, who was the daugh-
ter of a Chinese minister in New York, And pretty soon
sixty men and women from the universities students and
even professors came out to join in the great experiment

And there was another thing that old Pastor Grundtvig
could have told Dr. Yen if he had been there to tell it It is
this: that education can't be separated from the rest of life.
It is no more a thing apart than your brain is apart bom
your body.

You can't educate children if they are at home side You
can't get their parents excited about schools if they haven't
enough to eat You can't find teachers if war has come along
and swept them all away. You can't build your schools if
the men in your town won't turn in and help pot up the
school building and dig the well and do all the other wodk
that is necessary before yoa have a real school Afl of these
tHngs schools and health and food and roads and water
and the good wifl erf the village or the town-are tied to-
gether in a single package.

But if all the difficulties are tied together, so are all the
benefits.

Freedom from ignorance means better health and better
farms and better homes, and even better government And
that is because, as soon as the peasants had learned to read
and write and do a bit of figqring, they began to think and
talk and discuss their afiairs. If they could weak together
to build schools, they could work together to dig wefts, or
to clean up their villages, or to irrigate their lands. If they
could read posters teBfag how mosquitoes carry malaria or
rusty n^ik infect wounds or about the importance of vacci-
nation against smallpox or the need to boll water before
you drink ft-if they could read all of these things, tfaea
they coH cut down the diseases that swept away so many

14O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

of their people every year, and kept so many of them weak
and poor.

So Dr. Yen went all over China spreading his Mass Edu-
cation Movement, until over eight hundred villages had
joined it It was like a snowball Whenever Dr. Yen or his
teachers had managed to train ten or twenty young men
and women, they would, in turn, go out to nearby villages
and teach ten or twenty more boys and girls to read and
write. They would do more than this. They would teach
them how to bring the soil back to life, and how to dig
wells deep enough to get pure water, and how to protect
themselves against illness and disease, and how to work
together for the common good of the village. Dr. Yen and
his teachers and helpers were doing what nobody had been
able to do for four thousand years: they were breaking
down the Great Wall of Ignorance that had cut the Chinese
people off from the modern world.

Then came the World War. In 1937 Japan invaded China,
and from then on there was nothing but turmoil and misery
and poverty and war. The war went on for eight years,
and after Japan was finally defeated, poor China was
plunged into a civil war that went an for another seven or
eig;ht years, so for fifteen years China did not know peace.
Dr. Yen kept right on, as best he could, training teachers
and working away to wipe out diseases, and introducing
modem methods of farming. He even started a college near
the wartime capital of China, deep in the west His work
was so important that, when the United States voted hun-
dreds of tttfllioiis of dollars to help China, one tenth of it
was set aside for Dr. Yea.

la tibe eiid tibe Communists drove out Dr. Yen and his
teachers and workers. That was a pity, for he was chang-
ing the feee of China: if &ey had fet him atone he might
have done many of the things they wanted doue, without
aB the war and tibe deatk But what he had doae was not
Jost-what is done is nevear wfaoQy lost All those millions

THE RIGHT TO tEARN

of peasants who had learned to read and write; all of those
farms with new water flowing down from the hills; all of
those babies saved from malaria and from the cholera: that
was something. All those minds that were opened to the
sun, all those lives that were saved: nothing could change
that

Dr. Yen had no idea of stopping just because he had to
leave China. He moved on with many other Chinese to the
island of Formosa and started up his Mass Education Move-
ment there. Then on he went to the Philippine Islands with
his great crusade, Here it wasn't so much a matter of schools
and education after aO, the Americans had put in schools
way back fifty years earlier when they took charge of the
Philippine Islands. But after five years of war, and another
ten years of poverty after the war, there was much to do
even in the Philippines.

Dr, Yen used the same methods here that he had used
in China. He went to the villages, little collections of huts
tucked away in the outlying islands and almost forgotten
by everybody except the people who had to live in them*
In each of them he started what he called a ^wipmg-oafT
program: wipe out ignorance, wipe out disease, wipe out
poverty. And he got the young people of eadb village to
carry on the work. He had thousands of posters printed
and put one of them up in each of the villages of the islands:

Go TO THE PEOPLE

LIVE AMONG THEM

LEAKN FROM THEM

LOVE THEM

SERVE THEM

PLAN wim THEM

STABT WITH WHAT THEY ENOW

BUILD ON WHAT THEY HAVE

Not so different from what Bishop Grondtvig and Christen
Kokl had said back in Denmark, a hundred years ear-
lier.

142 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

There's one thing you can be sure of about children
and about schools and about education and that is that
the job is never done.

You are one of the lucky ones. You know how to read
or you wouldn't be reading this book And you live in a
society that is rich enough to have schools and libraries
and books. You live in a society that is rich enough to let
you go to school, instead of sending you out into the fields
to work.

Even after all the work of men like Friedrich Froebel
and Horace Mann and Domingo Sanniento and Christen
Kold and Dr. Yen even after all that, it is still true that
most people don t know how to read

You do, of course.

But China is at least three times as big as your country
(that's pretty safe because China is three times as big as
every country except India), and most people in Qhfaa still
dotft know how to read.

Or in India. Or in Indonesia. Or in the Congo. Or in
Brazil * . , and many otter countries. Just think: most peo-
ple in the world still can't read!

And just think: in many countries of the world they still
haven't discovered children!

Curious how everybody seems to get the same idea at
the same timef

For hundreds and hundreds of years nobody seemed to
woisy because the peoples of Asia and Africa and South
Asaerica couldn't read or write. Education so one might
have supposed was tor white people only.

Tien, just the other day, everybody woke up to the fact
that aB those rnfflioaas and millions of men aad women with
black skins and teown skins and yellow skins were people
fexx Why not worry about them I or a change? If it was a
good idea for white boys and girls to go to school, why
wasat it a good idea for bkefc and brown and yellow boys

THE BIGHT TO LEARN 143

and girls to go to school? If it was useful for tibie men and
women of Europe and America to know how to read and
write, why wouldn't it be useful for the men and women of
Asia and Africa to read and write?

For a long time people in Germany or England or America
had said: "Education is for everybody ." But they hadn't
really meant it. They had only meant that education was
for everybody in their countries.

Now people were saying, "Education is for everybody."
And they meant everybody.

There was Dr. Yen over in France discovering that simple
Chinese coolies could learn to read and write, and hurrying
home to China to spread the good tidings.

- And there was Dr. Frank Laubach, preaching the gospel
in the jungles of the Philippines. Now he had made the
same discovery, and he was getting ready to spread the
news all over the world.

Frank Laubach hadn't planned to be a teacher* He had
planned to be a preacher. The teaching came by accident

* . . Well, not wholly by accident, of course; things hardly
ever do.

He had always wanted to be a preacher. But not an
ordinary preacher: that was too easy, and he liked things
to be hard. He wanted to be a missionary. But, again, not
an ordinary missionary. He wanted to be a missionary in
the hardest place in the world. He read that the haniest
people to convert to Christianity were the wild Mores oa
the jungle island of Mindanao, in the Philippines. So of
course he got himself sent out there, And he quickly f oimd
out that, sore enough, they were the hardest people to
convert So hard that he stayed there for years and didn't
convert a single one of them.

He didn't even make any friends. Tliat saddened him.

Then one day he had a kind of vision.

Why should the Moras like him or accept the religion he

144 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

preached? After all, he didn't really like them, and he
certainly didn't accept their religion.

In fact he didn't even know their language.

Imagine an Arab coming to your home town and trying
to convert you to the Mohammedan religion by talking to
you in Arabic! He wouldn't get very far, would he? He
wouldn't get a bit further than Frank Laubach got with
the Moros there in the jungles of Mindanao.

So the Reverend Frank Laubach decided on two things.

First, that he must learn to like the Moros reatty like
them. That meant he would have to live with them, and
live the way they lived, and be interested in the things
they were interested in.

And that meant, of course, the second thing: that he
would have to learn the Moro language so he could under-
stand them and talk with them.

But how? Nobody had ever bothered to write down the
Moro language. In fact, there wasn't even a Moro alphabet

How do you set about learning a language if there isn't
any alphabet and if there aren't any written words?

That really put Dr. Laubach to the test. It was just the
kind erf hard problem that he liked,

He solved it of course, and with the greatest of ease.

He wrote the alphabet himself. Then he wrote out the
words of the Moro language.

Imagine inventing an alphabet! Imagine inventing a
written language or that was what Frank Laubach was
doingf

Now everybody was delighted, most of all the Moros
themselves. These fierce warriors who had terrified all the
other Rfipmos on the island were like children with a new
toy. Now tbey all wanted to learn their language . . . learn
to read it and write it So next Dr. Laubach had to invent
a way to teach it He managed that too he always man-
aged everything he put his mind to. He did it by drawing
cf the sounds and writing out the words next to

THE BIGHT TO LEARN 145

the pictures. But that was only the half of It The other half
was to encourage the Moros to learn, and he did thai by
what you might call the "glad-hand* method. A warm
handshake, a pat on the back, a gleaming smile, and at
every sign of progress more handshakes, more pats on the
back, more smiles and laughter. ... It all worked like a
charm.

But of course Dr. Laubach couldn't teach all the Moros
to learn their language that would have taken a lifetime.
So like James Yen over in France he hit on the idea of mak-
ing each of his pupils into a teacher.

He called his method "Each One Teach One."

Each one who learned the Moro language would go out
and teach it to one other Moro . . . and he would teach it
to still another . . * and so on, until everybody had learned.
It was all that simple.

When some of the Moro tribesmen hung back because
they didn't want to be teachers, ooe of the chiefs came to
Dr. Laubach's help. He was a very important chief, too, so
important that he had thirteen wives. TEvescyoue has got to
teach," he said. If he doesn't teach, IS kill him. 5 "

That helped.

In no time at all most of the Moro men were able to read
and write.

Then off Frank Laubach went, to otiber parts of tie
Philippines, to remote corners where no missionaries had
ever been. Everywhere he went he discovered new lan-
guagesdozens of them and he drew up alphabets and
made lists of words and drew pictures that looked like the
words. And everywhere he used his Each One Teach Ose
system. And lo and behold, pretty soon almost everyone
was reading and writing.

By now the lame of Dr. Laubach had spread aQ over the
world. Every mail brought him a new invitation to come to
some new country and teach the native peoples to read. So

146 CRUSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

off he went-to Malaya, to India, to Ceylon, to Java. . , .
That was twenty years ago, and Frank Laubach has been
going ever since. Up and down the great country of India
with its dozens and dozens of different languages, and to
the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Ceylon as welL
Deep into the heart of Africa: once when he was exactly
on the Equator he jumped back and forth a thousand times,
just so he could say, 'The Equator was at my mercy.'* Dur-
ing the World War he went over to the West Indies, and into
South America, to ancient Yucatan, to Peru, to Brazil. And
then after the war back to Asia and Africa, to the countries
on the Mediterranean, on the Indian Ocean, on the Pacific,
a white-haired old man with a battered suitcase and a
portable typewriter, conquering the world. Remember
Thomas Paine said, "Where Liberty is not, there is my
country"? Frank Laubach might have said, *Where Learn-
ing is not, there is my country.**

Everywhere he went he used the same methods that he
had used with the Moros back on the island of Mindanao.
He had an artist with him now, and the artist would draw
the pictures of words and sounds, and then write them out,
and in no time at all people who thought they couldn't
read a word were reading schoolbooks. Sometimes Dr. Lau-
bach had to write the books too just as Dr. Yen had had
to write the books for his Chinese readers. But that didn*t
worry him at all: he liked to write books. And everywhere
he went he used his chain-letter method of Each One
Teach One.

Before he was through he had taught almost sixty million
people to read.

Remember the story of Mr. Chips? He had started teach-
ing in a little English school as a very young man, and he
went oa and on for ifty years, teaching the sons and the
grandsoais of his first pupils. And when as a very old man he
ky dying, he heard someone say, * e What a pity he never had

THE BIGHT TO LEARN 147

a son," and he raised his old head, and his eyes flashed, and
he said, *1 had thousands of them, thousands of them."

Think what Jimmy Yen and Frank Laubach could have
said:

"Millions of them, millions of them."

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

You know afl about the Declaration of Independence of
1776. You may even know it by heart: '"When in the course
of human events . . .*

But did you ever hear of the Seneca Falls Declaration of
Independence of 1848?

It was not qttite as important as the Dedaratksi that
Thomas Jefferson wrote but it was important enough* It
was the Women's Declaration of Independence,

Women's Declaration of Independence! What were they
declaring independence of, anyway?

Men!

No, not quite the way you think. The women who drew
up and signed the Declaration of Independence weren't a
lot of disgruntled old maids; not at aH In fact the lady who
wrote it was happily married and the mother of seven

No, what they wanted was very simple. Not mdepead-

152 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

ence from men, but independence from the tyranny of
men.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . that all men
and women are created equal* That's what they said, and
that's what they meant.

What do you think of that?

What you think of it is no doubt that it is all pretty silly.
Of course men and women are created equal Who ever
thought that they weren't?

Of course girls can go to school, just like boys!

Of course women can speak up in public, just like men!

Of course women can be nurses or doctors or lawyers if
they want to!

Of course women can earn money and keep what they
earnl

Of course women can vote!

But there was no "of course** about it ... not in 1848
when the women got together and issued their Declaration
of Independence.

Odd as it may seem, the notion that women are the equals
of men is something quite new in history. The notion that
women should vote and hold office is so new that your
grandfather and grandmother can remember when it all
came to pass.

It is all so new that in many countries of the world it
hasn't happened even yet

No, for hundreds of years men had it all worked out and
very neatly, too.

Woman's place was in the home. Women didn't have
any business meddling in the affairs of men and almost
aH affairs were the affairs of men. Women didn't need to
earn money, or to have property of their own, or to be doc-
tars or lawyers, or to vote. Their fatheas, their brothers,
their husbands would take care of them. Just trust the men
to take care of everything.

But it was the men who hired little children to work in

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 1JJ3

the mines and the mills. It was the men who stole Negroes
from Africa and sent them over to America to be slaves, and
who kept them working in the fields. It was the men who
put up the slums in the great cities for women and children
to live in. It was the men who set up schools and then kept
girls out of them. It was the men who burned people at
the stake if they didn't worship the right way. It was the
men who waged wars , . * who wiped out helpless people
like the Indians . * . who burned down towns and villages.
And of course it was the men who made the laws saying
that men were superior and women were inf erior, and that
that was nature's way!

Were men really to be trusted with everything?

Wouldn't women do better than that?

Anyhow they could hardly do worsel

Certainly that's what Elizabeth Cady Stantos thought
Naturally. She was the oaie who had written the Women's
Declaration of Indepeixleiice in the first place.

She was the daughter of the leading lawyer in the town
of Johnstown, New York, and when she was fust a little girl
she had seen her friend Flora Campbell Fkra did the
washing and the housework for the Cadyswalk away from
her father's law office with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Little Eliza ran after her to find out what was the trouble,
Flora owned a house, and now her oo-good husband was
going to sell it, and they would have BO place to live, Aixl
Judge Cady had said that there was nothing in the world he
could do about it Married women didn't own anything.
Everything they owned belonged to their husbands, Itat
was the law. Aad the law said that the husbands could do
anything they pleased with their wives* property!

"Never mind," said Klfaa, TT1 go and find the kw aad
cut it out of the book, and then you can keep your house."

She did, too but that was many, many years kter.

Little Eliza grew up to be young Miss Cady, as clever a

154 CRUSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

young kdy as you could find between New York and
Buffalo. When she had learned everything the schools in
Johnstown could teach her, her father, bundled her off to the
new seminary in Troy that Emma Willard had just opened
up, and in no time at all she had learned all that the Troy
seminary could teach her too. . . . Then what? . . . Then
nothing at all, for there was no college in the country that
would accept girls, no matter .now clever they were. So
there was nothing for Miss Cady to do but put away her
books and go home and keep house for her father and play
the piano and pour tea and walk in the garden and wait
for someone to come along and marry her*

She didn't have to wait very long, pretty and clever as
she was, and in 1840 she married a handsome young lawyer
named Henry Stanton, being careful to leave out the "obey*
from Tbve, honor, and obey" in the marriage lines. . , .
Then off they went on their honeymoon, to London. Henry
Stanton was a delegate to the world anti-slavery conven-
tion there, and he thought his bride could enjoy the sights
of London while he sat and listened to what William Lloyd
Garrison and Wendell Phillips and the English abolitionists
had to say.

It didn't work out that way at all

Elizabeth had no notion of seeing the sights of London
while her husband was at the anti-slavery convention. That
would be missing all the excitement. She went to the
meetings of the convention herself, and it changed her life.

She had expected to hear the great orators of England
aod America declaim on die wickedness of slavery and
say what was to be done to put an end to it Instead she
heard them spend their time discussing the wickedness of
women, ainJ deciding how to keep them from having any
part ia the crusade against slavery. Those troublesome
Americans had sent over a number of women as delegates
and the siBy women expected to sit up on the platform, to
speak their minds, even to vote . . . just as if they were

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

men! That would never do why, that would make the
whole anti-slavery movement ridiculous.

To be sure, a woman sat on the throne of England:
Queen Victoria herself, A woman could sit on a throne but
not on a seat in their convention! So the convention sol*
emnly voted that the women would have to sit off by them-
selves in the gallery, or behind a curtain, so nobody would
see them, and they couldn't, talk at all

They wouldn't have treated slaves that way.

Unless, of course, they had been women slaves.

That was the first thing that happened to Mis. Stanton
there in London. The second thing was just as important
She met Lucretia Mott

Now we must stop and get acquainted with Lueretia
Mott even if it does interrupt the story of Mrs. Stanton,

Lucretia was a Nantucket girl Nantucket girls learned
early to be self-reliant and stouthearted They had to: their
menfolk ware away cm whaling voyages for two or tibree
years at a time and everything was in their hands. And
Lucretia was a Quaker girl, and Quaker girls, too, learn to
be self-reliant and independent, to Ksten to the "innea:
voice," to go the way their conscience teBs them to go, no
matter what the world says. When Locaretia was thirteen
she went to study at a giris' seminary, and stayed on to
teach. She met James Mott there, and married him at
eighteen, so sbe ought to have been pleased Perhaps she
was* But what impressed her most was that die taught just
the same things &e roea taught, bat got only half the pay
that the men received*

Lueretia never quite got over that lesson.

She gave her Me to teaching, and to crusading against
slavery, but she gave her life to the crusade for women's
rights, too.

She was there in London when they decided to pot the
women off the platform and away from die main hall, be-
hind a curtain. Of course as soon as Mxs* Mott sat on one

156 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

side of a curtain, it was all the people who sat on the other
side who were behind it. They didn't realize that then, but
we do now.

Mrs. Mott didn't get a chance to talk from the platform
at the London convention, but that wasn't so important.
What was important was that she got a chance to talk to
the delegates and their wives.

Especially Henry Stanton s young wife, Elizabeth Cady.
It was clear that Mrs. Mott liked her and trusted her. And
as for Elizabeth, it was the most important thing that ever
happened to her.

There was a kind of apostolic laying on of hands. There
was a passing on of the torch from Lucretia Mott to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

Now it is eight years kter, and we can go back to Mrs.
Staston and her Declaration of Independence. She had
moved from Boston with its ceaseless excitement over slav-
ery and the lot of the Negro to the little town of Seneca
Falls just a few miles from lovely Lake Seneca in upstate
New York Even here all her friends were excited about
ending the slavery of the Negro. Was no one interested in
ending the slavery of women?

Slavery! Wasn't that too strong a word?

Well, Elizabeth Stanton and Mrs. Mott didn't think so,
and they ought to know because they had been thinking
about it since they were girls.

In 1848 they put their heads together and decided that
the time had come to do something about the position of
women in America. And that meant a convention. In those
days, when you wanted something done you always called
a convention, sod if you were anybody at all you spent all
your spare time going to conventions and even time that
you couldn't spare.

Itfe was to be a women's rights convention.

Soon men and women were streaming into the little town

THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN

on the edge of Lake Seneca one famous name after an-
other. None more famous than Lucretia Mott, though, un-
less it was the fiery Negro orator, Frederick Douglass, so
tall and handsome and with a voice like an organ.

What to do? What better to do than issue a Women's
Declaration of Independence?

Elizabeth Stanton sat down and wrote it; she followed
Jefferson's Declaration as closely as possible:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men
and women are created equal/* There, that was a good
start. Then:

*The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries
on the part of man toward woman. 3 * What injuries?

He had never allowed her to vote.

He had made laws in which she had no voice.

He had made her pay taxes without representation.

He had taken from her all her rights in property, even
the wages she earned.

He had kept all the professions far himself and refused
to let women be preachers or doctors or lawyers.

He had denied her an education.

He had put her m an inferior position * . . aTkf kept her
there.

All true enough, too, that was the sad part of it Mrs.
Stanton and Mrs. Mott weren't just two crackpots; the facts
were on their side.

But it was one thing to declare independence and draw
up a long list of wrongs and injuries. It was quite another
to know what to do to make things better.

"We insist/* said the women at the convention, *oa aH
the rights that belong to citizens of the United Statesr

Did that mean the right to vofce? Certainty it did, said
Elizabeth Stantaa. And sbe put ft to the coowntraa: women
have "the sacred right to vote. 3 * There was quite a stir over
that one. What boldnessl What audacity! Wasn't that going
too far? Then up stood Frederick Douglass with his

158 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

icent voice. Slavery was just as bad for women as it was
for Negroes, he said. One way to end it was by giving
everybody the vote including women. With Mr. Douglass*
help, Elizabeth Stanton carried the day.

So the great crusade was on: Women's Rightsl Votes for
Women!

It didn't get very far not then. But what Abraham Lin-
coln later said of the Declaration of Independence itself
we can say of this Women's Declaration of Independence.
"They meant to raise a standard maxim for a free society;
something everyone could know and test by/'

Daniel Anthony was a successful businessman.

But he was a Quaker and a reformer, too, active in all
good causes. One day Daniel Anthony came down from
nearby Rochester to see Mrs. Stanton, and he brought his
daughter Susan with h.

It was a case of love at first sight Or, if not love, some-
thing as strong as love, and as enduring. For from that
day on it was in 1851 the two women were inseparable.

Jefferson and Madison; Sam Adams and John Adams;
Lee and Jackson . . even these didn't work together more
cbsely than Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton. And
their alliance lasted for fifty years.

What a pair they were: so much alike in their faith and
their hopes, so unlike in their character and their methods.
Elizabeth with her husband and her seven children and
her grandchildren; with her endless interest in lecturing
and writing and editing; with her vivacity and excitement
aad charm. And Susan, an old maid, married to the cause
of WQH*ea*s rights, and coirieat to gcve her life to that cause,
quiet, modest, hard-working, and sragb-mioded in fact
with all the Quaker virtues. Each one was a tower of
stoeaagjh; together they were Hke an army.

"Never feigeC Mrs. Stantaa said later, "that if I have
ctaae anything for the women of my coraftry, it is not I; it

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 159

is Susan and I." And how beautifully they worked together,
Susan all facts and figures and patience and planning, and
Elizabeth all enthusiasm and energy and eloquence. There
would be an important convention and Susan would per-
suade Elizabeth that she simply had to make the keynote
speech and then Susan would get up all the necessary
material for the speech. There would be a meeting of a
committee at the legislature, in Albany, perhaps on the
right of women to own property, and of course Elizabeth
would be the one to go down and argue the case, but it
would be Susan who found all the facts and figures for
her. . . .

But don't think that Susan Anthony was Just a glorified
secretary. Not at all. She was a person in her own right,
was Susan, and as the years went on and Elizabeth got in-
volved in editing that odd magazine called the Revokstton,
or in lecturing, more and more of the work fell on the tire-
less Susan, and more of the responsibility too.

Thus it was Susan who decided that the time had coroe
to go on and vote, no matter what happened. And one fine
day in 1872 she showed up at the voting booth, wilh BO
less than sixteen other ladies of Rochester, and announced
that they were all going to vote and nobody could stop
them. Nobody did, either not just then. To be sure a few
weeks later she was arrested for illegal voting which is just
what she wanted to happeDh-and in due course of time she
was tried and found guilty and fined one hundred doQais.
*1 won't pay,** she said, "nobody wifl ever make ine pay."
And she didn't either. The Judge, who had hoped to make
an example of her, didn't have the courage to send her to
jaiL

And it was Susan, too, who went out west to persuade the
new states to give votes to women. Wyoming had fed the
way, in 1869, even before it was a fulHIedged state. Soon
Utah followed, and then Colorado, and ooe by ooe the
other territories and states out in the Far West

l6o CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Neither Elizabeth Stanton nor Susan Anthony lived long
enough to see women's rights at full tide, but both of them
lived long enough to see the turn of the tide*

Once when Susan Anthony was still teaching school she
went to a meeting of Rochester teachers where the men
(remember women were supposed to be seen but not heard)
discussed the question of why teachers were not respected
as much as lawyers or doctors. Susan stood it as long as
she could; then she got up to say just one sentence: "As
long as society says that woman has not brains enough to
be a doctor or a lawyer or a minister, but has plenty of
brains to be a teacher, then every man who is a teacher
admits that he has no more brains than a woman/*

Brains enough to be a teacher? Brains enough to be a
doctor or a kwyer? It wasn't as simple as that It took more
than brains to be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer. It took
education and training. How was any woman to teach any-
thing beyond the ABCs, or be a doctor or a lawyer or a
preacher, if she wasn't allowed to have an education?

Education! Education for girls! Education for women!

Girls were allowed to go to school, of course up to a
point They were expected to learn reading and writing
and a bit of arithmetic enough reading to read the Bible;
eaaough writing to write letters; enough arithmetic to add
up the grocery bill But after that?

Well, after that they could stay home and learn useful
things like sewing and baking and washing and ironing. If
they were rich enough to have servants, or slaves, they
could learn to play the piano and sing a few tunes, and to
paint fthirat, and maybe even to read a bit of French, just
to show that they were ladies and not just women!

Of course there were always a few girls who somehow
broke through what Mary Lyon called "this empty gen-
tility, this genteel nothingi^ss^ and showed that they had
erf their own* Some of tiiem were hxiy enough to

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN l6l

have fathers who believed that girls had minds too like
that wonderful Margaret Fuller, whose father taught her
Latin and Greek when she was hardly more than a baby,
and who grew up in the company of artists and writers
and philosophers and became something of an artist and a
writer and a philosopher herself. Or like Elizabeth Cady
for that matter. And some of them were just naturally so
smart and so determined that nothing could stop them not
even the lack of an education.

Like Emma Willard, for example, or Mary Lyon, or
Elizabeth BlackwelL

Here is Emma Willard, who had always longed for an
education. But how did a New England country girl get
herself an education? At last, after she was grown up and
married, she had her chance. Her husband had moved to
Middlebury, way up in northern Vermont, where he was
in charge of an academy. Middlebury had a college too.
Not for women, of coursedon't be sffly; these were no
colleges for women. Everything was for men. But by great
good luck Mrs. Willard had a nephew who was all ready
for college, and off he went to Middleboiy to get the educa-
tion Mrs. Willard couldn't get But there was nothing to
prevent his aunt from reading all of his textbooks aaad learn-
ing all the things he learned especially as she was smarter
than he was. But what a way to get an education!

In 1814 Mrs. Willard thought that she had learned
enougjh to teach on her own, and that year she opened a
female seminary that's what they were called then. It flour-
ished, too; even the long, bitter winters couldn't freeze tie
desire for an education in tie girls of Vermont But Ver-
mont was such a fittfe state; Emina WiBard needed a larger
stage for Bar pearfoamance* One day she sat down and
wrote a letter to Governor De Witt Cfintcm of the neigfcbor-
ing state of New York. What a famous letter that tamed
out to be. Governor Qin&m was doing great things for
education m New York; wouldn't he please txy to do some-

l62 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

thing for the education of girk while he was at it? High
schools, seminaries, colleges that was what Mrs* Willard
proposed. It was a bold idea, but not too bold for the man
who was to build the great Erie Canal three hundred miles
across the state. Governor Clinton caught fire at once and
sent off a message to the New York legislature with Mrs,
Willard's proposals. And the legislature well, it did noth-
ing.

But all was not lost. For now some gentlemen in the city
of Troy, New York, caught fire too. They invited Mrs,
Willard to come to Troy and open a seminary there.

Within a year Emma Willard Seminary had opened its
doors. The standards were high. It wasn't a college, but it
acted as if it were. Lalfn, Greek, mathematics, science all
the hard subjects that young men studied at college.
Quickly the word went out that here was a place where a
clever girl could really get an education not just in pour-
ing tea and playing minuets on the piano and dancing the
waltz. Soon girls were streaming in from all over the country
to Mrs, WiDanTs seminary. For that matter they still are.

That was just the beginning for Emma Willard. With the
seminary in full blast, she took off for Europe to study
schools, to study them and to create them. It was a day
when everybody was interested in Greece which had had
such a glorious past, and then long centuries of oppression,
and which was now once again struggling for independence.
Hie poet, Lord Byron, was out there fighting f or the Greeks,
and the "Chevalier* Samuel Grldfey Howe. And Americans
were Tiamfng their new towns Athens and Corinth and
even Ypsilanti ia honor of Gteece; and all the new houses
that went up had marble columns (or just wooden columns
made to foofc Mfce marble) in the Greek style. Mrs, Willard,
too, wanted to help Greece. She ocraHn t fight, not with
gms anyway, so she did what she codkL She wait to
Athens aad opened a school to train women teachers for

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN if^J

Greek schools. It was the first teacher-training school
opened by any American earlier even tfran Horace Mann's
normal school in Lexington.

Mary Lyon aimed even higher. She wanted a real college
for women not just a finishing school or a seminary. She
got it, too.

She usually got what she went after. Her father had
died when she was scarcely more than a baby, and there
had been little time for school, or money either. But Maiy
didn't really need time: she could learn twice as fast as
anyone else, even in Yankee Massachusetts where babies
were born with glasses on. Twice as fast? Why, ten times
as fast is closer to the trutk She went through an English
grammar in four days, learning it all by heart Then she
found a latin grammar and mastered it in three days.
Think of that next time you have to learn to decline a
I^atin verb over the weekend! She managed to get a bit of
schooling at the Amherst Academy, and when she was
fifteen she began to teach school herself. A litde later she
was teaching in her own academy over in Ipswich, aorth
of Boston, next door to where Anne Hutdbinsoai had set
herself up as the equal of the Puritan minister . . . remem-
ber? And all the while Mary Lyon was dreaming of some-
thing better: a college for girls.

As yet there was no such thing in afl America-car far
that matter in all of England eftbex. Imagine: nowhere
could girls gel a proper education! But already things were
stirring. In 1835 Ober lia College, out in Ohio, opeoed its
doors to woauen as well as to men. Wonderful Bide Ofcerlin,
so full of courage and of ideas; two years later ft welcomed
Negroes too. It was the first college anywhere in the world
to admit both wosaen and Negroes. No woodear it grew to
be ooe of the great colleges of the world, with that kind of
beginning.

''When you haw a great object In view let BO obstacle,

164 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

no difficulty, distract you from it. Go where no one else is
willing to go; do what no one else is willing to do." So
wrote Mary Lyon, and she practiced what she preached.
She had a great object in view: a college for women that
should be as good as any college for men as good as
Harvard or Yale or Ainherst in the lovely village where she
had gone to schooL

All through her years of teaching Mary Lyon talked
about her college and planned for it and raised money for
it You could see her, flitting from town to town with her
green velvet bag, talking in churches and in sewing circles
and in schools, raising money for her college five dollars
here, two dollars there. It all went into the green bag, and
in the end the green bag turned into a college* At last, in
1837, she was ready to start She chose the village of South
Hadley, in the Connecticut Valley, not far from Amherst,
and named the college after one of the hffls along the banks
of the placid Connecticut River Mount Holyoke College.
It was a real college, too, not just a finishing school, its
courses modeled on those at Ainherst College, and some of
the Amherst professors rode along the winding roads and
over the notch in the bfflg to South Hadley to teach them,
The Amherst professors weren't the only ones who rode
over the notch, either; if any of you should go to Amherst
College, or to Mount Holyoke, you will quicHy discover
how well worn is the road over the notch between the two

Now at last women had a coflege of their own. What an
excitement on opening day, as fathers and mothers drove
up with tbefr daughteis real pioneers, those daughters^-
wfth Miss Lyon there to receive them and show them the
red brick building rising up five stories high out of a muddy
waste, What a gkxrious confusion. You could hear the car-
penters hammering away, and there were workmen tacking
down t!ie carpets, and young ladies sitting around a table
hemming the linen, and others scurrying around the kitchen

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 165

getting up some kind of lunch for the hungry students and
their parents. And teachers sitting on the stair steps giving
examinations to the entering freshmen. ... AH new, and
raw, but then so was Harvard College when it started, in
1636, and a little time would take care of all that Everybody
pitched in to help, those first years: the townspeople,
and the parents and the girls, who brought flowers and
shrubs from home to plant in the grounds, and even some
of the young men from Amherst College. And how the
girls clamored to get in! Why, the year after Mount Hofyoke
College opened Miss Lyon had to turn away four hundred
of them.

Mary Lyon made two things so dear that they never had
to be proved again*

One was that girls wanted to go to college, just like boys.

The other was that girls could learn anything that young
men could learn.

Anything?

Yes, anything.

Look at Elizabeth Blackwefl, who wanted to be a doctor.

Who ever heard of a woman doctor? Women weren't
smart enough for doctoring. Women weren't strong eaougfc
to saw off arms and legs. Women would faint dead away
if they saw blood.

And besides, it was immodest and indecent

Then why did a nice young lady like Elizabeth Blackwefl
want to be a doctor?

Wefl, one reason was because she was told that Ae
couldn't, aid she wouldn't stand for that. She came from
an independent family, did EBzabeth , . . from a femfly
that knew its own mind and, what's more, bad minds to
know.

Her brother Henry believed so stranger in women's rights
that he married Lucy Stone and together they spent all
their Kves cnisading for women, . . .Who was Lucy Stone?

l66 CKUSABERS FOR FREEDOM

She was the young lady who saw no reason why she should
give up her own name, just because she married, and so
she kept her name. To this day married women who keep
their own names are called Lucy Stoners.

And another brother, Dr. Samuel Blackwell, married
Antoinette Brown, who was the first woman preacher in
the country. She had gone to Oberlin College, of course-
just like Lucy Stone. Once when Miss Brown went to a
temperance convention the delegates spent the whole time
arguing about whether or not she should be allowed to
speak The editor of the New York Tribune* the famous
Horace Greeley, reported the convention this way;

Fmsr DAY: Crowding a woman off the platform.

SECOND DAY: Gagging her,

THEKD DAY: Voting that she shall stay gagged.

As if you could gag the Reverend Antoinette Brown
Bladfcwefl!

But let's get back to Elizabeth, wearing her heart out to
be a doctor. It wasn t just that she was "contrary-minded,^
as they used to say in New England, and wanted to do
what she wasn't allowed to do. Of course there was more
to it than that She wanted to do some good in the world.
She wanted to help the poor and the sick, to relieve some
of the pain and suffering that she saw all around her. And
what better way to do that than to be a doctor?

She was teaching in the South when she made up her
mind to study medicine, and the first thing she did was to
persuade a professor at the College of Medicine down in
Charleston to let her study his medical books. Even that
was a pretty daring request from a young lady, and most
doctors would simply have said no. But Professor Dickson
was pretty daring himself, so he said yes.

Next; a medical school But where?

These was not a medical school in the country that would
tate a woman. Elizabeth found that out all rigjit when she

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 167

started writing around to them: Harvard, Philadelphia, Jef-
ferson, Louisville . . . No! Nol No! No! always the same.

But wait Here's one that says yes! It is the Geneva Medi-
cal School, up in New York, not far from Seneca Falls where
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is busy drafting a Declaration of
Independence.

They didn't really mean to admit her at the Geneva
Medical School, but the professors put it up to the students,
and the students thought, What a lark! A woman studying
medicine; let's let her come and make a fool of herself.

So off she went, to Geneva. The professors didn't approve
of her at all; the townspeople in Geneva said that she was
"either mad or bad," but she stuck to it all the same, work-
ing twice as hard as any of the men. In the end she gradu-
ated at the head of her class. Then over to Europe for more
study to Paris, to Berlin, to the famous St Bartholomew's
Hospital in London. When she was through she knew lots
more medicine than most other American doctors,

You'd think her troubles were at an end, but they had
just begun. Back to New York came Elizabeth BlaekweH,
with high hopes, but she couldn't find an office and she
couldn't get into a hospital, and she couldn't practice inedi-
cine. She opened a little clinic in the slums of New Yodk
where poor women could come for help, and after a while
she bought a house down in what is now *the Village" and
opened an infirmary for women, with all women doctors
and nurses that meant herself, her sister, aad a poor Polish
refugee woman.

A women's hospital, women doctors how shocking!
Whenever the hoodlums and toughs of that district couldn't
think of anything better or worse to do, they would stand
in front of Dr* Bkcfcweffs hospital ai*d sneer at ber and at
her patients and throw rocks through windows and show
in many other ways how superior men were to wooaeuu

But Dr. Bkdcwefl kept on, and won the affection of her
patients and the respect of other doctors in the cSy, Tbea

l68 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

came the Civil War, with its terrible need for nurses, and
Dr. Blackwell trained nurses for the army, and then went
down to Washington to see that they got where they could
do the most good. For the stuffed shirts in Washington had
the curious notion that women shouldn't be allowed to be
nurses not unless they were very old or very plain, anyway.
But they soon had to give up that notion, and thank their
stars they could get nurses trained by people like Dr. Black-
well

After the war things were different The country was
used to women nurses now; and no longer shocked at the
idea of women doctors. In 1868 Dr. Blackwell was able to
open not only a new women's infirmary but a medical
school for women as well. What a triumph in twenty years!

Then Dr. Bkckwell sailed back to England, where she
had been bom, and became a professor at the London
School of Medicine, and for thirty years she trained women
doctors, hundreds of them, who went out to all parts of the
world. For by now women nurses and doctors were like
women teachers: they were the most natural thing in the
workL Nobody could remember when they didn't have
women doctor But Elizabeth Blackwell could.

Now we can go back to Elizabeth Stanton and Susan
Anthony and their lifelong struggle to win votes for women.

They were very old by now, both of them in their eighties,
but no matter. lite torch that they carried will not fall to
the ground or be snuffed out There are always younger
women to take it and hold it high,

Ufce Carrie Chapman Catt

She realty was young, too. When Mrs. Stanton wrote that
Declaration of Independence, Carrie wasn't even born.
When Susan Anthony got herself arrested for voting, Carrie
was a little god of thirteen with a pigtail and freckles.

It's difficult to tdtt you how different she was from Mrs.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 169

Mott and Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. She wasn't even
a New Englander. She wasn't even a Quaker.

She was just a little girl who grew up on an Iowa farm
and went to a country school, and when she was through
with high school she said she was going to the state uni-
versityjust like that By now, though, that was no longer
surprising; out west girls took it for granted that they could
go to the state university just as boys did especially in
Iowa, which was the first state to admit girls to its uni-
versity, ... So Carrie taught school and saved her money
and went off to the university, and learned not only history
and literature but how to speak in public. When she was
through she went back to teaching, and before she was
twenty-five she was superintendent of schools at Mason
City, which was a pretty big city as cities went out in Iowa
in those days. She didn't stay superintendent vay long,
though; she got married instead, and then she got interested
in politics and that meant that she got interested in votes
for women. For what was the use of politics if you couldn't
even vote?

You will remember that Elizabeth Stanton and Susan
Anthony made a wonderful team. Wefl, Carrie Chapman
Catt made a wonderful team too all by herself. She could
speak and write and get people exerted, just Bfce Mrs. Staa-
ton; she could plan and organize and work behind the
scenes, just like Miss Anthony. She had all the energy m
the world, and after she married George Catt, who was a
famous engineer, she had all the money she needed too,
and she couH give her time to tbe crusade for votes. Tlaae
had been a kind of laying oa of hands from Lucretia Mott
to Elizabeth Stanton, and now there was another laying on
of hands from old Susan Aatbcmy to Mrs. Catt

And now in 1900 the clouds were breaking up at last and
the sun was streaming through. Even Miss Anthony, eigfaty-
five years old, and infa^d to the last, qqoH see that "Mine
eyes have seen tbe glory of the coming of the Lwd/* she

I/O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

sang in her cracked old voice, and it was true. Now nothing
could stop the triumph of the great cause to which she had
given her life. It was hard to believe that it was just the
other day that it had all seemed so ridiculous, even so
wicked. . . . One state after another gave the vote to
women, and with the vote went all those other rights that
they had fought for, so hard and so long.

Then came World War L It was a war for democracy,
said President Wilson, a war for democracy everywhere in
the world Then why not start at home? Why not start by
giving the vote to women everywhere in the United States?
That's democracy.

And that is just what happened. President Wilson spoke
out for the rights of women, and in 1919 Congress passed
the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution- you can
remember it by all those nineteens giving the vote to
women everywhere.

Would the states agree? Most of them would, but some
of them held back. Then up and down the country went
Mrs, Catt, talking to legislatures and pleading with the
public and meeting with governors and addressing meet-
ings and writing letters, and one by one the states fell into
line. Finally there was just Tennessee-it all seemed to hinge
on that state. The fight went on for weeks and weeks. In
the end it was decided by the youngest member of the
legklature, Hany Burns scarcely more than a boy. Tote
far suffrage/* his mother wrote him. *T>on > t forget to be a
good boy and help Mrs. Catt? He did > too-and the amend-
ment passed.

Weaiy but happy, Mrs. Catt came home to New York.
When die got off the train in the Pennsylvania Station with
the sun slanting down through the windows into the great
hall, tinae was Governor Alfred K Smith to greet her, in
full dress, and a military band playing ''Hail, the Conquer-
ing Hero ComesT and the streets black with men and

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

women waving flags and throwing confetti and cheering
themselves hoarse.

What a change since 1848. If only LucreSa Mott and
Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony could have lived to
see it.

So women's rights won out in the end, just as the crusade
for freedom for the Negro won out, just as the crusade for
the rights of children won out. Who would have thought
it? Who would have thought it when Lucretia Mott was
forced off the platform at the London convention? Who
would have thought it when the Seneca Falls convention
passed that ridiculous resolution about votes for women?
Who would have thought it when Mary Lyon opened her
struggling little college in the hills of New England? Who
would have thought it when rowdies smashed up Dr, Black-
well^ shabby little infirmary down in New York?

Remember:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new songs measure
Can trample an empire down.

THE EIGHT OF ASYLUM

Asylum. It is a Greek word It means, quite simpiy, security.
It means a place where you are saf e Hfce home.

Remember the Pilgrims who took refuge in the Dutch
city of Leyden, and then sailed on the Magfo&er to the
sandy shores of Cape Cod? Remember the Puritans, twenty
shiploads of them, crossing the stormy seas to Boston Har-
bor and setting up the Massachusetts Bay Colony? Remem-
ber Roger Williams fleeing across the winter snows to the
islands of Narragansett Bay and setting up the colony erf
Rhode Island wheie everybody was allowed to wQcslap as
he pleased? * . . And Wiffiam Benn bringing over thousands
of Quakers from RngfaiJ and Lutherans from the Rhine
Valley to his colony of Pennsylvania?

AH of them fleeing hem persecution or infustiee or war.
All of them finding asylum in the New WorkL

It is an old story, the stay of flight and asjtom-andl a
story that is ever fresh and ne*r. It is as old as the Jews
wandering for forty years in the Wilderaess, seeking tibe

176 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Promised Land, and as new as the story of refugees trying
to escape from Communist East Germany to Republican
West Germany.

People in flight! Thousands and thousands of them, some-
times millions of them. Swarming onto the roads, fording
rivers and crossing mountains, crowding into little cockle-
shell boats, fleeing before the men on horseback with their
long spears, or before the men in armor with their muskets,
or the men in tanks with their guns, or the men in airplanes
circling overhead and dropping bombs on the helpless ref-
ugees below.

Men and women in flight, giving up everything their
homes, their farms, their cattle, the flowers they had planted
in the garden, the furniture they had made, die books and
pictures they had learned to love, the toys and dolls they
had pkyed with. Giving up everything their towns and
villages, their neighbors, their schools, their churches, their
life work . . hoping to find asylum in some new land.

Why can't people live together in peace? Why must those
who win wars drive out those who lose? Surely there is
room enough for all of them?

Why must those of one race or one color drive out those
of another race or another color?

Why must those who worship God one way drive out
those who worship Him in a different way?

Look at Prance under Louis XEV, who sat on the throne
for sixty-five years all the time from 1660 to 1715. That's a
long time to be King.

He was called the Sun King. He was the sun around
which all lesser stars revolved He was the sun, and all
light streamed out from him. If he was not there, all was
dart

Anyway, that's what he thought

Natoralfy, he thought that everything should be done

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 177

his way. When he stood up everybody should stand up,
When he sat down everybody should stand up too, for that
matter. When he took snuff everybody should sneeze.

One thing he was sure of. Everybody in France should
worship just as he worshiped. He was a Catholic, so every-
body should be a Catholic.

But everybody wasn't a Catholic in the France of his
day. There were probably a million Protestants in France.
They were called Huguenots the word means "people who
associate together"; we would probably call them Joiners.
They had their own church, and their own pastor^ and
their own schools; they had their own way of life.

That was what Louis XIV couldn't stand that anyooe
should have a religion or a way of life that was different
from his.

In 1685 the blow fell That year the Sun King made one
of the worst mistakes in history. Of course he didn't admit
that it was a mistake; a King can never make a mistake.
But it was, all the same. For he sail, "No more Protestants
in France! Everybody has to have the same religion as tbe
King.** So all over France sddieis moved in em the families
of the Huguenots. They settled on them, four or firo soldiers
to a household, and literally ate the people out of Boose
and home. They beat the men and terrified the women and
took the children away and pit them ia monasteries or
nunneries. They closed Huguenot schools and churches and
arrested Huguenot teachers and preachers.

What should the Huguenots do? What could they do but
give in or escape?

Him came the great flight of the Huguenots. Praoa evesry
village and town of France they streamed out toward the
frontiers of neighboring countries. Picture them: okl men
with white beards, young mothers with babies ia tfaw arms,
boys and giris tagging along bdhmd their parents, hero sad
there a young man driving a wagon loaded with blankets
and food and a few bundles of cbtbi&g, and peifeaps some

178 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

old grandmother or sick child lying on the bundles. They
traveled by night and hid by day, in the country barns or in
patches of forest, for the King did not want them to leave
the country and his soldiers had orders to stop them and
arrest them if they tried to do so.

Some of them got over the border to nearby Holland.
Others crossed the Rhine River into Germany. Others some-
how fought their way across the mountains and reached the
Swiss cantons. Still others, from the northern provinces,
made their way to harbor cities like Brest or Le Havre and
managed to hire little fishing boats to ferry them across the
Channel to England, or perhaps hid away on some merchant
vessel that sailed for more distant ports.

Altogether about three hundred thousand Huguenots left
France and found asylum in other lands. That may not
seem a great many to you, but imagine what it would be
like if about three million Americans should leave the
United States all at once.

How lucky that the Huguenots had somewhere to go.

Holland welcomed them, little Holland which had wel-
comed the Pilgrims, and which was one of the freest coun-
tries in the world. And thousands of Huguenots settled
down in Amsterdam and Leyden and The Hague.

The cities of Switzerland welcomed them Geneva by its
lovely lake, and Berne in the middle of the Alps, and Basle
at the head of the Rhine River welcomed them and fed
them and clothed them and cared for their sick, and kept
as many of them as they could. Louis XIV threatened the
Swiss with the most awful punishments for helping the
Huguenots, but they refused to be afraid

Ite German states welcomed them, especially Prussia,
whose Etng collected money for them and gave them homes
to five in.

Most important of all England welcomed them, raised
money f OT them, let them set up their own churches and
schools, and made them feel at home.

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 179

How fortunate for the Huguenots that they had other
countries they could go to* But how fortunate I or the other
countries, too, that the Huguenots came.

France never quite got over losing three hundred tiboo^
sand of her most intelligent and courageous inhabitants.

And the other countries never got over their good fortune
in having so many Huguenots come to join them and be
part of them.

Take America, for instance.

Nature, you might say, had made America an asylum
all that land, more than, in the whole of Europe, But even
in America there were some who said, "Stay out" Even
here there were some who said, **You must speak our lan-
guage, you must be of our race, you must worship our God,
or we won't let you iru"

That's what the Spaniards said, and they owned most of
South America and a good part of North America loo.
They wouldn't let anyone in who wasn't both Spanish aad
Catholic* That's what the French said, and they owned afl
of Canada, and a good part of the Mississippi Valley as
well They wouldn't let anyone in who wasn't both French
and Catholic.

But that's not what the English said. They sang a differ-
ent tune. They didn't quite say, *Come ooe, come afl,* but
that's really what it amounted ta So far as the English were
concerned there was room enough for all, if not in ooe
colony, then in another: if not m Massachusetts, thea in
Rhode Island; if not in New York, then in Pennsylvania; if
not in Virginia, than in Carolina. Room for Pilgrims and
Puritans, room foe: Quakers and Baptists, room for Catholics
and Jews. And room for HugueMts,

Room? Why, everybody wanted the Hugoeoots. Hie
Americans frad that much se&se anyway. Everybody washed
them, and tibey weot eve^ywi^re. Hiese wespesa't actoa% so

l8o CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

many of them perhaps fifteen or twenty thousand alto-
gethernot as many people as go to a big college football
game today. But what a difference they made! They scattered
all through the English colonies Massachusetts, New York,
Virginia, South Carolina and wherever they went they
took with them their energy and industry, their courage
and independence.

What a difference they made, these Huguenots from
France. In no time at all they had made their mark in the
new country, and in history too. Here is Peter Faneuil of
Boston; his father fled to Holland, and then came to the
Bay Colony, and now Peter has made a fortune and built
the great hall that bears his name and given it to the people
of Boston, and for them it became "the cradle of Liberty'*
the hall where the men of Boston voted their colony into
the Revolution, Or here is Apollos de Revoire; his son was
that Paul Revere who made the famous midnight ride
through the countryside, shouting that the British were
coming you remember him from Longfellow's poem. . . .
Or here are the Bowdoins one of them ended up as gover-
nor of Massachusetts and gave his name to a famous college
maybe you will go there someday, and be a poet like
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who went there and who
was part Huguenot too.

Or look at New York City and the nearby town of New
Rochelle, named after old Rochelle on the coast of France,
There had always been some Huguenots in New York, even
when it was New Amsterdam Peter Minuit, for example,
the man who bought Manhattan Island from the Indians;
or Judith Bayard, the wife of that Peter Stuyvesant who
hobbled around on his wooden leg. Now came many more
the Jays for example; one of them was to be the first
Chief Justice of the United States. Or the Bayards, who
gave so many senators and diplomats to the United States.
Or the De la Noyes. You may think you don't know them

THE BIGHT OF ASYLUM l8l

but remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and you will see
that you do.

So it went everywhere in the colonies. Look at the
Huguenots in the middle colonies, and think of Philip
Freneau in New Jersey, who was the first real American
poet, or the Du Fonts of Maryland with their gunpowder
factory. And down in Charleston, South Carolina, every
other name, it seemed, was Huguenot and still is: Legar6
and Manigault and Ravenel and Petigru and Laurais who
was Washington's friend and General Francis Marion, who
is remembered as the Swamp Fox of the Revolution.

France has done many good things for America: sending
over Lafayette to help win independence is what you prob-
ably know best. But the best thing France ever did fas
America was something she had no notion of doing at alL
It was sending so many Huguenots over to the New World.

We learned early, here in America, that it is a good
thing to be an asylum.

That, in any event, is what America became: an asylum
for those people of all countries who never had quite enough
to eat; for those who weren't allowed to worship their own
way; for those who were tired of soldiering, and o wars
not of their making; for those who wanted to escape ficom
the iron rule of emperors and dictators; for those who were
despised and mistreated; tor those who hungered and
thirsted after an education, if not f or themselves, then for
their children.

A hundred years ago-oh, more than that even these
was a popular song that they knew even in Europe, It
went like tins:

We have room for *M creation, md our banner is unfurled,
Here's a general invitation to the people of the wodd:
Come along, come along, make no delay!
Come from every nation, come from every way!
Our I&nds are broad enough, don't be alarmed,
And Unde Sam is ridi enough to give us aU a farm.

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

And how they came, from every country of the Old
World, shipload after shipload, pouring into New York Har-
bor, and Boston, and Baltimore, and New Orleans, too, and
spreading out all over the country. Hundreds of thousands
of Irish fleeing from starvation as from a pestilence: imagine
starvation in that beautiful island. Germans first a trickle
of refugees from the Revolution of 1848 that didn't come
offthe Forty-Eighters, they were called and then a mil-
lion others who fled from hunger and misery and war. They
swarmed into Ohio and Wisconsin and Missouri until you
would have thought that these were all German States, but
pretty soon you couldn't tell them from the Yankees or the
Irish or the Norwegians who had settled down in these
states as welL

Then, later on, the Italians and the Poles and the Bohe-
mians, coming to the land of a second chance. And the
Jews from the ghettos of Poland and Russia, fleeing from
bitter persecution and hoping to find an asylum where they
would be treated as equals. And still kter the refugees
from the Russian Revolution, and the peoples from the
Htde Baltic countries that Russia had swallowed up, and
the Hungarians who fled from the iron grip of the Com-
munists after they had tried a revolution and lost.

What a long story of poverty and misery and persecu-
tion. What a long story of asylum.

In 1876 France gave a birthday present to the United
States, which was just erne hundred years old: the present
didn't actually arrive far another ten years, but that didn't
matter. She gave the United States the Statue of Liberty
which stands in the entrance of the haibor of New York, with
its torch ever bright: it is the first thing everyone goes to see
when he comes to New Yoric. What did the Statue of Liberty
stand for? Tlie winning of independence by the Americans
in 1776? Libeirty for Americans? The friendship of America
and France?

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 183

Yes, all of these. But most important was something else,
The sculptor who made the statue he was a Frenchman
named Frederic Bartholdi called it Liberty Enlightening
the World. Liberty was to stand in the harbor holding out
the hand of welcome to all newcomers, and her flaming
torch was to be the promise of freedom to them to all of
them. That is what Emma Lazarus saw. She was a New
York Jewish girl who knew all about the suffering of her
people in Russia and Poland and who had worked with
the Jewish refugees who came flocking into New York. In
1886 she wrote a poem to be engraved on the pedestal of
the Statue of Liberty:

Here at our sea-washed., sunset gates shaft stand
A mighty woman with a torch whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beaconrhand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mUd eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Jour huddled masses yearmng to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teen&ng shore,
Send these, the homdess, tempest-tossed, to me:
I Uft my lamp beside the golden door"

The tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to
breathe free those are the ones who found asylum in
America*

America itself was an asylum, but the greatest champion
of the right of asylum was not an American bat a Norwe-
gian. His name was Fridtjof Nanseo.

Norway is just a little country, all mountains and snow
and long winding fjords that cot deep into the coast, aad
with fewer people than half a dozen American cities today,
but she has produced far more than her share of great
None was greater than Fridtjof Nansen.

184 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

He even looked like a great man, and you don't know
how unusual that is. Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, straight
as a Norwegian pine, fierce blue eyes, golden hair he
looked like a Viking warrior, and he was. Even as an old
man he was magnificent; at the League of Nations, in
Geneva, they said that next to Mount Blanc the most
splendid sight in all Switzerland was Fridtjof Nansen. They
said that when he went by, even the mountains bowed
down to him.

What a life of adventure and of peril; what a life of con-
questbut always in the cause of peace. From the time he
was a boy he had hurled himself against nature, steeled
his body and his mind but never his heart against hard-
ship. Before he was twenty he had crossed the towering
mountains of Norway on skis the first man ever to do that
Before he was twenty, too, he proved himself the fastest
ice skater in the world. He could sail his boat on the Norwe-
gian fjords in any weather; he could swim through the icy
waters of the arctic seas; he could figfct polar bears and
wolves with only a hunting knife. And it wasn't all just
strength and courage either: he could dissect a fish; he
could test the currents of the polar seas, he could write
books on icebergs, he could direct scientific expeditions and
lecture at universities.

It was the arctic North that fascinated him the only
part of the world that had not yet been conquered. So he
set out to conquer it With three companions he did what
had never been done before (unless by some unknown
Eskimo} he crossed the heart of the immense island of
Greenland by sfed and snowshoe and skL Then, a few years
later, he was off to chart the waters of the northern seas
and to find the North Pole. He fitted out a ship-it was
called the Forward- with food and medicines and supplies
airf a thousand books; he sailed ft deep into arctic waters,
dtftteg with the ice; then with a single companion he set
oat with skis and dog sleds to the North Pole, four hundred

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 185

miles away. He didn't quite make it, but he came closer
than anyone had ever come before. And he had lots of
time to think, too, for the two men spent almost a year in
an ice house polar bear and walrus for food, bearskins
for beds and blankets, blubber for light before they man-
aged to find their way back to their ship. When the Forward
came sailing back into Oslo Harbor one September morn-
ing there were a hundred ships out to greet it, and cannon
booming from the forts, and the flags fluttering from every
house, and the waterfront black with people to welcoiae
Nansen home.

It was not just that he had reached farthest north* That
stirred everybody's imagination, to be sure that and the
story of courage. But there was more to it than that It had
been a great scientific expedition as well, and in die end it
took six big volumes to tell the story of all the scientific
findings. No wonder his own university made htm a profes-
sor, and universities all over the world hastened to honor
him.

A great sportsman; a great explorer; a great writer; a
great scientist.

That was enougjh of a career for any man.

But wait! We have hardly begun.

The peaks have been reached, they were so low. Hie vast
expanse seems small and the snow fields no longer gleam,
the mountain tarn is not high nor lonely and the white swans
are flown. But once more, yet once more, tie wings can be
stretched for (me flight beyoad the peaks aad the glaciers,
O brave dreamed*

That's what Nansea himseff said, and that fe the best
description of him: brave dreamer.

First there were years of qaiet teaching at the university,
and writing scientific books, and the years of politics s&H
diplomacy. In 1905 Norway separated from Swedes. Most
separations cause wars; it was Nansen wfeo helped make

l86 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

certain that this would be a peaceful separation. His wife
was alarmed that Norway might set up as a republic, for
she was sure that if it did the Norwegian people would
make Nansen their first President. That's just what they
would have done, too. Nansen himself thought that a King
would be bettera King was what they had always been
used to. So he went over to Denmark and persuaded a
Danish Prince to become King of Norway, and then went
home and persuaded the Norwegian people that they really
wanted a King and not a President*

Now came a new career. "All my life I have been waiting
for the great idea to which my life was to be engaged,"
Nansen said. It was not the conquest of the North Pole
nor yet of the South Pole, which for a time he planned. It
was the conquest of hunger and persecution and wrong.
It was saving the victims of war. It was finding asylum for
the refugees of the whole world.

In 1914 Europe was plunged into war, and for four years
the main business of almost every country was killing and
burning and destroying. Great armies swarmed through the
countryside battering down cities and wiping out villages,
looting homes and factories, libraries and museums, tearing
up railroad tracks and breaking down bridges, killing off
cattle and poultry, and trampling down the grain in the
fields. Everywhere they went they left an ocean of ruins*
Hien at last the guns fell silent and the armies ceased to
march. But the ruins were there* and the misery and pov-
erty and hunger lingered cm for years. Millions of men had
beea killed and other minions were in prison camps, Mil-
Boos of men and women and children had lost their homes
and were face to face with starvation.

To Fridtjof Nansei>-as to Jane Addains in America it
was all madness* What was Europe about, destroying itself
in Ifcis way? What were human beings about? Even animals
didn't kill off their own feted At the end of the war Nausea

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 187

threw all of Ids energies into helping Woodrow Wilson
create the new League of Nations* The League, they hoped,
would find a way to heal the wounds of war and to prevent
future wars.

If the American President Woodrow Wilson was the man
who did most to create the League of Nations, it was
Nansen who did most to make it useful

By now Nansen was one of the three or four great citizens
of the world. As soon as the war was over, one problem
after another was dumped into his lap. Each one was more
than any one man could possibly solve, but Nansen took
them all and did the best he could with each of them.

First they asked him to take charge of tie Job of getting
prisoners of war back to their own countries. Above all, the
German prisoners, who were in camps in faraway Siberia,
and the Russian prisoners, who were in camps in Germany
altogether half a million of them. Everything had to be
done from the beginning. First Nansen had to get the coun-
tries to agree to the return of their prisoners, Tl*en he had
to find the ships and the railroad trains to take them home.
He had to feed them on the way, set up camps to receive
them, vaccinate them and bring fee sick ones back to
health, find new homes for them if they had lost their old
homes. It was an immense job, but Nansen wound it up in
two years.

Somehow it ran into another and even harder job. Ihat
was taking care of over a million refugees.

Most of them were refugees from Russia, for Russia had
gone through not orfy a war but a revolution, and you
know what happens during a revolution. Tliere are always
some who oppose a revolution, and when the revolutionists
win, the opposears are the ones who have to ran for their
lives. It had happened many times before in history; efvea ia
America the Tories who opposed the Revotatkm had to See
to Canada, sixty or seventy thousand of them. Now

l88 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

were a million Russians, scattered all over Europe and
Asia tooall the way from France to China. Most of them
wanted to get home again. But how to bring them home?
They were really lost, these refugees: no money, no jobs,
not even a country to belong to, for their old countrythe
Russia of Tsar Nicholas was gone, and as yet they hadn't
found a new country. Nansen took charge of everything.
He rounded up the refugees, put them on ships and on
trains, and sent them back to their homeland. He supplied
them with food and clothing and medicine. He even gave
them special passports the famous Nansen passports: every
country in the world would accept the name "Nansen*
even if it wouldn't accept any other name. Within a few
years Nansen had returned over a million refugees to their
own homes.

Then on top of that came the terrible problem of the
Greek refugees again almost a million of them. For cen-
turies they had lived in that broad mountainous land we
call Asia Minor in Anatolia and Smyrna. Now the Turks
wanted that land for themselves, and they drove out the
Greeks. How would they get back to Greece? Who would
feed them as they crowded along the dusty roads; who
would take care of those too weak to walk; who would
take care of them when they finally arrived back on Greek
soil? Greece couldn't do it-she had suffered through the
war just like so many other countries. The Turks wouldn't
do it: "Not our responsibility," they said. The answer was
Nausea. Always Nansen. Nansen would raise the money.
Nansm would find the ships and send the food. Nansen
would jramd up the doctors and the nurses to take care of
the sfct Nausea would persuade the governments to bestir
themselves-to set aside land, to find work for the new-
comas, to set up hospitals and schools. And of course Nan-
sea did.

And while he was busy with the problem of taking care

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM l8g

of the Greek refugees another and even more terrible prob-
lem was given him to solve.

Remember the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War,
Famine, Pestilence, and Death? Now all four of them rode
down the Russians. First the war and they had been de-
feated in war. Then the Revolution. And after that, Famine
and Pestilence and, of course, Death, Death not of thou-
sands but of millions. For there was a terrible drought afl
through the Ukraine and the great valley of the Volga
it was as if the whole Mississippi Valley from Pittsburgh
to Kansas City should go through a year without water.
The crops withered on the ground; the cattle died of thirst
Twenty million people were threatened with starvation. Then
pestilence swept the stricken land, cholera and typhus. Poor
Russia!

What to do? There was plenty of food in the wodd-in
the United States or in the Argentine or off in Australia.
There were plenty of ships on the Atlantic, Ifeeie were even
plenty of men who had no work and would have been glad
to pitch in and help. How bring afl these togetfaer-tihe food
and the ships and the mea--and use them to save the starv-
ing Russians?

Again the League of Nations put the job on Nansen.
Could he bring help in time? He turned to his old friend
Herbert Hoover, in America the man who had brought
food to the starving Belgians even during the war: there
never was a better man for or^tnizing things than Herbert
Hoover. Between them they raised almost one hundred
million dollars, bought food, chartered the ships and the
trains, broke through all the tangfes of red tape, and some-
how got food over to Russia. Not enough, to be sire four
million Russians starved to death that winter of 1921. Bat
millions who might have starved were saved.

Now, after the war, one more task, the most heartbreak-
ing of all, was put on the broad shoulders of old Fridijof

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Nansen: the task of finding asylum for still another stricken
people. This time it was the Armenians, an ancient Christian
people who for centuries had lived in the midst of the
Moslem peoples of the East. For centuries, too, they had
been persecuted by the Turks their priests killed, their
churches burned, their people driven from one region to
another. Now, with the war going on, the Turks were re-
solved to put an end to the Armenians. The method was
simple: kill them off. Men, women, children it made no
difference. Altogether in these years the -Turkish tyrant
Mustafa Kemal killed over one third of all the Armenian
people. Somehow the others managed to escape, thousands
of them to Greece, other thousands to Syria on the Medi-
terranean, but most of them to the new Armenian state
deep in the Caucasus Mountains which is now a part of
Soviet Russia.

But meantime they had to be saved. They were without
food and clothing, without tools for forming or for work;
without medicines or doctors or nurses. Could anything be
done for them? Could enough of them be saved to start a
new Armenian nation? Once again it was up to Dr. Nansen.
Nansen appealed to the whole world and the world re-
sponded. Money and supplies poured in, and somehow
Nansen managed to get most of it out to the stricken
Armenian refugees. He brought in the food and the medi-
cine, and shipped in the machines and tools so that they
could get started again. And in time they built up a new
flourishing Armenia.

Not long before he died Nansen was elected rector of
the ancient University of St Andrews in Scotland. It was
an honor that the young men voted him, and he went over
to them and made a speech. When he spoke he spoke to all
who were young to all who are ever young even to you:

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM

What a joyous thing to see the day dawning and to know
that you are bound on a voyage to new realms. Your sool
bounds upwards on beams of light to the vault of heavea.
You laugh at the risks and smile at the dangers. Youths
buoyant faith and self -trust is in command.

All his life Fridtjof Nansen was on voyages to new lealms
new realms of physical discovery, new realms of work,
new realms of faith. He was the greatest of all explorers
because he explored not only the face of the globe but tibe
hearts of mankind.

You have met a good many heroes in this bookmen
like Roger Williams and Tom Paine and Sanniento and
James Yen. Now meet a country that is a hero: Israel

Like America, it is an asylum.

It was easy for America to be an asylum. AH that land-
as Thomas Jefferson said, TLand enough for our descead-
ants to the thousandth and thousandth generation*- and

o

most of it empty. All the wealth of soil and forest and river,
of coal and iron and oiL No wonder Americans could slag,
**We have room for all creation/* Hiey had, too.

But now look at Israel It is just a Htde country, wedged
in between all those other countries on the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean Sea, so little you can hardly find it
Why, you could tuck it away in a corner of Texas or Cali-
fornia and scarcely know it was there. And if you do fmd
it, and look at it closely, you will see that most of it is
desert

If the American song was "Come along, come along, make
no delay" you might almost suppose that the song of Israel
would be taken from the Mad Hatter s tea party remem-
ber? TMo room, no room.**

But ft turned out just the other way around

In modern times in the last thirty years, that is-fibe
United States has begun to worry about having enough

192 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

room, and has got very choosy about whom it will allow to
come in. A few thousand here, a few thousand there; not
more than two or three hundred thousand newcomers each
year. For a country like the United States that's nothing;
why, more than ten times that many babies are born each
year*
It was little Israel that said, "Come one, come all.**

Have you ever heard of the Wandering Jew? He is a
character out of the world of fiction: an old Jew who is
doomed to live forever, and whose fate it is always to be
wandering from country to country, never at rest or at
peace.

He is not entirely a character out of fiction, though. He
is a symbol of the Jewish people. Over two thousand years
ago the Jews were driven out of their home in Palestine
they called it Israel and they scattered to every quarter of
the globe. You found Jews in northern Africa, in Spain and
Portugal, in Germany and Poland and Russia, in Persia
and India and even in distant China. Wherever you went
you would find a Jewish community. And if you could look
into the minds and hearts of the members of those com-
munities, you would see that many of them longed to re-
turn to IsraeL

Every Sabbath day they would sit in their temples and
say, with their rabbis, "If I forget Thee, O Jerusalem, let
my right hand forget its cuiming. May my tongue cleave
to my palate if I remember you not, if I place not Jerusalem
ahead of my joy."

No wonder so many of them wanted to return to IsraeL
Almost everywhere in the world they were mistreated and
persecuted. Not for any fault of theirs, not for any wrongs
that they had done, not because they were not good citi-
zens. No, simply because they were Jews,

weare herded into the slums of great cities slums

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 193

called ghettos. They were made to wear special dotbes
with markings that told that they were Jews, They were
not allowed to work at the jobs that they could do best,
or enter the professions, but were given jobs that no one
else wanted. They were not allowed to go to schools or
universities, or vote, or hold office. They were not even
second-class citizens; they weren't citizens at all

They could endure most of that They could live in their
ghettos and make a living at trades like tailoring; they
could even manage without schools because they had tibeir
own schools and their own learned men.

What made their lot too hard to bear was peasecution*
Whenever things went wrong when times were hard, when
there was poverty, or a defeat, or a pkgqe-the people
took it out on the Jews. In city after city, in country after
country, mobs would run riot and attack the ghettos. H*ey
would break into the temples, drag the rabbis through the
streets, sack the ghettos, kill all who resisted, SoHaetimes
it wasn't just the mobs it was the King, whose soidiears
swarmed into the Jewish quarters and cut down aB who
got in their way.

Not a nice story, this stay of the persecution of the Jews
by the Christians,

And it wasn't just something that happened a fcog time
ago, either like die persecution of the Huguenots in Prance.
It was something that went right on, year after year, derail
to our own time.

How did the Jews survive? Tliey survived by holding
fast to their religion and making it fee cement that boead
them together. Tbey serviced by their bro of teaming, aid
by teaching to each new generation of chfldrea tfce histoiy
of Israel and of its religion.

And in the bad years ci the kte iSoos tbey survived fey
finding asylum in the United States: thousands antd ikxi-
sands of thean, crowding ioto the steerage of slaps aaad

sailing over to New Yoik and its Statue of Liberty.

o *

1Q4 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

And they survived, too, on hopes and on dreams the
hope of returning someday to their homeland; the dream
of making Israel once again a real nation.

They almost didn't survive at all. Just a few years ago
so recently your parents can tell you about it the Jews
were the victims of the worst tragedy that ever happened
to any people since the time five hundred years ago when
the Spanish conquerors wiped out the Indians of Mexico
and Peru.

In 1932 Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany and began
his career of crime. If there has ever been a more wicked
man in history, it is hard to think who it could have been.
Everything that Hitler did was wicked, but the most wicked
thing that he did was to try to kill off all the Jews not only
the Jews of Germany but of every country that he con-
quered. He almost succeeded, too, in this awful ambition.
During the years that he was absolute dictator of Germany
and of Austria and Poland and France and many other
helpless nations he killed almost every Jew in all of those
countries. Altogether Hitler killed almost six million Jews.

A few escaped. Some of them managed to hide. Some
of them managed to escape to countries like Sweden and
Switzerland which were not in the war and could give them
asylum. Some of them managed to get over to America-
great scientists like Albert Einstein and great writers like
Thomas Mann. And a few managed to survive the terrible
camps where they ware imprisoned and waiting for death.

Evesa bef (He the war, some Jews had been encouraged to
go back to Israel to live. Now, when Hitler was at last de-
feated and the war was over, the word went out to all the
Jews who still survived that they could find asylum in
Israel Gome home to Israel Come from every land, come
from ewary continent, come and build up the ancient home
of the Jewish people! And Israel passed a law called the

THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM 195

Law of the Return, which made every newcomer a citizen
of Israel the moment he set foot in the country.

Then began one of the great stories of history, the *in-
gathering" of the exiles. From every quarter of the gbbe
Jewish people streamed into the little country hugging the
shore of the blue Mediterranean. They came from tibe
prison camps of Germany and Poland, from the rubble of
cities that had been leveled to the ground, bom the ghettos
of Russia and Rumania. They came from the ancient states
of North Africa Egypt and Morocco and Algiers and from
the even more ancient countries of Asia Persia and India
and China. They came, some of them, from England and
France and the United States, not to escape perseeutioii
for there were no persecutions in these countries but to
have a part in the great adventure of building a new nation.

On they came, year after year, the young and the old,
the lame and the blind, those who had been beggared and
those who had suffered from persecution. They came afoot,
they came by ship, they even came by plane* !$ ancient
Yemenite peoples, tucked away in the deserts of Arabia,
heard of the new homeland and began to walk across the
desert, hoping to get to Israel Soon they were stranded
and faced with starvation. Their religion told them thai one
day they should be borne on the wings of an eagle to the
Promised Land, and b, airplanes swooped down oat of the
sides and picked them up and carried them aH to Israd,
fifty thousand of them, just as had been prophesied

On they came, year after year, streaming in to this tiny
plot of ground. The Arabs tried to stop them, and they had
to fight for their life. They lost half of their ancient capital,
Jerusalem, and they built a new Jerusalem. Hie dd cities
had fallen into ruins and they built new cities, fbexe wasn't
enough land to go around, and they turned dese&t land
into farm land. Iheir people were poor and sick aad igao-
rant and they gave them work, and cored them, and seaat
them to school

196 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

In ten years little Israel gave asylum to more than one
million Jews. They planted olive trees and orange and
lemon trees in the soft Trills along the Sea of Galilee, and
brought water down from the river Jordan to give life to
the soil and cover the brown hills with a coat of green.
They built little farming villages out on the edge of the
desert and grew enough food for their needs. They moved
into the great desert of the south called the Negev, and
brought water into it and made it bloom like the rose.

In ten years they made a new nationone of the smallest
nations in the world and one of the greatest nations in the
world.

The United States and Israel: two asylums that became
nations, two nations that became asylums.

FAIR TRIAL

Duty, Honor, Reverence, Loyalty those are great wonfe,
and they have a great history. We couldn't do wtthotrt
them. We certainly couldn't tell the story of human rights
without them.

But they are not words that you use very often*

There is another word that means more to you than any
of these certainly one that you use oftener than you use
any of these.

It is "f air."

Fair play. That's the only kind of play that is possible.
Not to play fair is cheating, and you can't play at all if there
is cheating.

Fair fight That's the one condition of any figjit that it
should be dean and fair. The two words mean the same
thing. Not to figfct fair-well, Americans call it "hitting be-
low the belt*; die Eagjish say, TDbat's not cricket* It means
the same thing; ifs dirty.

Fair shares. You don't want nioie tfera yoor share, and

2OO CRXTSADERS FOR FREEDOM

you don't want others to have more than their share either.
To take more than your share is being a pig.

"No fair!" It is the cry of children all over die world. It
is a universal word. No fair looking when you are "it" in a
game of hide-and-seek No fair getting a head start in a
race. No fair getting your father or mother to help you in
a contest that is supposed to be for children. No fair look-
ing at the cards when you play solitaire. No fair having an
extra player on your team. ... No fair! When youVe said
that, youVe said everything.

Without fair play nothing works; certainly nothing is
any fun. You can't have any games without fair play. You
can't run a school without fair play. Even a family can't
get along together unless there is fair play.

Without fair trial nothing works either.

What fair play is to the world of children, fair trial is to
the world of grown people. Just as you play your games ac-
cording to the rules, and have an umpire to make decisions
and enforce the rules, so the grown-up world runs its busi-
ness according to rules. They are the rales of law. And it
has umpires to make decisions and enforce them. They are
judges and courts.

If your teams don't play according to the rules or if
your umpires should call all the decisions on one side, the
game breaks down. And if the affairs of men are not con-
ducted according to the rules of law or if judges give all
the decisions on one side, everything breaks down too.
When men and women have to cry, "No fairl" confidence
is gone confidence in the law and the courts and the gov-
ernment Then pretty soon society itself starts to come apart
at the seams.

Fair play fair trial; they mean pretty much the same
thing and they work the same way. Fair play for the poor
as for the rich; for the ignorant as for the learned; for the
weak as for the strong. Fair play for Protestants in Catholic

FAIR TRIAL 2O1

countries and for Catholics in Protestant countries, and for
Jews in all countries, and even for those who haven't any
religion at all. Fair play for Negroes as for whites; fair play
for peasants as for lords, for workingmen as for merchant
princes. Fair play for those who are "otherwise minded"
as well as for those who hold all the popular ideas and agree
with everybody about everything. Fair play for those who
are wrong as well as for those who are right

Fair play means that nobody is above the law and no-
body is below the law. Nobody is so great or so powerful
that the law cannot speak up and say ^JtopF Nobody is so
poor and helpless that the law cannot look down and find
him and protect him.

The law!

We have read about a good many discoveries and inven-
tions in this book. Did you ever think what a wonderful
invention the law is? The law says what is rigjht and what
is wrong. It says what is just and what is unjust It sets up
governments and says how they are to be run. It arranges
for marriages and for the duties of parents and of children
to each other. It fixes the hours of work, and protects
women and children against overwork. It sets up schools
and colleges and libraries. It controls airplanes and rail-
roads and automobiles. It inspects food and water and pro-
tects your health. It builds playgrounds and hospitals.

What does it not do!

But whatever it does, it has to be fair.

"Freedom,* said a great English philosopher, "is a stand-
ing law to Hve by,** Think erf that: freedom is kw*

It's really a very old idea, this idea of fair play and fair
trial You can find it in the Old Testament, and in the his-
tories of Greece and Rome. The trouble is that for hundreds
of years men said, **Yes> what a woaaderful ideal* and than
didn't pay any attention to it, just as they say, "Peace!

202 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

What a wonderful idea,* and then go out and start another
war.

We can say just when and where the idea o fair trial
began to loom up as really important. It was in June of the
year 1215, in England. To be exact, at a field called Runny-
mede, on an island in the Thames River outside the city of
London. For that was the year that two thousand knights
and barons met with King John of England and complained
of all their hardships, and said that they would no longer
pay taxes to him or fight for him unless he agreed to give
them their rigjhts. Those rights were written down in what
is called Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, And King
John signed it, all right; he had no choice in the matter.

There were a good many rights set forth in the Great
Charter, but only one of them concerns us. It is number 39.
What did it say?

No free man shall be imprisoned or outlawed or banished
or in any way molested . . except by the lawful judgment
of his peers and by the law of the land.

There it is. Nobody arrested or put in prison, except by
the law of the land.

Not by a King, pounding the table and roaring, "Off
with his head! 9 *

Not by soldiers bursting into a man's house and seizing
him and carrying him off to the Tower of London, or to the
Bastille in Paris, or to any dungeon.

Not by a judge saying, "I am die law," and hurrying some
poor wretch off to the gallows.

No. By the law of the land* By fair triai By a jury picked
from the plain people of the neighborhood.

Of course ft didn't happen all at once. Kings continued
to pound tables and say, "Off with his head." Soldiers
smashed their way into houses and hauled their victims
off to prison. Judges went on thinking that they were the
law, or making tip the law as they went along.

FAIR TRIAL 203

But all the time there was that promise in the Great
Charter: the law of the land; fair triaL

And gradually, over the years, it loomed up larger and
larger until finally nobody dared ignore it, not even kings
or soldiers or judges.

What did it mean? Or perhaps we should ask, what
meanings clustered around it and attached themselves to
it and became part of it just as meanings cluster around
a person and become part of him when we know hfrn bet-
ter?

It meant that everybody, high and low, had a right to
fair play* It meant that you couldn't be arrested by soldiers
or by the police without good cause. You couldn't be
clamped in jail and allowed to rot there, f orgotten by every-
body except your own family. You couldn't be tortured to
make you confess to things that you hadn't done. You had
a right to a fair trial: to a judge who was fair, and a jury
who were fair, and witnesses who were f air. If anybody
lied about you, you could challenge him. You could tefl
your own story, your own way. You had a right to a kwyer
to help you. You ware innocent until the Court proved you
guilty. And even if you were guilty you still couldn't be
treated cruelly or unfairly. Even then you had rights under
the law.

Of course you take all this for granted now. But except
in England and the countries settled by England, like
America and Canada and Australia, it is all quite new.
Even today there is no such thing as fair play, or fair trial,
in many of the countries of the world. Even today in
Russia and Hungary and Spain aad Chma, men and women

Or J JL _

go around in fear of their lives. They never know when
there may be a knock on the door sad the secret police wffl
march in and take one of them off to jail And nothing to
do about it! And as for fair trial why, that Is

Dictators have BO time for lair trial Besides, if they
willing to aBcw few trials, they wotdda't fee dictator

204 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

no ... bring the prisoner in, charge him with some crime,
it makes no difference what, beat him if he makes trouble,
torture hfrn to get a confession, then sentence him to prison
for twenty or thirty years, and that is the end of him. That
will teach people to be independent; that will teach them
to make troublel

The English won fair trial early, but for most other people
it was a long time coming, and it took much bloodshed and
tragedy and misery before it came.

Take France, for instance.

Remember the Huguenots how they were forced to es-
cape from France and find asylum in other countries if
they wanted to keep their religion?

Of course many of them stayed on in France. They went
^underground," as we would say today that is, they kept
up their religion in secret A dangerous thing, that, for
the government, and the Church got more and more de-
termined to wipe out the Huguenots, and more and more
merciless about the methods they used.

Here is one Huguenot minister caught with his prayer
books and his Bible; he was hanged. And three brothers
who tried to defend him when he was captured; all of them
had their heads chopped off. Here is another poor devil: he
gave lodging to a Huguenot minister for one night; for that
he was sent to the galleys for twenty years chained to a
seat in the j^eat ships, bending his back to the oars day
after day, until he dropped dead of weariness and pain.

No mercy for the Huguenots. They were a bad lot, and
no need to give them "justice." The only justice was to get
rid of them! Just what Gortez had said when he killed off
all the Aztec Indians of Mexico. . . , Just what Pizarro had
said when he wiped oat the Inca Indians of Peru. They
were all heathens; they didn't deserve justice. . . . Just
what the Turks said when they murdered half a million
Armenians, . . . Just the way Hitler argued, a few years

FAIR TRIAL 205

ago, when he kflled off all the Jews he could lay his hands
on: they were Jews and didn't deserve justice.

That's the way the King and the judges reasoned in
France in the years after the flight of the Huguenots that
is, in the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV.

Look at what happened to a Huguenot named Jean
Galas, down in Toulouse in the south of France.

Everybody respected Jean Galas and his family: a proper,
law-abiding man, an honest shopkeeper, a good husband
and father, a good master, a good citizen. Of course they
knew that he was a Huguenot, but as long as he didn't
bother anybody, they overlooked that*

But, alas, Galas had a son who was always in trouble,
who always managed to fail at all the things he wanted
most to do. And one dreadful day the son went off and
hanged himself.

What a shocking thing to happen. A suidde couldn't
get a proper burial. His body would be dragged thioagjh
the streets and then hung on the gallows. A suicide dis-
graced his name and his family. ... So the father said
that it was all an accident his poor son had fallen and
killed himself.

Here at last was a chance to punish old man Galas for
being a Protestant.

No such thing, said the Court The death of young Marc
Galas wasn't an accident at all He wasn't a sukade either.
It was murder!

Jean Galas had killed his son, said the Court He had
killed the boy to prevent fom from turning Catholic. That
was the real story!

It was a reKgjous murder, said the Court And old Jean
Galas must suffer for it

Now the whole of Toulouse was in an uproar. la the
past they had liked old Galas and his family well eixmgh,
but now they were swept by tenoir and hatred. Public

206 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

opinion can change like that; it can swing around, just like
the wind, and for no reason.

So Jean Galas was arrested and dragged off to jail and
charged with the murder of his son* Then he was tried for
that terrible crime,

Fair trial! Why, nobody thought of that for a moment
Fair trial for a Huguenot? Fair trial for a murderer? Non-
sense.

What followed was a mockery of a trial.

First the old man was tortured to make him confess. That
proved useless, for he didn't confess. Then the judges ad-
vertised for people to come and bear witness against Galas.
Come one, come all, tell anything you want, make any ac-
cusations you can think of the worse they are the more the
judges will thank you* And as for those who tried to speak
up and say a good word for Galas why, they were seized
and thrown into prison just as if they had been criminals
themselves.

Really the whole trial was just a pretense, for the judges
had made up their minds in advance, and even written
their decision in advance. They knew that Galas was guilty,
and that was the end of the matter. Why bother with
evidence? Why bother with a hearing? Why bother with
a fair trial?

So the Court sat in judgment on Galas and said he was
guilty.

Poor old Galas, was there ever so pitiful an old man?
First to lose his son. Then to see his family scattered to the
winds, his wife and children in hiding, his house and all
his bekmgings taken from him, Tien to be put to torture
the worst kind of torture that the judges could think of.
Tliey tied him to a great wheel and broke all his bones, one
by one. They poured gallons and gallons of water down
his throat Tbey left him out in the sun to die in agony,

AH that was to make him oonf ess to his crime. But he
never confessed After all, he was innocent

FAIR TRIAL 2O/

Now Jean Galas was dead, and his wife and his daughters
were in hiding, and his other son had somehow escaped
across the mountains to Geneva in Switzerland. It was all
over the trial and punishment of Galas.

No, it wasn't all over. History is never really all over,
and nothing is settled until it is settled right.

Lookl Over in Geneva the young Donat Galas has thrown
himself on the mercy of the great Voltaire.

Now we come to Voltaire. He is worth staying with for a
time; indeed he is worth staying with for a whole lifetime*

He had a resounding name: Franois Marie Arouet de
Voltaire. He had been a dashing young man, but now he
was a little old man with a face like a fox and a skin as
wrinkled as a prune, and eyes that mocked at you, and a
mind that worked twice as fast as any otter mind in
Europe, and a heart that was at least twice as big. . . .
He Mved in a splendid house at Ferney, just outside the
city of Geneva a house with a dozen splendid rooms and
a private theater, and a great library, and lovely gardens
running down to the blue Lake of Geneva, and when he
looked out of his windows he could see the son dancing
on the waters of the lake and the snow-capped mountains
pointing up into the sly. The rooms were for the many
guests who crowded in on hfm from all over Europe. Hie
theater was to put on the plays that he wrote. The Hbraiy
was for his own books. He hadn't written all of them, to be
sure, but sometimes it seemed as if he had. One day you
will read some of his books, bat don't plan to read them aB
unless yon have lots of time on your lands, for there are
almost a hundred volumes.

Voltaire the name that was feared and loved uad^e than
any name of his time. The sharpest tongue and the sharpest
wit in all Europe a tongue that coold lash oat fifce the
tongue of a scorpion and sting as badly; a pen that flashed
Bfce a sword, and cot too. Hiere was really nothing that

208 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Voltaire couldn't do, and nothing that he wouldn't do,
either, for that matter, if he thought he ought Nothing
frightened him not kings nor bishops nor judges. They had
put him in jail, they had beaten him, they had banished
him, they had burned his books-nail to no avail. Voltaire
spoke his mind no matter where he was and no matter what
the issue was. And what a mind! He wrote all the best
histories, and the King, who detested him, nevertheless had
to make him the royal historian because to make anybody
else that would have been ridiculous. He wrote philosophy,
he wrote politics, he wrote fables and tales, he wrote poetry,
he wrote plays. And, like Thomas Jefferson, whom he re-
sembled in so many ways, he wrote thousands of letters,
and almost every one of them planted a new idea in the
mind of the reader. Voltaire's France was teeming with
writers and historians and philosophers, and every one of
them looked to Voltaire and called him master*

For Voltaire was the brightest star in the firmament of
France. He was the sun around which all the other stars
circled Talk about I/mis XIV being the Sun King-why,
Voltaire outshone even kings. Certainly he outshone poor
simple-minded Louis XV, who did his best to get rid of the
troublesome Voltaire, But you could no more get rid of
Voltaire than you could get rid of the weather. Frederick
the Great of Prussia, who was twice as important as Louis
XV, admired Voltaire so much he even managed to look
like him. He had Voltaire come and Hve with hi f or three
years, and he would have kept him forever, if he could
And in St Petersburg, in Russia, die Empress Catherine
who was also caBed the Great-sent letter after fetter ask-
ing Voltaire to come and stay with her and be honored,
and spoiled, by her court

But Voltaire would have none of that What he wanted
was independence, He didn't need to live at a court; wher-
ever he lived was a court He had money enough for
afi his needs after aH eveiybody in Europe bought his

FAIR TRIAL

books and watched his plays. He built himself two houses
outside Geneva, and another in Lausanne, so no matter
which king tried to arrest him or make trouble for him
which king or which city or state he could always slip off
to one of his houses in another state and be safe.

What side was he on, this Voltaire, with all his genius
and his brilliance and his spirit? He was on the side of
liberty. He was on the side of justice. He was on the side of
humanity. That's why Louis XV was so afraid of him- That's
why the Church in France was so afraid of him. He could
always be counted on to speak out against wrong and ex-
pose injustice, and to arouse the conscience of Europe on
behalf of the right

No wonder young Donat Galas turned to Voltaire for
help. The old man he was deep into his sixties then-
listened to the boy's story with wonder and with horror.
Could such things really be, in France, in the 17605? 1
shall drop this matter only with my death,* he saki "Since
the massacre of St. Bartholomew nothing has so disgraced
the human spirit as the murder of Galas* . . * Cry outl Cry
outl for Galas."

Cry out he did, and his voice was heard all over Europe.
The judges down in Toulouse who thought they had buried
Galas forever had reckoned without Voltaire. Now every-
body was talking about the Galas case in Switzerland, in
England, in France. . . Now all Voltaire's friends up in
Paris were clamoring far the Court to reopen the case.

"Nor said the judges. "Neverf" said the judges. Tmpos-
siblel" said the judges, The case is over. Galas is dead, and
we are content"

Then Voltaire put everything aside and bent aB his
genius to the task of getting justice for Galas. How the
letters went streaming out, to the great and the powerful
up in Paris, to lawyers and judges, to writers and editors,
*The honor erf Ranee is at stake/* wrote Votease> ^tibe honor

21O CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

of mankind is at stake. The case must be reopened" The
clamor rose higher and higher; all France joined in and
then all Europe, and at last even the King could no longer
resist it. He ordered the case of Galas to be reopened.

Of course, once that was done, the whole case fell apart
Once impartial judges got a look at the facts and the papers,
it was clear that there was no case against old Jean Galas
at all. It was like the Emperor's new clothes in Hans
Christian Andersen's story: there weren't any clothes. There
was no reason to suppose that the Galas boy had ever been
murdered at all. There was no reason in the world to put
any blame on his father. The whole case was a tissue of
lies, from beginning to end.

So Galas was cleared . . . poor Galas, tortured to death
there in Toulouse. His family could come home again and
have their house and their belongings back The judges
were all very sorry. Everybody was very sorry. , . . But
there was nothing to do about it now.

That's what happens when you don't have fair triaL

Now cross the Atlantic Ocean to America. From the be-
ginning the Americans had been part of England, and they
had been brought up on the Great Charter and on fair
triai When they came to write their own constitutions,
some of them in 1776 and some in 1787, they wrote fair
trial into them. No man to be imprisoned except by the
law of the land; everyone to have his day in court; trial by
jury; everyone innocent until proved guilty; no cruel pun-
ishments * . * all the familiar guarantees. They were all in
the Bills of Bights, and everybody was safe.

How proud Americans were of their Bill of Rights. In
America everybody was sure of a fair trial

Everybody? Ctertamly all the great and the powerful;
ce3ainfy afl ordinary men and women too. But how about
t&e poor and t&e friendless? How about Negroes?

FAIR TRIAL

One summer day in 1837 a Portuguese pirate ship named
the Tecora sailed into the harbor of Havana, in the island
of Cuba. A red pirate ship, like Captain Kidd's? Well, not
quite. But a pirate ship all the same. For the Tecora car-
ried a cargo of Negroes stolen from their homes in Africa,
and the captain of the Tecora was going to sell the Africans
as slaves.

In the eyes of the law the slave trade was piracy, and
the Tecora was a pirate ship.

But that didn't bother the Portuguese captain, who made
a tidy profit selling the Africans as slaves. Nor did it bother
the two Cubans, Senor Ruiz and Senor Montez, who bought
the Africans and sailed off with them on another ship named
the Amistad to sell them to Cuban sugar planters.

They had done this so many times now, Senor Ruiz and
Senor Montez, and it never occurred to them that there
was anything unusual about it this time. But there was.
The Africans were unusual. They were of the Mendi tribe,
from Sierra Leone, a tribe not used to slavery. And their
leader was unusual too. He was a young chieftain named
Cinque, handsome, intelligent, and fearless.

After the long terrible trip across the ocean the Mendi
were in a dangerous mood. And their mood became more
dangerous every day. Just for taking a drink of water the
captain of the Amistad flogged one of the Africans until the
poor fellow ran with blood, and then he rubbed safe into the
wounds. . . .FcHjffdaysoutontheAimsf^ai^
his fellow Africans broke the great iraa chain that bound
them, and cut the ropes around their feet Then they found

some of the great kfcives used to cut sugar cane, attacked the
Cuban captain and crew, killed two of them, and overpow-
ered the others. . . . Now theyweifc free! But what good did
that do them? They couldn't sail the ship, after aO; they
didn't know one rope from another. **We wffl spaie your
lives if you steer our ship back to Africa,* they told SeScaes
Ruiz and Mootez.

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Of course the two Cubans agreed And of course they
did no such thing. By day they sailed east, toward Africa;
by night they sailed west, back to America. Then, at last,
they headed for the United States, Late in August they
reached Long Island, off New York, There Cinque put
ashore for water, and quickly the word went around that
there was a strange ship, with a strange crew a kind of
ghost ship in the waters off New York. Within a few days
an American naval ship took the Amistad in tow and es-
corted it into harbor and lodged all the Africans in jail in
the city of New Haven.

Now everything seemed to happen at once. Ruiz and
Montez told how they had been attacked and how their
companions had been murdered by the Negroes. What a
frightful story! To jail, then, with the terrible Cinque and
his little army of f ollowers, until they could be properly
punished But Ruiz and Montez didn't want them in jail.
They wanted their slaves back again so they could sell
them and pocket the profits. . . . And now die Spanish
minister comes into the picture remember that Cuba be-
longed to Spain in those days. The minister wanted all the
Africans sent back to Havana so that he could make an
example of them. "Just wait till we get our hands on them,"
he said; Changing is too good for themP

Things certainly looked black for Cinque and his fellow
Africans.

But not so fast

Here and there men were looking up and taking an in-
terest in the poor Mendi Negroes. Hey couldn't speak a
word of English and nobody could understand their lan-
guage, so it was hard to get their story. But wasn't there
something ishy about the whole thing?

Itat's what Lewis Tappan thought, down in New York
City; he was a rich merchant, and an abolitionist, and he
had the same nose for injustice that a hunting dog has for
a 'possum. I&afs what Kills Gray Loring thought up in

FAIR TRIAL 213

Boston; he was a lawyer who spent all his spare time and
money taking care of those nobody else would take care of.
And that's what some of the professors at Yale College
thought too, especially the famous Josiah Gibbs. He was so
clever he could figure out almost any language, and in no
time at all he had learned enough Mendi to talk with
Cinque and his companions and to get their story.

So, what with everybody helping, the real story came
out.

The Amistad Africans weren't slaves at all. They were
free men who had been kidnaped out of Africa and shipped
into slavery. That was against the law, and the law said
that anyone who stole Negroes for skves should suffer
death.

All right, then; the Africans weren't skves. Still, that
wasn't the end of the story. After all, they had killed the
captain and sailed off with the ship. Didn't that make tbem
thieves and murderers?

Not at all, said their friends. After aH, if they weren't
slaves but free men, they had a right to rise up against their
kidnapers and to win their freedom.

The mam thing was to see to it that they weren't bundled
off to Cuba, or to Spain, where they would certainly be
punished and those who were left, anyway sold into slav-
ery. The main thing was to be sure that they had a fair
trial.

Fair triaL Fair trial f or the Mendi Africans. Fair trial
for skves. After all, that was tibe only way to fed out if
they really were skves.

So there was to be a trial, and in the Supreme Court of
the United States, too, with the whole country tooimg on.

Who would speak for the Africans?

John Quiney Adams. Son of President John Adams. Sena-
tor from the state of Massactasetts. Secretary of State of
the United States. President <rf the United States. Hie great-

214 CBUSADEKS FOR FREEDOM

est man in the country, the man who had done more for
his country than any man alive in 1840.

Now he was seventy-three years old. His hand trembled
when he wrote; his eyes filled with tears; his voice quavered;
he couldn't trust his memory or even his mind. Anyway
that's what he said. Nobody else said that Even those who
hated him most and down South they sat up nights just
to hate John Quincy Adams admitted that at seventy-three
Old Man Eloquent was worth two of anybody else.

When Adams was a young man really just a boy over
in England with his father, he went to see the Great Charter
of 1215, How his heart beat when he looked down at the
signatures at the end of it and saw tibe name Saer de
Quency.

His ancestor. He was sure of it!

The Quincys had been on the side of liberty for six hun-
dred years. That was a great heritage. He could not fail it
now.

So old John Quincy Adams took on the defense of the
Amistad Negroes. First, then, down to New Haven, where
they had already languished in jail for almost two years,
to talk with them. . , . They got along famously, the old
man and the young Africans; and when Adams reached
Washington a few days later there was a letter for him from
one of the Mendi TDear friend Mr. Adams," it said Ton
have children and friends, you love them, you feel very
sorry if Mendi people come and take them to Africa. . . .
We never kill captain if he no kill us. If Court ask who
bring Mendi people, we bring ourselves. All we want is
make us free.**

"AH we want is make us free 3 * there's the cry of all peo-
ple, in aB ages of history.

Well, Adams would do his best

Then came the trial KctuiB the sceae the old court-
room with its marble pillars, in the basement of the Senate.
Eight black-robed Judges sitting up there on the bench-

FAIR TRIAL 215

there should have been nine, but one of them had just died
and in the middle of them the Chief Justice, Mr. Taney,
with his long thin face and his noble forehead and his eyes
as sharp as diamonds. Next to him Judge Joseph Story
the man who had been appointed to the Supreme Court
when Adams himself refused the appointment, so in a sense
he was sitting in Adams* place. . . . Story knew everything
there was to know; he had read all the books of law ever
written and he had written a good many of them himself.
He was not only a judge but a professor at the Harvard
Law School, and half a dozen other things as well. Anyway
he was the greatest judge in America, and some people
thought he was the greatest judge in the world.

And there, pleading for the Africans, was Old Man Elo-
quent.

The Supreme Court of the United States and the mar>
who had been President of the United States, all to see that
the Africans had a fair triaL

"I had been deeply distressed till the moment when I
arose/' wrote Adams in his diary, "and then my spirit did
not sink within me. ... I did not answer to public expec-
tations, but I have not utterly failed.**

As he spoke the years fell away from die old man, all the
fire and passion of his youth came back to Trim- Hour after
hour he went on, it took two days f or him to complete his
argument. And when he was through? Well . . . T have
not utterly failed/* he wrote, and indeed he had not Judge
Story read the opinion of the Court Tie Africans had never
been slaves. Hie Africans had a rigfat to ig;ht f or their
freedom. The Africans were free;

Fair trial

Now back to France. Not tfae same France. T&ere had
been a Revdtatkra; these had been a Napoleon Bouaparla
There had been mi Empire. Now tibere was a Republic asd
a CtoiisttatfoB, and ^vea a Bffl of Rights, Had France

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

learned about fair trial since Voltaire cried out for Galas?

The year was 1894 and once again there was a trial.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was on trial for treason.

The army said that Captain Dreyfus sold secrets to the
Germans. They were ready to prove that Captain Dreyfus
was a traitor, and to put the blame for everything that had
gone wrong in the army for years squarely on the shoulders
of Dreyfus. Why? Because he was a Jew, and the men who
ran the army still hadn't learned that Jews are people, too,
and that Jews have the same rights as everyone else.

Was it a fair trial? Not at all. It was almost as unfair as
the trial of Jean Galas more than a hundred years earlier.
No torture this time, to be sure, no breaking on the wheel,
no persecution of the family. But what happened was al-
most as bad.

It was a secret trial. Nobody on the outside was allowed
to know what went on. Why? "Reasons of state" . * "rea-
sons of security" ... a good excuse, that, for secrecy. Cap-
tain I^reyfus was not allowed to see the evidence against
him or to ask questions of those who bore witness against
him. He was not even allowed to defend himself properly.
Who could doubt the outcome of such a trial? Of course
the Court found Captain Dreyfus guilty of treason. They
stripped him of his army rank, his uniform, and his decora-
tions, and sent him off to Devil's Island, for the rest of his
life.

Devifs Island just a barren rock off the coast of South
America. It deserved its name, too. You were better off
dead, than alive on DeviFs Island. They put Dreyfus-
he was no longer Captain Dreyfus in a little hut all by
himself, and fastened a chain to one of his ankles, and then
put a guard outside his hut just as if he were really danger-
ous or loigjit escape. For a long time they didn't let him
have any letters or see any frie&ds, or taJQc with anyone.
During the day be codd walk tot a few hundred feet bade
and forth on his rocky island, and at night ha tried to sleep

FAIR TRIAL

in his hut, with a lamp burning all night long and the
insects buzzing around the lamp. . . .

Meanwhile back in Paris the generals all sighed with
relief. They had put the blame for everything on that
troublesome Jew. And with the newspapers to help them,
they had whipped up anger against the Jews, and had the
people on their side. Now they were stronger than ever,
these generals stronger even than the government

But wait.

There was a Voltaire for Dreyfus, too.

His name was Emile Zola. Like Voltaire, he was a man of
letters a journalist, a novelist He was one of the great
novelists of his time.

When Zola heard how Captain Dreyfus had been tried
and sentenced and shipped off to Devil's Island, his soul
was stirred. He didn't know whether Dreyfus was guilty or
innocent But he did know that Dreyfus had not had a
fair trial. That was enough.

"I accuse!* he wrote*

"I accuse the army of injustice ... of the persecution of
Dreyfus because he is a Jew. I accuse the courts of injustice,
I accuse the newspapers of injustice. I accuse the French
people of injustice ... of denying Dreyfus a a&r trial be-
cause he is a Jew.**

And now another voice took up the charge. It was die
voice of a man named Georges Qemenceau.

He, too, was stirred by this example of mfostiee.

Here he stood, at the threshold of a great career. Before
he was througjh he would be Prime Minister of France. He
would lead France through the Rrst World War to vfctoiy.
He wooH go down in fcfstoiy as ~Hse Hger* because of
his f erodous courage.

Now he was already showitg that courage. He stood up
against the army and the Coort and the gowrnment, gad
be, too, said, 1 accuse you of denying Dreyfus a fair trial
because he is a

2l8 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

All of France was rocked by the Dreyfus case. And not
France alone: the whole of Europe was stirred. Never had
there been such a case. Was Dreyfus a traitor ... or was
he an innocent victim of a gigantic plot against him?
France had to know. The world had to know.

So in 1899 they brought Dreyfus back from Devil's Island
for another trial . . . Dreyfus who had no idea what a stir
he was making in the world. This second trial was a bit
better than the first, but it still wasn't a fair trial. The gov-
ernment still hadn't learned its lesson. Once again the
Court said that Dreyfus was guilty, but it was clear to
everybody that this time they weren't at all sure of it. And
this time, too, everybody could see that there had not
been a fair trial.

The clamor rose louder and louder, and beat against the
government like giant ocean waves dashing themselves on
the shore.

Now the government was in a panic.

The officers who had charged Dreyfus with treason were
in a panic. One of them killed himself. Another ran away
to England and went into hiding.

So now there had to be a third trial.

This time it was a fair trial. This time nothing was secret
and nothing was covered up for reasons of "national se-
curity.*' This time Dreyfus knew what all the charges were,
and had a chance to look at afl the evidence and to defend
himself.

And of course the whole case against him crumbled into
dust, just as the case against Galas had crumbled into
dust It all turned out to be nothing. Someone had sold
secrets to the Germans, but it was not Dreyfus; in fact
it was the man who had first accused him. All the evidence
against Dreyfus had been forged. Hie "reasons of security"
weren't reasons at all they were just ways for the army to
cover up the fact that it didn't realty have a case.

FAIR TRIAL

Now no one in his senses doubted that Dreyfus was inno-
cent.

And now everybody was sony. Now, more than ten years
later, Captain Dreyfus was given back his uniform and his
rank and his decorations, and given some more decorations
to make up for all that he had suffered. And now everybody
shouted "Vive Dreyfus! Vive la fastieer

Long live Dreyfus: yes, of course. But he couldn't live
forever.

Long live justice: yes. Justice can live forever.

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN
RIGHTS

What a spectacle it is, when we look back upon it, tils
long, desperate, heartbreaking struggle to be free. Tie
struggle of men and women to throw off the bonds of slav-
ery. The never ending struggle for the right to speak Tte
magnificent struggle for the right to worship GodL Hie strug-
gle to work out of the blackness of ignorance. The struggle
for the rights of life and happiness, for the rights of women
and of children* * * . This it is that makes the whole world
one. This it is that ties together centuries of history into a
kind of unity--tbis straggle to fee free, this struggle towsid
the light This it Is that brings together mothers in Norway
and India-the fact that they want their children to go to
school This it is that brings together the men and women
of Japan and erf Israel: that they want to worship God in
their own way. Itfc it is that brings together Negsoes *
South Africa and of the Congo and the Arab peoples of
Egypt and the Hindns of India: that they want tbe sasae
chance at freedom and happiness ttot the wfeftse peoples of

224 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

that unites the heroes of all nations heroes of freedom of
religion like Roger Williams, of freedom from slavery like
the American Frederick Douglass and the Haitian Tous-
saint L'Ouverture, and of freedom of asylum like Fridtjof
Nansen, and of freedom for women and children like Jane
Addams.

When you look back on that long story of struggle you
cannot but believe there is something very deep in the
heart of man which demands freedom.

That is the first lesson, then, that all men are bound to-
gether by the strongest of ties the love of freedom. But there
is another side to this. Those who do not have freedom are
bound together too.

Every one of you who reads this book already enjoys
freedom otherwise you wouldn't be reading it. You have
freedom to read, freedom to learn, freedom to think. . . .
You are all bound together by good fortune. But there are
millions and millions of people all over the world who do
not have freedom. They do not have the right to read or to
speak their minds; they do not have the right to work at
the things that interest them. . . . They do not even have
freedom from injustice or freedom from fear.

Are they your business?

Remember the story of Abel and Cain in the Old Testa-
ment, in which Cain asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The answer is easy. Of course we are all our brothers*
keepers.

You wouldn't stand by stuffing yourself with food while
children who were starving stretched out their hands to
you in pitiful appeal You wouldn't say, "It's none of my
business," and go on eating.

You wouldn't stand by and see some little boy beaten
by a big bully and say, "It's none of my business."

You wouldn't enjoy being waited on by other children
who were slaves.

You wouldn't even enjoy your own schools the shining
new cafeterias, the well-stocked libraries, the gymnasium,

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 225

and the swimming pool if you could look out of the win-
dows and see ragged children working in factories across
the street

Of course not None of us would. We would all share
what we had to eat; we would step in and fight the bully;
we would wait on ourselves; we would try to bring the
working children into our schools and playgrounds.

That's easy enough when they are right there before
our eyes. It's a bit harder when aU these things are a thou-
sand miles away. . . . It's harder to take in, then, that
there are millions of children who are starving that there
are millions of men and women who are being bullied by
soldiers or by the police; that there are millions of people
who are still slaves; that there are millions of children work-
ing in the fields and the factories instead of going to school

It takes some imagination to think of all these as if
they were right there in front of us. But then it takes im- v
agination for almost anything that is important

There is another thing to remember, too, when we con-
trast our own good fortune with the hard times that: so
many other people suffer the misery and poverty, the igno-
rance, the tyranny, the slavery that still go cm in so many
parts of the globe.

It is this:

Poverty, ignorance, tyranny, slavery these things are aU
like contagious diseases. It's no good saying that it's all
right as long as toe can read, or as long as toe are bee to
worship as we please, or as kmg as we can speak our minds,
or join labor unions, or be sore of a fair trial, or as long as
we have enough to eat Slavery and tyranny, fifce measles
and smallpox, are catching. Hie people who are not alowad
to read newspapers or hear the radio, wlx> are not allowed
to go to school, who are not allowed to have a fedar trial
these carry their ignorance and their fears and anger
around with them, and spread them- The people who are
poor and hungry and miserable spread their envies and
their hatreds and their greeds, ...

226 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Just as a disease will spread from house to house and
town to town, so poverty and injustice spread from people
to people and from country to country. Trouble in Cuba
means trouble all over South America and in the United
States too. Warfare and terror in the Congo mean trouble
all over Africa and in Europe and America too. If the
white people of South Africa or of Alabama are unjust to
the colored people, that injustice is felt by colored people
everywhere in the world. If the little children of India
haven't enough to eat, if the children of Bolivia don't go
to school, if the children of the Arab countries are sickly
and crippled, sooner or later the children of Denmark and
Canada and Australia will feel the bad effects.

Three hundred years ago a great poet put this as well
as it has ever been put. "No man," he said, "is an island
entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent. . . .
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
Mankind."

All of us are involved in mankind. Whatever hurts other
people hurts us, too, and in very real and practical ways,
like the spread erf slums in the big cities. It hurts us, too, in
moral ways. For if it is bad not to share your food with a
starving child who stands in front of you, it is j'ust as bad
not to help starving children in distant India. If it is cow-
ardly not to try to help one boy when he is attacked by a
gang of bullies, it is just as cowardly not to help men who
are attacked by bullies or soldiers in South Africa. We have
to help people everywhere, for their sakes, and for our own
safces as well, because we are all "involved in Mankind."

There's another thing about all these rights we have been
discussing. They are all tied together. Each one of them is
part of a network of rights. When you stop to think of it,
that is not at all surprising; it is the common sense of the
matter. Think how all your own rights (you don't call
them that, of course, because you take them for granted)
axe all tied together: the right to go to school, the right to

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

read, to talk, to play, to have enough to eat all of these
are part of your way of living.

All our rights are not only tied together; they are de-
pendent on each other.

It's no use being free to say whatever you want, if you
haven't anything to say.

It's no use being free to read, if you can't read.

It's no use being free to work at whatever job you like
best, if there aren't any jobs at alL

And all the freedom in the world won't help you if you
are driven out of your country and can't find asylum any-
where.

You must have noticed, as you read these stories of hur
man rights, that many of the leading characters could have
shifted their roles about from one story to another with
the greatest of ease. After all, Tom Paine belongs in the
story of freedom of religkm, or of fair trial, or of asylum,
as well as in the story of free speech. Tlieodore Paifcer, too,
belongs in the story of free speech or freedom of religion
just as much as in the story of the straggle against sbray.
Jane Addams pkys a leading rote in the struggle for &&
rights of children, the rights of women, fair trial, the strug-
gle for peace, the rigfct of asylum almost everything. Or
look at the story of the Htigi^nofe. We toid thai story as
part of the rigjht of asyfam. But ft is a chapter in tibe htstay
of religions freedom because tiie Hogaeaois wera not al-
lowed to worslrip as they wished It Is a c&apter to the
story of free speech, because &e BtagaeDOts were silenced.
It is a chapter In the stoiy of fak trial, as we kaow ham
the history of tbfe fftiftd Jean Calas. . . * And so it goes
with efveay one of these.

destinies of a! people are eeimectei AH human

'IZJ* ml \T watv ^rwvmnsn&w***

Tliese are Bee some giant Bet Tie strands &at go one
way ffire made np of people; the strands tbat go ibe cAer
way axe made up of their rights. And each one is tied to-

228 CKUSADEBS FOR FREEDOM

gether with all the others by a hundred knots. Cut the net
in any one place, cut the knots that tie up people to their
rights, and the whole net will unravel.

The only way to make sure that people are safe and that
rights are safe is to tie all the knots firmly. The only way to
make sure that everybody has fair play is to make all 'the
rights universal.

That is what the United Nations is trying to do.

Even while the great war against Hitler was still raging,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was thinking and planning
for the world that was ahead.

How were the people of the world to avoid another war
a war which might wipe them all out of existence? How
were they to avoid those injustices and fears and hatreds
that make wars?

Out of President Roosevelt's thinking and planning, and
the thinking and planning of hundreds of other men and
women in many countries, came the United Nations.

The United Nations has two grand purposes just as all
governments have two grand purposes.

The first purpose is to keep order and keep the peace.

The second purpose is to take care of the welfare of
ordinary men and women.

In 1945, out in San Francisco, spokesmen for fifty coun-
tries came together and created the United Nations. Soon
it moved to New York, and it grew and grew, until today
it has one hundred members. ... If you go to New York
you will visit it: the tall gleaming building, on the shore of
the East River, the great library and the conference build-
ings; the splendid meeting halls with their handsome wall
paintings; the hundreds of delegates from all countries,
many of them dressed in their native costumes, thronging
the corridors and sitting rooms. . * . There it is, the great
monument to peace*

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 229

But the United Nations does more than try to keep the
peace. It does a hundred other things as well. It feeds
hungry children and teaches farmers how to grow more
grain; it stamps out dangerous diseases; acts as a court of
law when nations quarrel with each other; sets standards
of work hours and conditions of work all around the
globe; wipes out illiteracy. . . . What does the United Na-
tions not do?

But what of rights? What of the rights of man?

How was the United Nations to see to it that men and
women everywhere were secure in their freedoms? What
could it do to protect them in the exercise of their rights?

That's what people were asking all over the world the
men and women who had been fighting for long years for
their rights and for the rights of their fellow men.

What of the rights of man?

That is what Eleanor Roosevelt was asking.

Nobody in our time has done more for the rights of laeaot
and women and children than Mrs. Roosevelt No cme has
had the freedom of the peoples of the earth more closely
at heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt is one of those wonderful people who
could fit into any one of the chapters in the story of human
rights. Free speech? She has always championed the right
of the poor and neglected to speak their minds. Once she
tried to speak in a town owned by a coal-mining company.
They had forbidden her to speak on tibeir land, so she
went to the United States Post Office and stood on the
steps theare and gave her speech. That was United Stales
property and nobody could stop free speech theace. Mrs.
Roosevelt thought that every spot oa eartib ought to be jest
that free.

Was ft the rights of worsen and chikfeea? Afl her Kfe^
from the time she was a young social woifcer la tlie slams of

CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

New York City, Eleanor Roosevelt has taken special care
of women and children. She is like Jane Addams; she thinks
that women should have all the rights of men and that
children should have all the rights and all the love that
there is to have.

Was it freedom from slavery? She has gone all over the
world to every continent and almost every country seek-
ing out those who were oppressed and abused, and speak-
ing up for them, pleading their cause, helping them out
into die bright light of freedom. And everywhere in the
world she is known and loved because she thinks that all
men and women, of all colors and races, are equal in the
sight of God and should have equal rights.

When she was a little girl her grandmother used to say
to her: TEleanor, you are a girl, and I expect you to be
more sensible and more thoughtful than your brothers."
More was expected of girls than of boys; more was expected
of women than of men: she learned that from the beginning
and she has acted on that belief all her life.

She learned something else, too. Remember how people
like Fridtjof Nansen and Jane Addams and Charles Brace
felt that they had a special obligation to the poor and the
unfortunate just because they were so well off and so fortu-
nate? Mrs. Roosevelt felt that too.

For Eleanor Roosevelt, like so many of the champions of
the poor and the oppressed like Wendell Phillips and Jane
Addams was born lucky. She belonged to one of New
York's great families; when she was still a little girl her
uncle Iteodore was President of the United States. She
was educated by governesses and in English schools; she
traveled in England and all over Europe. When she came
home ft was to many her handsome cousin Franklin every-
body knew that he was a young man with a great future*
That meant that in time she was the wife of die governor
of New York; then the wife of the President of the United
States-tibe oaly President to be elected more than twice.
* . . Between the two of them, her uncle and her husband,

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 231

the Roosevelts were in the White House for twenty
years!

Eleanor Roosevelt now we should call her Mrs. Roose-
veltwas born to be First Ladythe First Lady of the
United States and, in time, the First Lady of the world.

What was it that made her the protector of the poor and
the oppressed in every land? What was it that made her
the spokesman for all those who had no other spokesmen?
What was it that made her the champion of peace and of
justice everywhere?

More than anything else, it was the fact that she never
thought of herself. She never thought that she was impor-
tant. She never thought what kind of a figure she would
cut There was no work that was too ordinary for her she
was like Jane Addams in that: she would dandle babies on
her knee, or make lemonade at a children's party, or drive
long hours to little towns where she addressed some youth
encampment Never was there a more unselfish crusader.
She treated everybody alike; if she made tea for the Queen
of England she could make it for a group of Gid Scouts
who came to call on her; if she could speak to the great of
the world in the United Nations, she could speak at some
high school in Oklahoma* Her whole life reminds us of
that wonderful line from the English poet George Herbert:

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy lai&s,
Makes that and tK action fme.

The United Nations would not be complete until ft Bad
done something to protect the rigjhts o men and women
in all lands: that much was dear.

What to do?

President Trnrrum asfced Mrs, Roosevelt to represent tibe
United States in tibe new United Natioas, and of oorase
die agreed she always agreed to do whatever looked like
her duty. And besides, she thoogjht, what a chance to striae
a Mow for the rights of man!

232 CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

That's just what the other delegates to the United Na-
tions thought too: what a chance for the rights of man. Put
Mrs. Roosevelt on the job. * . . And they did. In no time
at all she was giving most of her time to human rights. The
United Nations decided to draw up a Declaration of Hu-
man Rights, and they made Mrs. Roosevelt chairman of
the committee to draw up the Declaration.

What were the rights of man?

Not as easy as you might think, that question. Just think
how hard it is to get white people and Negroes in Missis-
sippi to agree on basic rights. Itiink how hard it is to get
members of a labor union and their employers to agree on
basic rights. Yet they all live in the same country, they
have all gone to the same schools, they have all studied
the same Bill of Rights, Then think how hard it is to get
Americans and Russians, Frenchmen and Algerians, Israelis
and Egyptians, to agree on basic rights!

But Mrs. Roosevelt was firm and patient, and kept ever-
lastingly at it No matter how much the members of her
committee wrangled, she never seemed to get tired or angry.
Sometimes she kept the delegates there for hours on end,
until they finally hammered out some kind of agreements.
The Russians wanted one thing, the Indians another, the
Africans still another. . . And everything had to be trans-
lated into English and French-Mrs. Roosevelt found her-
self even doing that and then it had to be explained and
discussed and discussed and explained.

But gradually it all took shape. As Mrs. Roosevelt and
her committee moved back and forth from New York to
Geneva, from Geneva to Paris, from Paris back to New
Yoik, the members learned to understand one another and
to realize that they had common purposes. After all, the
sentiment for fair play is pretty much the same everywhere
in the world, and much of human rights comes down to
that: fair pky.

In the end the committee came up with:

THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 233

A UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
What did it say?

All human beings are born free and equal

All have the rights of life and liberty and security

All are free; none are slaves

All are equal in the eyes of the law

All must have a fair trial

All have the right to privacy

All are free to travel

All have a right of asylum

All have a right to marry and raise a family

All have a right to own property

All have a right to free thought and to free speech

All have a right to worship freely

All have a right to join or not to join-clubs and parties

All have the right to take part in the politics and govern-

ment of their country
All have a right to work at fair wages
All have a right to join trade unions
All have a right to rest and to play
All have a right to food and drink, clothes and shelter
All have a right to security in sickness or in old age
All have a right to an education in school and out of school

What a long list

It adds up to something pretty familiar to the rights
that Thomas Jefferson wrote into the Declaration erf Inde-
pendence: IJfe, liberty OIK! the Pursuit of Happiness,

So now there was a universal Bill of Rights,

First renaember? there had been the Qceat Charles of

Then came the charters of freedom in America and in
England the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641, and
the Kngtkfr Bill of Rights in 1689, and then the famous
Bills of Rights of Virginia and Massachusetts and all the
other states, and then the Bffl of Rights in the United Stales

234 CBUSADERS FOR FREEDOM

Constitution. Then the French caught the idea and had
their own Declaration of the Rights of Man Jefferson
helped write it and after that almost all of the new states
that came swimming into history, in Europe and South
America, added their Bills of Rights,

Now at last, in the year 1948, a Bill of Rights for all peo-
ple everywhere in the world.

Now we are through.

With this book Yes. Books must come to an end.

With this story. No. A story like this never comes to an
end. You can't win human rights once and for all as you
win a baseball game, for instance. They have to be won
over and over again. "Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty** yes, eternal vigilance. Even in free countries like
the United States or France or India the rights of man are
always in danger. Even in these countries there are always
some who do not really believe in human rights anyway,
not for other people. Even here there are some who want to
silence free speech, or deny the vote to Negroes, or refuse
freedom of worship to those they dislike.

And, besides, there are always new rights to be won.
There is a great universe of human rights to be explored it
is like the universe of space, it is like the universe of science.
We can never hope to know everything about space or to
conquer the whole of it. We can never hope to learn all
the secrets of science. We can never hope to exhaust all
the beauty of the world, or all the philosophy. And we can
never hope to master all rights, all freedoms*

There are always new worlds to conquer.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA.
MABCH 15

AMHERST, MASS.
MAY 15

INDEX

Adams, John Quincy, 33-34; a* 3 " 1 Meadi Negroes, 213-15

Adams, Samuel, 34

Addams, Jane, 101-8

Alcott, Bronson, 117, 119-^1

Alton, 111., S 1 -^ 35

American Anti-Slavery Society, 70

Amistad, the, 211-12

Andersen, Hans Christian, 88-91, 117

Anthony, Daniel, 158

Anthony, Susan B., 158-60, 168-70

Armenians, Nansen aids, 190

Ashley, Lord Anthony, 94-9?

Asylum, defined, 175

Austin, Attorney General James, 34

Barfioldi, Fr&Mric, 183
Bayard, Judith, 180
Bffl f or ReKgtocis Freedcan, 58-59
Bffl <rf Bi^bts, -6o
BlackweH, Rev. Antoin^te Brown,
BladhroD, EBzabrfb, 1^-68
Bladcw^l, Hary, 165
BladcwdB, I>. Samcrf, 166
Boston, as education city,

INDEX

Boston Latin School, isa.

Brace, Charles Loring, 97, 100-1

Bradford, William, 43

Brown, John, on Harriet Tubman, 79

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, on child labor, 96

Galas, Donat, 207, stoQ
Galas, Jean, 2*057
Galas, Mark, 205-6
Calvert, Lord, 40
Carroll, Lewis, 117

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, 208
Catholics, and freedom of worship, 40
Catt, Carrie Chapman, 16870
Channing, Rev* William Ellery, 33-35
Charles II, King of England, 51
Charles IX, King of France, 53
Child labor, 92^-97
Children's Aid Society, 100
Children's Bureau, 107
Church of England, 42; power of, 57
Cinque, six 16
demenceau, Georges, ^17
Clinton, DeWitt, 16*

Coffin, Levi, and Underground Railroad, 75-77
Gome-outers, the, 49
Common Sense (Paine), 18
Cousin, Victor, 1^9
Crandall, Prudence, 68
The (Paine), 19

Declaration of Human Rights, MI 35
Declaration of Independence, 55
DeviFs Island., sx6
Douglass, Frederick, 157-^58
Dreyfus, Alfred,

Einstein, Albert, 194
Emancipation Proclamation, 82
Erskine, Thomas, aa

INDEX 237

Fair trial, 197-220

Faneuil Hall, 35-34

Faneuil, Peter, 34

Folk High School, 132-35

Franklin, Benjamin, 17, 128

Frederick the Great of Prussia, 208

Freedom from slavery, 61-84

Freedom of religion, 37-60

Freedom of speech, 13-36

Freneau, Philip, 181

Fresh Air Fund, 100

Friends, Society of, 49. See also Quakers

Friends of Freedom, 26

Froebel, Friedrich, 104, 116-19

Frost, John, 23

Fuller, Margaret, 161

Garrett, Thomas, 68-69

Garrison, William Lloyd, 27, 69-70

Gibhs, Josiah, 213

Greeley, Horace, 166

Grundtvig, Nicholas Svend, 131-35

Hardy, Thomas, 25-26

Harvard, John, 122

Hitler, Adolf, 194

Huguenots, 176-81; and freedom of warship, 40; persecution of,

204-10

Hull House, 103 ff.
Hutchinson, Anne, 47

Indians, Williams* treatment of, 47
Israel, as asylum, 191-96

Jay, John, 180

Jefferson, Ttomas, 53-59; on slavery, 67
Jews, persecution* of, 192-94; Portuguese, 40
John, long of England, 202

238 INDEX

Kemal Mustafa, igo
Keppel, Admiral, 24
Kindergarten, first, 118-19
Kold, Christen, 133-35

Lathrop, Julia, 107

Laubach, Frank, 143-47

Lazarus, Emma, 183

Lewis and Clark, 55

Liberator, the, 27, 30, 33, 70

Library of Congress, 54

Lincoln, Abraham, as Great Emancipator, 80-83; on Rev. Parker,

71; on slavery, 66
Lion, the, 44

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 180
Loring, Ellis Gray, 213
Louis XIV, King of France, 176-77
Louis XV, King of France, 208
Lovejoy, Elijah, 28-33
Lowell, James Russell, 27
Lyon, Mary, 163-65

Madison, James, 58-60

Magna Carta, 202

Mann, Horace, 123-28

Mann, Thomas, 194

Marion, Gen. Francis, 181

Mass Education Movement, 139-41

Mayflower, the, 43

Mendi Negroes, 211-15

Minuit, Peter, 180

Moofcez, Sefior, 211-13

Minuit, Peter, 180

Monticello, 54

Moros, the, 144-45

Mott, Lucretia, 155-57

Mount Hofyoke College, 164-65

Nausen, Fridtjof, 183-91
Nansen passports, 188
Nkias, 64

INDEX 239

Noblesse oblige, defined, 95
Normal schools, 126
Noyes Academy, 68

Oastler, Richard, 92-93
Oberlin College, 163
Olmsted, Frederick Law, 97
Otis, James, 34

Paine, Thomas, 16-27

Parker, Theodore, 70-73

Penn, Admiral William, 48, 50-51

Penn, William, and freedom of worship, 40, 48-52

Pennsylvania, 52

Pericles, on freedom, 84

Pestalozzi, Johann, 117-18

Philadelphia, as "City of Brotherly Love," 52

Phillips, Wendell, 34-35

Pilgrims, and freedom of worship, 40, 43

Pitt, William, 22, 25

Pizarro, Francisco, 53

Presbyterians, and freedom of worship, 40

Protestant, defined, 49

Puritans, and freedom of worship, 40, 49

Quakers, and freedom of worship, 40, 49-52; against slavery, 68

Religion, freedom of, 39-60

Revoke, Apollos de, 180

Rhode Island, 46-48

Right of asylum, 173-96

Rights of children, 85-112

Rights of Man, The (Paine), 21-27

Rights of women, 149-72

Right to learn, 113-48

Roosevelt, Eleanor; 229-33

Roosevelt, Franklin D^ 228

Ruiz, Senor, 211-13

Sadler, Thomas, 9^-93

St. Bartholomew Massacre, 53

Salem, Mass., 44-45

240 INDEX

Sandburg, Carl, 101
Sandwich, Lord, 23-24
Sarmiento, Domingo, 128-30
Seekers, the, 49

Seneca Falls Declaration of Independence, 151, 157-58
Separatists, the, 49

Slavery, beginnings of in America, 64-67; Jefferson on, 67; Lin-
coln on, 66; Lovejoy denounces, 29-33
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, The ( Addams), 105
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 153-60, 168, 169
Statue of Liberty, 182
Stockdale, John, 24
Stone, Lucy, 165-66
Story, Joseph, 215
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 77

Taft, William Howard, 107

Tappan, Lewis, 212

Tecora, the, 211

Temple School, 120-21

Toussaint L'Ouverture, Pierre Dominique, 224

Treasurer, the, 65

Tubman, Harriet, 77-79

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe), 77

Underground Railroad, 75-77

UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency

Fund), 109-12

United Nations, purpose of, 228-29
University of Virginia, 54

Voltaire, Franois Marie Arouet de, 207-10

Whitney, EH, 65

Wfflard, Emma, 161-63

Williams, Roger, 42, 44-48; and freedom of worship, 40

Worid War H, and children, 109

Yen, Yang Chu, 135-42
Zola, Fertile, 216-17

105319