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WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
HISTORICAL
The Romance of American Expansion
Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road
PSYCHOLOGICAL
The Riddle of Personality
Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters
Scientific Mental HeaHng
MARTHA WASHINGTON.
From the paintin? by Woolaston.
Frontispiece.
Woman in the Making
of America
BY
H. ADDINGTON BRUCE
Illustrated
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1912
Ker-
Copyright, 1912,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1912
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. 8IMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
€CI.A327194 (K^
I
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MRS. KATHERINE F. BOWES
OF BOSTON
ONE OF THE NOBLE ARMY OF AMERICAN WOMEN
WHOSE LIVES, UNKNOWN TO HISTORY, HAVE BEEN
A FORCEFUL INFLUENCE IN THE STRENGTHENING
OF THE NATION, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
PREFACE
The present volume is an outgrowth of
studies I have for some years been making
for a general history of the political, economic,
social, and territorial expansion of the United
States. The more I became acquainted with
the facts of the national evolution, the more
I was impressed by the part woman has
had therein. In the determination of grave
constitutional and moral issues, such as those
which led to the War for Independence and
the Civil War; in the great migratory move-
ment by which the people of the seaboard
colonies and their descendants conquered the
Alleghany mountain barrier, pressed forward
into the Mississippi Valley, and thence in
time advanced to the Rocky Mountains, and
beyond the Rockies to the shore of the Pacific
[vii]
PREFACE
Ocean; in the growth of commerce and in-
dustry, of culture, of education — in all these,
and in every other phase of the nation's history,
I found women playing an active part, and
exercising a tremendous influence. I also
found that nowhere was there available a
continuous record of what woman has contrib-
uted to the upbuilding of the Republic, from
the earliest to the latest times; and I deter-
mined, if the opportunity offered, to do some-
thing in the way of supplying such a record,
both as a matter of simple historical justice
and because of the unquestionable historical
importance of the subject.
I do not pretend that in this book I have told
in full the story of woman's work in America.
To do that would have required many volumes,
and would have necessitated far-extending
researches for which I could never have hoped
to find the time. My aim has been simply
to indicate the various directions in which
woman's activities have been most beneficial;
[ viii 1
PREFACE
to help in making the present generation better
acquainted with some of the great American
women of other times; and to provide, as it
were, a starting-point from which some future
historian may proceed to present a far more
detailed record than I have found possible.
Even as it is, the preparation of this little
volume has been no light task, so manifold
are the sources to which I have been obliged
to resort — State papers, family records, mem-
oirs, biographies, books of travel, special his-
tories, publications of learned societies, etc.
That I have been able to carry my labors
to completion is largely owing to the courtesy
of the authorities of Harvard University Li-
brary, who have given me, since I began my
explorations in the field of American history,
the readiest access to their rich storehouse of
historical material.
For much helpful information I also owe a
debt of gratitude to officers of the General
Federation of Women's Clubs, the American
[ix]
PREFACE
Civic Association, the National Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, and other organ-
izations. But most of all I am indebted to my
wife, herself an embodiment of the best in
American womanhood, for many invaluable
suggestions, and still more for the stimulus of
a companionship that has been a constant
inspiration to literary endeavor.
H. Addington Bruce.
Cambridge, Mass., May, 1912.
x]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface vii
I. In the Time of the Founding . . 1
II. Later Colonial Belles and House-
wives 44
III. The Women of the Revolution . 81
IV. Heroines of the Westward Move-
ment 115
V. The Struggle over Slavery . . 156
VI. Woman's Work in the Civil War . 188
VII. The Women of To - day ... 224
Index 253
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Martha Washington . . . Frontispiece
From the painting by Woolaston .
PAGE
Monument to Hannah Duston, Haverhill,
Massachusetts 15
The Hannah Robinson House, Saunders-
town, Rhode Island 59
Old Indian Fort near Newmanstown,
Pennsylvania 72
Deborah Sampson 92
From an old engraving.
Fort Henry 127
From an old wood engraving.
*' Mother " Bickerdyke 207
From an engraving.
Julia Ward Howe in 1865 .... 214
From a photograph.
WOMAN IN THE MAKING
OF AMERICA
CHAPTER I
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
WHEN Alexis de Tocqueville made his
celebrated tour of the United States,
one of the things which most deeply impressed
him was the respect paid to the women of the
country. " In the United States," he after-
wards wrote, " men seldom compliment women,
but they daily show how much they esteem
them. They constantly display an entire
confidence in the understanding of a wife, and
a profound respect for her freedom."
Other foreign visitors have since made the
same discovery, and have usually commented
o^ it with an air of surprise. But to anybody
[1]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
acquainted with what may be called the inner
history of the United States — with the forces
that have contributed to its steady growth and
progress — there is nothing surprising in the
attitude of American men toward American
women. It is largely the expression of an in-
herited and instinctive appreciation of the
notable part woman has played in shaping
the destinies of America. De Tocqueville
himself had at least a glimmering of this
truth. "If I were asked," he declared em-
phatically, " to what the singular prosperity
and growing strength of the American people
ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply
— to the superiority of their women."
Unfortunately, historians have not seen fit
to bring into clear relief the wonderful person-
alities and glowing achievements of the women
whose lives have counted for so much in the
making of the United States. They have had
a great deal to say about the forefathers of
America, but comparatively little about the
[2]
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
foremothers. So that while the Americans of
to-day, like the Americans of de Tocqueville's
time, instinctively respect and appreciate the
American woman, they have no very definite
knowledge of what she has meant to the national
development.
Not everybody realizes, for instance, that
the foundation stone of the great republic —
the English colonization of America — was
successfully laid only by the help of a little
company of women. Yet this is one of the
best-authenticated facts in the history of
America's infancy.
As is well known, the earliest permanent
English settlement was established at James-
town in 1607. Unlike the Pilgrims and the
Puritans, who followed them a few years later,
the first colonists did not come to the Amer-
ican wilds because of religious persecution at
home. They were sent out by a commercial
corporation, the Virginia Company, which
expected to reap rich profits by developing
[3]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the resources of the New World. In fact, the
great motive for the enterprise was the hope
of finding gold and silver mines.
This failing, the settlers turned to the cul-
tivation of tobacco, and were soon exporting
it in great quantities to England, where it
found a ready market at high prices. But
though rapidly making money for themselves
as well as for the Virginia Company, they were
far from satisfied. They suffered greatly from
the climate, and still more from the mismanage-
ment of the authorities placed over them. They
got on none too well with their Indian neigh-
bors. Most of all, they missed the joys of
domestic life, the welcoming smiles and warm
greetings of wives and children after the day's
work was done.
Not a woman had accompanied them from
the old country. In the following year two
arrived, a Mistress Forrest and her maid,
Anne Burras. Eager suitors quickly laid siege
to the latter, whose marriage to John Laydon
14]
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
is memorable as the first English wedding in
the New World. Otherwise, for more than ten
years, the colonists were virtually dependent
on Indian squaws for feminine society.
In vain they begged the Virginia Company
to promote the emigration of women who should
make them wives. No attention was paid
to their petitions and complaints, and they
constantly grew more restless, discontented,
and unhappy. All the while, too, misgovern-
ment increased, until at last they were ready
to rise in open rebellion.
Just at this time, a group of patriotic and
far-sighted Englishmen obtained control of
the Virginia Company. At their head was the
liberty-loving Sir Edwin Sandys, who, if any
one man is deserving of the honor, may fairly
be called the founder of the United States.
Sandys saw clearly that the colony could not
thrive without self-government, and he drew
up a plan which resulted in the creation of the
Virginia House of Burgesses, the first really
[5]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
representative American legislative body. He
also saw that self-government was not enough,
that in order to build up a sound social organ-
ization the colonists must have the helpmates
they so insistently demanded.
" We must find them wives," he bluntly
told his associates, " in order that they may
feel at home in Virginia." ^
A scheme that makes curious reading to-day
was soon devised. The Virginia Company
undertook to advance the passage-money of
the prospective brides, but every successful
suitor among the colonists was to pay to the
company one hundred and twenty pounds of
" best leaf tobacco," and no one was eligible
to become a suitor unless he could prove that
he had the means to support a wife.
Under these conditions ninety " young, hand-
some, honestly educated maids, of honest life
and carriage," were induced to take ship for
1 "The Records of the Vh*ginia Company of London,"
vol. i, p. 269.
[61
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
Virginia. They did not know, as we now know,
that by thus adventuring with fate they were
helping to lay the foundations of one of the
greatest nations in the history of the world.
They were merely poor but worthy girls,
prayerfully hopeful that they would find good
husbands among the strangers over the
water.
And in this they were not disappointed.
The early Virginians shared to the full the
feeling so well expressed by good old Gov-
ernor Spottswood a century later: "Whoever
brings a poor gentlewoman into so soli-
tary a place from all her friends and ac-
quaintances, would be ungrateful not to use
her with all possible tenderness." Such was
the welcome given the " leaf tobacco " brides,
and so fondly were they cherished by the
men whom they married, that they soon wrote
home enthusiastically advising others to follow
their example. More brides came, and still
more, and after them whole families. There
[7]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
was no longer any danger that Virginia would
be a failure. Saved from the state of " soli-
tary uncouthness," as one planter termed it, the
settlers turned with contentment to their
daily tasks and to their self-imposed mission
of winning the wilderness for civilization.
As in Virginia, so in every colony. Whether
they came with the first or with later arrivals,
women exercised a refining, ennobling, and in-
spiring influence, bringing out the best that
was in their husbands and sons, and sharing
without a murmur the hardships inevitable
in the opening up of a new country. When
they left their native land, they had no illusions
about the life that lay before them. They
knew it would be rough, harsh, and dangerous,
and that it would mean unending hazard and
labor. But they faced it courageously for
the sake of those they loved.
The picture of the Pilgrim mothers, falling
upon their knees on the deck of the Mayflower to
thank God for a safe journey, and then going
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
ashore to wash clothes,^ is eloquently descrip-
tive of the spirit shown by all the women of
early America. They had come not for a life
of ease, but to play their part earnestly in
the home-making for the men.
There was no task, however difficult or un-
pleasant, from which they shrank. When
occasion demanded they willingly went into
the fields to break the ground, sow seed, or
aid in harvesting the ripened grain. They lent
a hand in the actual building of the rude log
cabins that sheltered them; and, in Pennsyl-
vania, in burrowing out the caves in which the
Quaker pioneers took refuge along the banks
of the Delaware River. As Deborah Morris
tells us, in her narrative of the experiences
of her aunt, Elizabeth Hard:
" All that came wanted a dwelling and
hastened to provide one. As they lovingly
helped each other, the women even set them-
selves to work that they had not been used to
1 " Mourt's Relation," p. 12 (H. M, Dexter's edition).
[91
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
before; for few of the first settlers were of
the laborous class, and help of that source was
scarce. My good aunt thought it expedient
to help her husband at the end of the saw, and
to fetch all such water to make such kind of
mortar as they then had to build their chimney."
This was a typical experience of the first
mothers of America, as was Mrs. Hard's un-
pleasant discovery, when she left the saw and
made ready to cook dinner, that the larder was
empty. For a moment she felt downhearted,
but only for a moment.
" Didst thou not come for liberty of con-
science.^ " she asked herself. " Hast thou
not got it, also been provided for beyond
thy expectation.'^ "
Kneeling in the tattered tent which was then
her home, she humbly begged the divine for-
giveness and aid. As she rose from her prayer,
in walked the family cat, bearing in its mouth
a fine large rabbit.^
1 A. H. Wharton's " Colonial Days and Dames," p. 68.
fioi
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
Even in these first and most painful years
there were compensations for the sacrifices
women were called on to make, and the hard-
ships they so patiently endured. They were
sure of the devotion of their husbands — the
colonial records are surprisingly free from refer-
ences to matrimonial discord — and they were
surrounded by healthy, happy, and loving
children. They had the joys that come of
living in a home of one's own, however humble.
And, in the case of those who had emigrated
for conscience' sake, they had the satisfaction
of knowing that they dwelt in communities
closely knit together by identity of religious
belief.
Thus it was that, no matter how hard the lines
in which their lives were cast, the American pio-
neer women were able to make the American
pioneer home a center from which cheerfulness
and sunshine unfailingly radiated. This, it need
scarcely be said, meant much to the men, and
so did the rugged, virile qualities which their
fill
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
wives and sisters and daughters displayed in
times of great emergency.
The severest demands were made, of course,
on those colonists who pressed forward from
the settlements by the sea into the lonely
depths of the inland forests. Here they were
menaced not only by wild beasts but by the
enmity of the native inhabitants, who, friendly
enough at first, soon began to resent any further
invasion of their ancestral lands. In face of this
double danger, the women showed themselves
no less resolute and courageous than the men.
They learned the art of molding bullets and
loading muskets, and how to use all manner
of weapons of defense. Many of them became
expert shots. And when the Indians at last
took the war-path in earnest, and raged along
the border with torch and scalping-knife, they
met a brave resistance from countless heroines.
Nor did defeat, the slaughter of their loved ones,
and their own captivity, break the spirit of
the dauntless frontiers women.
fl21
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
Perhaps the most striking illustration of
the truth of this is to be found in the story of
Hannah Duston.^
When King William's War was at its height,
a band of Canadian Indians swooped down on
the Massachusetts settlement of Haverhill,
killed nearly thirty of the inhabitants, and made
prisoners of thirteen women and children.
Among the captives were Mrs. Duston and
her new-born babe, whose wailing a heartless
warrior soon stilled forever by snatching the
helpless infant from its mother's arms and beat-
ing it to death against a tree. Others of the
prisoners, who could not keep up with the ter-
rific pace set by the raiders as they retreated
toward Canada, were ruthlessly tomahawked.
And when, at nightfall, the survivors sank
wearily to the ground, and gaspingly prayed
that God would preserve them, they were
mocked with derisive laughter.
1 S. G. Drake's " Indian Wars," pp. 315-317 (Edition of
1837).
[131
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" What need you trouble yourselves? " jeered
the Indians. " If your God will have you de-
livered, it shall be so."
Finally, after several days of the hardest
travel, the war-party broke up into several small
detachments, among which the prisoners were
distributed. Mrs. Duston,a friend of hers named
Mary Neff, and a young boy fell to the lot of
a chief who tauntingly informed the unhappy
women that he intended making them " run
the gauntlet " in an Indian village just across
the border. In their enfeebled condition, this
was the same as sentencing them to death,
and at once Mrs. Duston came to a desperate
resolution.
" Look you," she told Mrs. Neff, " we are
dead women unless we now escape. And we
can escape only over the bodies of our masters.
We must kill them to-night, or perish our-
selves."
Taking the boy, Samuel Leonardson, into
her confidence, she asked him to find
[14]
MONUMENT TO HANNAH DUSTON, HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS.
Page 15.
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
out just how to kill by a single blow. Brave
and quickwitted, young Samuel readily
gained this knowledge from an unsuspecting
Indian.
" He told me to * strike here/ " he whispered
to Mrs. Duston, at the same time laying a
finger on his temple. Grimly she nodded, and
counted the minutes till sunset.
That night while the Indians — ten or twelve
in all, including some squaws — were slumber-
ing soundly about their camp-fire on the bank
of the Merrimac, the two women and the boy
rose stealthily to their feet. Like avenging
furies they bent over the sleepers, tomahawk
in hand, and dealt blow after blow in rapid
and fatal succession. The very Indian who had
shown the boy how to make death swift and
silent was the first to die under his pupil's tom-
ahawk. None escaped except one young In-
dian lad and a squaw, who, badly wounded,
ran screaming into the forest.
Then followed the gory work of scalping
[15]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the dead — for Mrs. Duston was nothing if
not thorough, and she knew that without the
ghastly trophies no one would believe her tale
— and after this a canoe was launched and the
homeward voyage begun.
It is pleasant to be able to add that the
daring trio reached Haverhill in safety, though
half dead from fatigue and hunger; that the
news of their exploit sped like wild-fire through
the colonies; that the Great and General
Court of Massachusetts voted all three of
them a goodly reward; and that even the gov-
ernor of faraway Maryland sent a pewter
tankard to Mrs. Duston as evidence of his ad-
miration for the pluck, resourcefulness, and
self-reliance she had shown.
On a different order but similarly illustra-
tive of the tragic experiences and sterling
characteristics of the women of early New
England, is the story of the captivity of Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson as told by herself in one
of the most remarkable narratives coming to
116]
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
us from those long-gone times. ^ Mrs. Rowland-
son was the wife of the Reverend Joseph Row-
landson, pastor at Lancaster, Massachusetts,
a settlement which, in February, 1676, was
raided and laid in ashes by a large body of
Nashua and Nipmuck Indians under the leader-
ship of one of the chief lieutenants of the re-
doubtable King Philip. The red men, as was
their custom, attacked the place soon after
dawn, and those of the settlers who had time
to do so fled for protection to the Rowlandson
house, the largest in Lancaster. After burning
the outlying cabins and killing a number of
fugitives whom they intercepted, Mrs. Row-
landson tells us, in language that could scarcely
be improved as a vivid portrayal of the horrors
of the raid :
" At length they came and beset our house;
^ " The Soveraignty and Goodness of God, Together
with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed. Being a
Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson, Written by her own Hand for her private
Use, and now made Public at the earnest Desire of some
Friends." First printed in 1682.
[17]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
and quickly it was the dolefullest day that
mine eyes ever saw.
" The house stood up on the edge of a hill.
Some of the Indians got behind the hill, others
into the barn, and others behind anything that
would shelter them; from all which places they
shot against the house, so that the bullets
seemed to fly like hail; and quickly they
wounded one man among us, then another, and
then a third.
" About two hours, according to my ob-
servation in that amazing time, they had been
about the house before they prevailed to fire
it, which they did with flax and hemp which
they brought out of the barn. And there being
no defense about the house, only two old
flankers at two opposite corners, and one of
them not finished, they fired it once; and one
ventured out and quenched it. But they
quickly fired it again; and that took.
" Now is the dreadful hour come that I
have often heard of in the time of the war, as
[18]
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
it was the case of others; but now mine eyes
see it.
" Some in our house were fighting for their
lives, others wallowing in blood, the house on
fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen
ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out.
" Now might we hear mothers and children
crying out for themselves and one another,
' Lord, what shall we do? '
" Then I took my children and one of my
sister's girls, to go forth and leave the house;
but, as soon as we came to the door and ap-
peared, the Indians shot so thick that the
bullets rattled against the house as if one had
taken a handful of stones and threw them;
so that we were forced to give back. . . . But
out we must go, the fire increasing and coming
along behind us roaring, and the Indians ga-
ping before us with their spears and hatchets
to devour us.
" No sooner were we out of the house, but
my brother-in-law (being before wounded in
[19]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
defending the house, in or near the throat)
fell down dead; whereat the Indians scornfully
shouted and hallooed, and were presently
upon him stripping off his clothes.
" The bullets flying thick, one went through
my side, and the same (as would seem) through
the bowels and hand of my poor child in my
arms.
" One of my elder sister's children, named
William, had then his leg broken, which the
Indians perceiving knocked him on the head.
" Thus were we butchered by those merciless
heathen, standing amazed, with the blood
running down our heels.
" My eldest sister, seeing her William and
others dead, exclaimed, * Lord, let me die with
them! ' At the same moment a bullet struck
her; and she fell down dead over the threshold.
" The Indians laid hold of us, pulling me
one way and the children another, and said,
* Come, go along with us.' I told them they
would kill me. They answered, ' If I were
[20]
- IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
willing to go along with them they would not
hurt me.' "
This marked the beginning of an agonizing
captivity, during which Mrs. Rowlandson,
separated from all her children but the wounded
one, was taken from place to place in central
and western Massachusetts, and up into New
Hampshire. For the first week, despite the
pain of her own wound, she carried her stricken
child in her arms, ever praying that it would
survive. But this consolation was denied her,
the little one dying in an Indian wigwam on
the eighth night of the captivity. For two days
afterwards she hugged the tiny corpse to her
breast, until the Indians, moved to some de-
gree of pity by the sight of her intense grief,
took it forcibly from her and buried it.
And now, rallying from the shock of her
bereavement and of the terrible scenes through
which she had passed, and determining to
make every effort to rejoin her husband, who
fortunately for himself had been absent from
[21]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Lancaster the day of the raid, Mrs. Rowlandson
sought to gain the confidence of the Indians by
accompanying them without the sHghtest pro-
test in all their aimless wanderings. It was her
hope that their watchfulness might suflSciently
relax to allow her to make her escape. They
did, it is true, become friendly and kind to her;
yet at no time did an opportunity for flight
present itself. To add to her trials the food
supply began to run low, and she was soon put
on the most meagre diet. The extent to which
she suffered in this respect — but suffered un-
complainingly — may readily be inferred from
a passing reference in her narrative to a curious
adventure she had with King Philip himself,
whom she met for the first time about a month
after she had been taken prisoner.
" Philip," she says, " spoke to me to make
a shirt for his boy, which I did; for which he
gave me a shilling. I offered the money to my
mistress; but she bid me keep it, and with it
I bought a piece of horse-flesh. Afterwards
[221
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for
which he invited me to dinner. I went; and
he gave me a pancake about as big as two
fingers; it was made of parched wheat, beaten,
and fried in bear's grease ; but I thought I never
tasted pleasanter meat in my Hfe."
In the end the seeming misfortune of
starvation proved of the happiest fortune to
her. The New England authorities, spurred
to action by Mr. Rowlandson's ceaseless en-
treaties, offered King Philip a liberal reward
for her release; and Philip, himself in urgent
need of sustenance, was prompt to accept it.
Once freed, Mrs. Rowlandson made her way
to Boston, and there, with courage unabated
and rejoicing in the similarly effected liberation
of her surviving children, joined with her hus-
band in the task of upbuilding a new home.^
Courage, endurance, and independence of
spirit were, indeed, prime characteristics of
1 The Rowlandsons removed to Wethersfield, Connecticut,
in 1677, Mr. Rowlandson having been appointed pastor of
the church there.
[231
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the pioneer women in times of peace as well
as in times of war. Though, like the women of
all ages and all lands, they instinctively looked
to men for support and protection, they could,
if need be, make their own way in the world,
and make it well.
This brings us to a most interesting fact —
namely, that it is a great mistake to suppose
that the American " business woman " is a
modern product. She was present and took
a conspicuous part in the early development
of every American colony. Thus, among the
founders of Taunton in Massachusetts was a
certain Elizabeth Poole, who, according to
the inscription on her tombstone, was " a
great proprietor of the township of Taunton,
a chief promoter of its settlement." In fact,
an entry in Governor Winthrop's journal,
under date of 1637, leaves no doubt that she
was one of the first settlers in that section of
the Bay State. " This year," the entry runs,
" a plantation was begun at Tecticutt by a
[241
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
gentlewoman, an ancient maid, one Mrs. Poole.
She went late thither, and endured much hard-
ship and lost much cattle."
A nineteen-year-old girl named Elizabeth
Haddon made the long oversea journey to
open up a tract of land which her father had
secured in New Jersey, and her fame is perpet-
uated in the name of the town of Haddonfield.
Madame Mary Ferree, the widow of a French
Huguenot, was the energetic cultivator of
twenty-five hundred acres of land in Pennsyl-
vania. Governor Winthrop of New Haven, son
of the celebrated Winthrop of Massachusetts,
found one of his ablest assistants in the person
of Mrs. John Davenport, wife of the local
minister. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
boasted " merchant princesses " while they
were still little better than villages. In Vir-
ginia the records remind us of several " acute,
ingenious gentlewomen " who operated pros-
perous tobacco plantations.
But by far the most remarkable among the
[251
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
first American women of business was Mrs.
Margaret Brent of Maryland. Not only did
she win distinction as a financier, but she was
the first American " suffragette." Coming to
Maryland in 1638, she so gained the confidence
of her kinsman, Governor Leonard Calvert,
that in his will he named her as his sole execu-
trix. One of her first acts in this capacity was
to quell a budding mutiny among Maryland's
small army by selling some of the state cattle
to meet the soldiers' arrears of pay. Lord
Baltimore, the proprietor, severely reprimanded
her for thus " meddling " with affairs of govern-
ment, but the Assembly gallantly rallied to her
support. Said they, in a joint letter to the an-
gry proprietor:
" As for Mrs. Brent's undertaking and med-
dling with your Lordship's estate here. ... we
do verily believe and in conscience report that
it was better, for the colony's safety at that
time, in her hands than in any man's else in
the whole province after your brother's death.
[261
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
For the soldiers would never have treated any
other with that civility and respect, and though
they were even ready at several times to run
into mutiny yet she still pacified them, till at
the last things were brought to that strait
that she must be admitted and declared your
Lordship's attorney by an order of court (the
copy whereof is herewith enclosed) or else all
must go to ruin again, and then the second
mischief had been doubtless far greater than
the former. So that if there hath not been any
sinister use made of your Lordship's estate
by her from what it was intimated and engaged
for by Mr. Calvert before his death — as
we verily believe she hath not — then we con-
ceive from that time she rather deserved favor
and thanks from your Honor for her so much
concurring to the public safety than to be
justly liable to all those bitter invectives
you have been pleased to express against
her." 1
1 " Archives of Maryland," vol. i, pp. 238-239.
[27]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
The assemblymen themselves frowned upon
her, however, when she appeared before them
one day and insisted that, as " his lordship's
attorney," she be given vote and voice in the
House. As the report of the proceedings puts
it, in the quaint phraseology of the time:
" The Governor denied that the said Mrs.
Brent should have any vote in the House. And
the said Mrs. Brent protested against all pro-
ceedings in this present Assembly unless she
be present and have vote aforesaid." After
which, having spoken her mind, " the said
Mrs. Brent " turned on her heel, left the as-
tounded legislators staring after her, and walked
out to resume the management of her extensive
interests.
Mrs. Anne Hutchinson of Boston was another
fervent advocate of woman's rights. She has,
for that matter, been called the first American
club- woman. But her chief claim to fame rests
on the fact that she was the forerunner of an
illustrious line of American women to champion
[281
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
actively the great cause of freedom of thought
and speech.
America, it should be remembered, was not
always a land of liberty. Though its early
settlers were in the main refugees from bigotry
and oppression, they did not as a rule bring
with them any lively desire to extend to others
the toleration which they themselves had been
unable to find in the Old World. Rather, they
frequently made life most unhappy to any who
chanced to differ from them in religious and
political convictions.
This was particularly true of Massachusetts,
where the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
joined hands to build up a governmental machine
of the most despotic character. Fortunately,
the machine had hardly got well in motion
before champions of liberty arose to oppose it
and to sow in Massachusetts the seeds which
were to give such a wonderful harvest to future
generations. Prominent among the earliest
of these champions of liberty was Mrs. Hutchin-
[291
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
son, who settled at Boston with her husband in
1634.
From the first she was recognized as an
uncommonly gifted woman. Even Governor
Winthrop, who became her deadly enemy, ad-
mitted that she was " a woman of ready wit
and bold spirit." Other leaders of Boston so-
ciety, including the famous Sir Henry Vane,
were willing captives to the brilliancy of her
intellect and the charm of her manner, and
liked nothing better than to spend an afternoon
at her home at the corner of School and Wash-
ington streets. Whatever subject might be
brought up for discussion, she was always sure
to illumine it with original and piquant com-
ment. But her greatest interest was in helping
and elevating her own sex, and this eventually
led to her undoing.
So long as she confined herself to assisting
women who were in want, and nursing women
who were ill, the authorities raised no objec-
tions. But when she began to hold weekly
[301
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
meetings to which women alone were admitted,
official Boston looked at her askance. It was
rumored that theological topics of the most
delicate nature were openly debated at these
meetings, and that Mrs. Hutchinson was prop-
agating most unorthodox views.
Taking alarm, the Court determined to
investigate her doings, and upon this a pretty
storm developed. It was discovered that she
did actually hold novel theological opinions;
but it was also discovered that she had gained
a strong following, including Sir Henry Vane,
who was then governor. An attempt to pros-
ecute her resulted only in the formation of
factions, which attacked one another in noisy
controversy.
With the defeat of Sir Henry Vane for re-
election, and his departure for England, matters
took a new turn. Vane's successor, Winthrop,
was a bitter anti-Hutchinsonite, and he
promptly placed Mrs. Hutchinson on trial
as a person " not fit for our society." Said he,
[31]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
in addressing her at the opening of the
trial:
** Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as
one of those that have troubled the peace of the
commonwealth and the churches. You are
known to be a woman that hath had a great
share in the promoting and divulging of those
opinions that are causes of this trouble, and
to be nearly joined not only in aflSnity and af-
fection with some of those the court hath
taken notice of and passed censure upon, but
you have spoken divers things, as we have been
informed, very prejudicial to the honor of the
churches and ministers thereof; and you have
maintained a meeting and an assembly in your
house that hath been condemned by the
General Assembly as a thing not tolerable
nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for
your sex; and notwithstanding that was cried
down, you have continued the same."
She was brought to the bar like any ordinary ■
criminal, and mercilessly bullied and brow-
[321
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
beaten. She was denied counsel, and thrown
entirely on her own defense, and from the first
it was evident that the judges intended de-
ciding against her. For some time she parried
their questions skilfully, but at last she was
trapped into some damaging admissions,
and sentence of banishment was at once
passed.
Accompanied by her faithful husband, the
unfortunate woman sought a new home in
tolerant Rhode Island; whence, after her
husband's death, she removed to a frontier
settlement in New York, not far from New
Rochelle. There she perished in an Indian
massacre. It is said that the news of her fate
was received with grim satisfaction by her
persecutors. As the implacable Winthrop
phrased it, they felt that she had met the
just vengeance of God.
But there were women who suffered even
more severely in behalf of freedom of thought
and speech than did Mrs. Hutchinson. In
[33]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
1656 two Quakers, Ann Austin and Mary
Fisher, were seized upon their arrival in Boston,
thrown into prison, starved, stripped naked
and searched for witch-marks, and finally
shipped to Barbadoes. They were the first
representatives in Massachusetts of a sect
which claimed liberty of conscience as an in-
alienable right of the human race. The cruelty
of the reception given them did not deter others
from following their example, and before long
there was a veritable invasion of apostles of
toleration. Converts multiplied all through
the colony, while the authorities stood aghast^
rightly believing that if the Quaker ideas
prevailed, they would no longer be able to rule
with the iron hand of absolutism. Accordingly,
they enacted a series of drastic laws, culmina-
ting in one decreeing the death penalty to any
Quaker who, having once been banished,
should venture again into Massachusetts.
Among the stanchest supporters of Mrs.
Hutchinson had been a young Boston matron
[341
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
named Mary Dyer and her husband, William
Dyer. When the Hutchinsons took refuge in
Rhode Island, the Dyers followed them, set-
tling at Newport, where they soon became people
of consequence. Some years later Mrs. Dyer,
who is reported to have been of a " wonderful
sweet and pleasant discourse, having a pier-
cing knowledge in many things," made a long
visit in England. While there she became a
convert to Quakerism, and on returning to
America by way of Boston was thrown into
prison for this heinous crime. In vain she ex-
plained to the Boston magistrates that she
was simply passing through Massachusetts.
They would not release her until her husband,
who was not a Quaker, arrived from Rhode
Island and promised to take her home and allow
her to speak to no one until the Massachusetts
boundary had been reached.
This was in 1657. Two years later she was
found visiting some Quaker prisoners in Boston,
and this time she was formally banished with a
[35]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
warning that did she return the hanging law
would be enforced against her.
" That is a cruel law," said she, " and ought
to be repealed."
Within a month she was back in Boston to
demand fair treatment for the Quakers, two
of whom were lying under sentence of death.
Her own imprisonment quickly followed, and
then came a short and speedy trial.
" Mary Dyer," Governor Endicott told her
sternly, " you shall go hence to the place from
whence you came, and from thence to the place
of execution, and there be hanged until you be
dead."
" The will of the Lord be done," was all she
said. " Yea, and joyfully I go."
In the interval between her condemnation
and the day set for her execution she main-
tained the same spirit of calm fortitude, and
spent part of her time in writing an " Appeal
to the General Court in Boston " for the re-
mission not of the death sentence passed on
[361
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
her but of that previously passed on her two
fellow-sufferers. This document may well be
quoted in part, both because of its historical
importance and because of the impressive light
it throws on the beautiful character of hapless
Mary Dyer.
" Whereas," it began, " I am by many charged
with the guiltiness of my own blood; if you
mean, in my coming to Boston, I am therein
clear and justified by the Lord, in whose will
I came, who will require my blood of you, be
sure, who have made a law to take away the
lives of the innocent servants of God, if they
come among you, who are called by you,
'Cursed Quakers;' altho' I say — and am a
living witness for them and the Lord — that
He hath blessed them, and sent them unto
you. Therefore be not found fighters against
God, but let my counsel and request be ac-
cepted with you, to repeal all such laws, that
the Truth and servants of the Lord may have
free passage among you, and you be kept from
[37]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
shedding innocent blood, which I know there
are many among you would not do, if they knew
it so to be. Nor can the Enemy that stirreth
you up thus to destroy this Holy Seed, in any
measure countervail the great damage that
you will by thus doing procure. Therefore,
seeing the Lord hath not hid it from me, it
lyeth upon me, in love to your souls, thus to
persuade you.
" I have no self -ends, the Lord knoweth, for
if my life were freely granted by you, it would
not avail me, nor could I accept it of you, so
long as I should daily hear or see the sufferings
of these people, my dear Brethren and Seed, with
whom my life is bound up, as I have done these
two years. . . . Wo is me for you! Of whom
take you counsel? Search with the Light of
Christ in ye, and it will show you of whom, as
it hath done me and many more, who have been
disobedient and deceived, as now you are;
which Light, as you come into, and obeying
what is made manifest to you therein, you will
[381
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
not repent that you were kept from shedding
blood, tho* it were by a woman. It's not mine
own life I seek (for I chuse rather to suffer with
the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures
of Egypt) but the life of the Seed, which I
know the Lord hath blessed; and therefore
seeks the Enemy thus vehemently the life
thereof to destroy, as in all ages he ever did.
" Oh, hearken not unto him, I beseech you,
for the Seed's sake, which is one in all, and is
dear in the sight of God; which they that
touch, touch the apple of His eye, and cannot
escape his wrath. ... In love and in the
spirit of meekness I again beseech you, for I
have no enmity to the persons of any; but you
shall know that God will not be mocked, but
what you sow that shall you reap from Him,
that will render to everyone according to the
deeds done in the body, whether good or evil." ^
The influence of this appeal on those to
1 George Bishop's " New England Judged by the Spirit
of the Lord," pp. 288-292.
[39]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
whom it was addressed was absolutely nil.
But public opinion was fast becoming aroused
by the persecution of the Quakers, and even
the bigoted Endicott shrank from executing
the death sentence against a woman. With a
refinement of cruelty, however, it was resolved
to reprieve Mrs. Dyer only at the last moment.
Under a strong military guard, detailed lest
a rescue might be attempted, she and the two
men previously sentenced were taken to Boston
Common, where the gallows had been erected.
One after the other her companions were ex-
ecuted before her eyes; the rope was adjusted
to her neck, and she began to ascend the fatal
ladder. Then, and not till then, was she told
that it was not intended she should die.
Carried back to jail, she learned that the
reprieve was contingent on her consenting to
leave Massachusetts and promising to stay
out of it. In simple but eloquent language she
refused.
" My life," said she, " is not accepted,
[401
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
neither availeth me, in comparison with the
lives and liberty of the Truth and servants of
the living God, for which in the bowels of love
and meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless,
with wicked hands have you put two of them
to death, which makes me to feel that the
mercies of the wicked is cruelty. I rather
chuse to dye than to live, as from you, as guilty
of their innocent blood." ^
Now, however, the authorities had only
the one thought of getting her off their hands.
Despite her protests she was hurried from Boston
and escorted into Rhode Island.
For a few months nothing more was heard
from her. Then, having definitely made up
her mind that it was the Lord's will she should
combat even unto death the cruel persecution
of her fellow-religionists, she once more came
to Boston, once more was arrested, and once
more sentenced to die. This time, Endicott
assured her, the sentence would be carried out.
1 Bishop's " New England," p. 311.
[41]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" Listen, then," said she, " I came in obedi-
ence to the will of God the last General Court,
desiring thee to repeal thy unrighteous laws
of banishment on pain of death; and that same
is my work now and earnest request."
" Away with her, away with her," com-
manded Endicott.
Again, as she stood at the foot of the ladder,
she was told that she might yet save herself
by promising to go home and to remain there.
" Nay, I cannot. For in obedience to the
will of the Lord I came, and in His will I abide
faithful to the death."
Without a tremor she stepped up the ladder,
rung by rung. A great hush among the crowd,
a quick motion of the executioner's hand, and
her last moment had come.
It is many a day since Mary Dyer, martyr
of liberty, met her doom on Boston Common —
many a day since Anne Hutchinson, Margaret
Brent, Hannah Duston, Mary Rowlandson,
and all other of the worthy women of early
[421
IN THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING
America passed across the stage of life. But
the lessons they taught and the works they
wrought have never ceased to influence for
good the heart and thought of the nation.
[43]
CHAPTER II
LATER COLONIAL BELLES AND HOUSEWIVES
THERE is no period in the history of the
United States about which so Httle is
known as the first half of the eighteenth century.
Until quite recently the general historian has
never pretended to describe it in detail, but
has passed rapidly from the picturesque and
romantic time of the founding to the impress-
ive era of the Revolution. Yet, as modern in-
vestigators are beginning to make very clear, it
is a period of vital interest and significance.
It witnessed a really remarkable cultural and
intellectual development — a breaking away
from the crudities and austerities of the early
colonization, and the upbuilding of a social
structure which foreshadowed the distinctive
traits of American society to-day.
[441
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
Politically, it was marked by many occur-
rences and movements of profound importance
when viewed in the light of later events. On
the economic side, conspicuous changes took
place, chief among which was the extension
of the area of cultivation and settlement from
the coastal country to the edge of the rock-
rimmed Mississippi Basin. In a word, the so-
called forgotten half-century was a period of
preparation, a period wherein the road was
cleared for the advent of the mighty nation
of the future. And just as she had played a
striking part in the foundation-laying of the
previous century, so did the American woman
contribute in many and various ways to this
clearing of the road.
Not the least of her contributions, and cer-
tainly the most fascinating to her latter-day
descendants who fondly piece together the
scattered records of her doings, is the insistence
with which she emphasized the lighter side of
life. Protest though they might, and did,
[451
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
such frowning citadels of asceticism as Boston
and Philadelphia were forced to follow the lead
of more liberal communities and surrender to
her demand for gaiety and entertainment.
In all the larger centers of population bright
raiment replaced the sober garb of former times.
As early as 1704 a traveler recorded that the
Englishwomen of New York " go very fashion-
able in their dress," while the Dutchwomen
" set out their ears with jewels of a large size
and many in number." .
The century was still young when the tin-
kling spinet, that curious forerunner of our
modern piano, made its way across the Atlantic
and into the homes of the well-to-do. By 1712
teachers of spinet-playing found it profitable
to follow their profession even in the stanchest
stronghold of Puritanism, and not many years
afterward dancing-masters boldly advertised
for patrons in the city of William Penn. In-
deed, the famous Philadelphia Dancing Assem-
bly was founded as long ago as 1719, when
[461
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
Governor Hamilton led off with the mayor's
wife in the first dance of that historic series
of subscription balls. Concert-going, sleigh-
riding, tea-parties, and " turtle frolics " —
much like the clambakes and lobster-bakes of
to-day — were other popular diversions of
the eighteenth century belles and beaux of the
North.
In Philadelphia fishing-parties constituted
a special form of social amusement, as we learn
from the mid-century traveler, Andrew Bur-
naby.
" There is," he notes, " a society of sixteen
ladies and as many gentlemen called the Fish-
ing Company, who meet once a fortnight upon
the Schuylkill. They have a very pleasant
room erected in a romantic situation upon the
banks of that river where they generally dine
and drink tea. There are several pretty walks
about it, and some wild and rugged rocks
which, together with the water and fine groves
that adorn the banks, form a most beautiful
[47]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
and picturesque scene. There are boats and
fishing tackle of all sorts, and the company
divert themselves with walking, fishing, going
up the water, dancing, singing, conversing, or
just as they please. The ladies wear a uniform
and appear with great ease and advantage
from the neatness and simplicity of it. The
first and most distinguished people of the colony
are of this society; and it is very advantageous
to a stranger to be introduced to it, as he
hereby gets acquainted with the best and most
respectable company in Philadelphia."
Of New York society the same observer
records :
" The women are handsome and agreeable,
though rather more reserved than the Phila-
delphia ladies. Their amusements are much
the same as in Pennsylvania — viz, balls and
sleighing expeditions in the winter, and in the
summer going in parties upon the water and
fishing; or making excursions into the country.
There are several houses pleasantly situated
[48]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
upon East River, near New York, where it
is common to have turtle feasts; these happen
once or twice in a week. Thirty or forty gentle-
men and ladies meet and dine together, drink
tea in the afternoon, fish and amuse themselves
till evening, and then return home in Italian
chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise."
Another traveler of the same period gives
us this contrasting view of the amusements
of the social leaders of Boston, where dancing
and similar forms of recreation made headway
slowly :
" For their domestic amusements every after-
noon after drinking tea, the gentlemen and
ladies walk the Mall, and from there adjourn
to one another's house to spend the evening,
those that are not disposed to attend the evening
lecture, which they may do if they please six
nights in the seven the year round. What they
call the Mall is a walk on a fine green common
adjoining to the south-east side of the town.
The government being in the hands of dissenters
[491
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
they don't admit of plays or music houses;
but of late they have set up an assembly to
which some of the ladies resort. But they are
looked upon to be none of the nicest, in regard
to their reputation, and it is thought it will be
soon suppressed, for it is much taken notice of
and exploded by the religious and other part
of the people. But notwithstanding plays and
such like diversions do not obtain here, they
don't be dispirited or moped for the want of
them, for both the ladies and gentlemen dress
and appear as gay in common as courtiers
in England on a coronation or birthday."
In the South, where the people were settled
on vast plantations rather than in compact
communities, there was not such frequent op-
portunity for intercourse. But, once the first
difficulties of colonization were overcome, a
brilliant social life speedily developed. As
in the North, dancing was a favorite recreation,
both on the plantations and in the towns.
So, too, was card-playing, as we are reminded
[501
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
by William Black's all-too-brief description
of a government ball which he attended at
Annapolis in 1744. It was held in the council-
chamber, and Black reports that in a back
room " those that was not engaged in any
dancing match might better employ them-
selves at cards, dice, backgammon, or with a
cheerful glass."
The planters when at home kept open house,
dispensing hospitality with a lavish hand,
while their wives and daughters, in silks and
satins and brocades, greeted the coming and
sped the parting guest with all the graciousness
of a cultured womanhood. Weddings were
made the occasion of prolonged and notable
festivities, and race-meets early became a
feature of Southern life, especially in the Old
Dominion.
All this, of course, was bitterly denounced
by the severer type of moralists, who rightly
held the women of the colonies chiefly respon-
sible for the revolt against the former order
[51]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of things. But, as we of the present can see
clearly enough, the change was for the better.
It meant the creation of an atmosphere of
refinement and moral and intellectual freedom.
It encouraged the growth of cheerfulness and
contentment in a country where life was still
in many ways hard and savage and depressing.
Thus it was an important element in preparing
and equipping the people for the great struggle
that was to be the paramount fact of the second
half of the century. In fact, it was directly
productive of leadership for that struggle, as
is shown by the number of Revolutionary he-
roes born of mothers who delighted in manners
and customs at which even to-day the puritan-
ically minded look askance.
Let us make no mistake. The Puritan point
of view was, and is, of the greatest value to the
Republic. But so is the capacity for enjoying
the little things of life, so long as it does not de-
generate into mere frivolity. And the eighteenth
century girls and matrons, who glided through
[52]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
the graceful minuet, went gaily on sleigh-rides
and turtle frolics, or cheered the victory of
some favorite horse, were assuredly not frivolous.
It needs only a hasty reading of contempo-
rary letters and memoirs, our main reliance for
the social history of the period, to appreciate
their essential earnestness and seriousness.
They were the best of housewives, and almost
invariably superintended in person the prep-
aration of the dainty dishes set forth at wedding-
feast and dance-supper. The beautiful gar-
ments in which they look down at us from the
pictured canvas on the wall, were often fash-
ioned by their own hands. If, as in the South
and on the forgotten plantations of Rhode
Island, they were the mistresses of noble man-
sions and of a small army of dependents, they
keenly appreciated the duties as well as the
privileges which this entailed. They cheerfully
looked after the manifold affairs of household
management, taught their servants and slaves
the domestic sciences, and were untiring in
[531
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
works of charity. To their children they were
always the best of mothers.
Nothing can illustrate more clearly the spirit
prevailing among the women who moved in
the " fashionable " circles of eighteenth century
America than the story of Eliza Lucas Pinck-
ney, the mother of Thomas and Charles Cotes-
worth Pinckney of Revolutionary renown.
Mrs. Pinckney ^ was the daughter of Colonel
George Lucas, an English officer who, about
1738, settled near Charleston in one of those
magnificent South Carolina plantation homes
of which Drayton Hall is a surviving example.
He had hoped to pass his days in peaceful and
prosperous retirement, but when war broke
out between England and Spain he was ordered
on active service, and was obliged to sail hur-
riedly for the West Indies, leaving his young
daughter in charge of his Carolina interests.
1 The life story of Mrs. Pinckney is told in detail by Mrs.
H. H. Ravenel in "Eliza Pinckney," an admirable little
biography.
[54]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
Although not more than sixteen or seventeen
years old, and of a lively and fun-loving dis-
position, the little Eliza rose splendidly to the
occasion. A letter written to a friend not long
after her father's departure gives a vivid
glimpse of the way in which she appreciated
the responsibility thrust upon her.
" I have a little library," she writes, " in
which I spend part of my time. My music and
the garden, which I am very fond of, take up
the rest that is not employed in business, of
which my father has left me a pretty good
share; and indeed 'twas unavoidable, as my
mama's bad state of health prevents her going
thro' any fatigue. I have the business of three
plantations to transact, which requires much
writing and more business and fatigue of other
sorts than you can imagine. But lest you
should imagine it to be burdensome to a girl
at my early time of life, give me leave to assure
you that I think myself happy that I can be
useful to so good a father."
[55]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Any hope that Colonel Lucas would soon
return to America was dispelled by his ap-
pointment as governor of Antigua, and the
temporary stewardship which his daughter had
so cheerfully undertaken thus became a stew-
ardship of years. But instead of complaining
or shirking her duties, she enthusiastically gave
herself ^to the task of developing the plantations
along not merely profitable but also novel
lines, embarking on a series of agricultural
experiments unlike any formerly attempted
in South Carolina. At her request, her father
sent her the seeds of indigo, ginger, and other
tropical plants, which she cultivated with
remarkable success. Moreover, she freely
distributed seed to other planters who wished
to carry on similar experiments, and in this
way she actually became the founder of a new
agricultural regime, the cultivation of indigo
for export proving so remunerative that it was
soon a staple product of the South.
The growing of flax and hemp, and, at a
[561
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
later period, the development of a silk industry,
were other activities of the tireless IViiss Lucas.
And that she was not only extremely diligent
but exceedingly far-sighted is strikingly evi-
denced by the fact that she laid out an entire
plantation in oaks, in anticipation of the time
when the colonies would need more ships and
would turn to ship-building themselves.
Thus her days were spent largely in the open,
and in occupations usually left to men. But,
as her correspondence proves, she lost none of
her early fondness for books and music. Her
letters also abound in references to " festal
days " at Drayton Hall, and other of the man-
sions on the Ashley. She was a frequent vis-
itor to Charleston, and always a welcome guest
in the town houses of such social leaders as the
Middletons and the Pinckneys.
It was there that she made the acquaintance
of her future husband. Chief Justice Pinckney,
whose sudden death in 1758 left her a widow
at the early age of thirty-six, with three small
[571
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
children to care for, and several plantations
to manage. As in her girlhood, she showed her-
self equal to the emergency. Even while still
" bitterly oppressed with grief " she began to
plan for the future of her little ones, and just
as she had labored for her father's interests,
so now she labored for theirs. Not until her
sons had grown to manhood did her vigilance
and diligence relax.
Passing imperceptibly into a gentle old age,
she still made her influence felt. And when she
died — nearly twenty years after the American
colonies had become a free and independent
nation — wide was the circle that mourned her
loss. Washington, we are told, and it is pleas-
ant to believe, paid his tribute to this noble
American mother by begging to be one of those
who should have the privilege of bearing her
to her last resting-place.
In every colony were to be found women like
Eliza Lucas Pinckney — possessed of the ad-
vantages of wealth and position, ardent, light-
[581
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LATER COLONIAL BELLES
hearted, high-spirited, but right-minded and
earnest and brave. They were women of
fine ideals and fine achievement. Even when
their dreams did not come true, when fate was
adverse to them, they left traditions that have
powerfully, however unconsciously, influenced
the thought and conduct of posterity.
I am reminded of the tragic tale of Hannah
Robinson,^ which I heard for the first time in
the shadow of her old home overlooking the
waters of Narragansett Bay. She was the
daughter of a typical Rhode Island planter,
Rowland Robinson, whose ample acres in-
cluded much of the country round about the
present village of Saunderstown. It was, like
the South, a region of vast estates, landed
gentry, and slave labor. To-day it has to a
considerable extent relapsed into wilderness,
but at that time it was the scene of a picturesque
1 This account follows the version given in W. Updike's
" History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett " (edition
of 1847).
[591
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
social activity, with a constant coming and
going between the plantations, and an
abundance of hunting, feasting, and dan-
cing.
Into this gay life Hannah Robinson was intro-
duced at an early age, to be instantly acclaimed
the reigning belle of Narragansett, and be-
sieged by a throng of eager suitors. Her father,
who had set his heart on marrying her into
one of the great families of the neighborhood,
saw with delight the popularity of his beautiful
and talented daughter, and spared no pains
to impress on her the desirability of making
a brilliant match. It then developed, to his
horrified amazement, that she had already
secretly plighted her troth to a young and ob-
scure Newport man named Simons, whom she
had met at a dancing-school.
" Look you, father," said she, calmly, in
answer to his torrent of furious protestation,
** you need not storm. He may not be a rich
man, but he is a good man, and nothing will
[60]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
induce me to break the vow I have taken,
or to betray the faith he has placed in
me.
Then began a bitter persecution. Deter-
mined that she should neither see nor com-
municate with her lover, the irate Rowland
Robinson kept a constant watch on his daughter.
If she took a walk or a ride, a slave was sent
to follow her. Did she wish to visit friends,
permission was given only after it had been
made absolutely certain that Simons would
have no opportunity of meeting her.
Once, the story goes, after she had started
on a journey to New London, her father chanced
to spy from an upper window a vessel sailing
from Newport. Though he had no knowledge
of its destination, he immediately imagined
that it was bound for New London, and that
Simons was one of its passengers. Rushing
down-stairs, he called for a horse, galloped
post-haste after his daughter, and compelled
her instant return.
161]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
For all of this, the lovers managed to outwit
him, sometimes meeting even on the Robinson
grounds, and renewing their pledges in the
peaceful shelter of the dense shrubbery about
the house. And, so soon as the long strain
began to tell on the fair Hannah's health, they
found allies among her relatives, particularly
in an uncle. Colonel Gardiner, who bluntly
informed Rowland Robinson that he had the
option between seeing his daughter die by
inches or allowing her to wed the man of her
choice. But the grim old planter only squared
his jaw, and increased the rigor of his oppo-
sition.
Convinced at last that she need never hope
to gain his consent, the unhappy girl yielded
to her sweetheart's pleadings for an elopement.
Under the pretext of visiting an aunt at Wick-
ford, she met him there, leaped into a carriage
with him, and galloped off to Providence,
while her body-servant looked on aghast, para-
lyzed by the thought of the reception awaiting
[62]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
him when he returned to the Robinson house
without his mistress.
As they drove madly along the Providence
road that pleasant afternoon, the lovers doubt-
less planned the good old-fashioned ending to
their romance. But fortune had decreed other-
wise. At news of the elopement and subse-
quent marriage, which took place that same
evening, Rowland Robinson was seized with
an insane fury, vowed never to forgive his
daughter, and threatened Simons with a fearful
vengeance.
Given a timely warning, the young couple
went into hiding, and for a few brief months
enjoyed the happiness of which they had
dreamed. Then, worn out by prolonged anx-
iety and grief at her father's bitter attitude,
the winsome Hannah fell a victim to the dread
malady of the hectic flush and the racking
cough — that terrible scourge of modern civil-
ization. Day by day she grew weaker, and as
the disease progressed she begged pitifully
[63]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
to be allowed to die in the home of her child-
hood.
Only when it was too late, did old Rowland
relent. On a litter borne by four weeping
slaves she was carried back to the beautiful
Narragansett country, to take a last fond look
at its well-remembered scenes, and in a little
while to find repose amid its verdant fields.
This was many, many years ago, but even
to-day the sturdy farmers and weather-beaten
fisherf oik, who dwell in the land of the vanished
planters, cherish the memory of the " unfortu-
nate Hannah Robinson." From generation
to generation they have handed her history
down, as the precious and inspiring record of
one who cheerfully sacrificed life itself for the
sake of love.^
^ It is only fair to say that there is another version of the
story, and one far more favorable to Rowland Robinson.
According to this account, the latter was justified in his op-
position to the marriage, as Simons was a worthless scamp,
whose treatment of her broke his wife's heart. And her
father, instead of refusing to receive her, went to her so soon
as he learned of her desperate condition, and brought her
home, where she died the night after her return.
[64]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
Of course, there were other phases in the
history of the forgotten half-century than those
which I have described. If it was a period in
which the advantages that go with wealth be-
gan to make themselves felt, it was also a period
of difficulty, struggle, and hardship. As in the
time of the founding, there was a constant
pioneering movement, a perpetual advance into
the wilderness. In this not only the English
but colonists of many nationalities took part —
men and women who, like the Pilgrims and
Puritans before them, were refugees from re-
ligious and political oppression. Huguenots
from France, Palatines from Germany, High-
landers from Scotland, and Scotch-Irish by
the thousand, united to swell the steadily
rising tide of immigration.
Coming for precisely the same object that
had actuated the English pioneers of the seven-
teenth century — to make permanent homes
for themselves in the New World — the later
arrivals boldly struck into the unoccupied
[65]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
lands of the interior, planting their settlements
chiefly in the foot-hill region of the Alleghanies,
then known as the " back country " of Pennsyl-
vania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
It was the beginning — though none realized
it at the time — of that westward movement
which was eventually to carry the American
people to the shores of the Pacific; and, as
in the case of each successive forward step,
it was attended by many dangers and difficul-
ties.
What it meant to the home-seekers them-
selves — the discomforts they underwent, the
perils imaginary and real by which their cour-
age was tried — is well exhibited in an account
written by Robert Wither spoon, who emi-
grated from Ireland with his father's family
in 1734 and settled in inland South Carolina,
where some relatives had preceded them two
years earlier. After describing the hardships
of the trans-Atlantic voyage, which was more
then two months in duration, owing to severe
[661
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
storms and the general unseaworthiness of
their ship, Wither spoon relates:
" We landed in Charleston three weeks be-
fore Christmas, and found the inhabitants
very kind. We staid in town until after Christ-
mas, and were then put on board of an open
boat, with tools and a year's provisions. . . .
The provisions were Indian corn, rice, wheaten
flour, beef, pork, rum, and salt. We were much
distressed in this part of our passage. As it was
the dead of winter, we were exposed to the
inclemency of the weather day and night;
and (which added to the grief of all pious
persons on board) the atheistical and blas-
phemous mouths of our patroons and the other
hands. They brought us up as far as Potatoe
Ferry and turned us on shore, where we lay
in Samuel Commander's barn for some time,
and the boat wrought her way up to the ' King's
Tree ' with the goods and provisions, which is
the first boat that I believe ever came up so
high before.
[67]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" While we lay at Mr. Commander's our
men came up in order to get dirt houses
to take their families to. . . . What help
they could get from the few inhabitants in
order to carry the children and other neces-
saries up they availed themselves of. As the
woods were full of water, and most severe
frosts, it was very severe on women and chil-
dren. . . . When we came to the BlufiF, my
mother and we children were still in expecta-
tion that we were coming to an agreeable
place. But when we arrived and saw nothing
but a wilderness, and instead of a fine timbered
house nothing but a mere dirt house, our spirits
quite sank; and what added to our trouble
our pilot left us when we came in sight of the
place.
" My father gave us all the comfort he could
by telling us we could get all those trees cut
down, and in a short time there would be plenty
of inhabitants, so that we could see from house
to house. While we were at this, our fire we
[68]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
brought from Bog Swamp went out. Father
had heard that up the river swamp was the
' King's Tree.' Although there was no path,
neither did he know the distance, yet he fol-
lowed up the swamp until he came to the branch,
and by that found Roger Gordon's. We watched
him as far as the trees would let us see, and
returned to our dolorous hut, expecting never
to see him or any human person more. But
after some time he returned and brought fire.
" We were soon comforted, but evening
coming on the wolves began to howl on all
sides. We then feared being devoured by wild
beasts, having neither gun nor dog nor any door
to our house. Howbeit we set to and gathered
fuel, and made a good fire, and so passed the
first night. The next day being a clear warm
morning, we began to stir about, but about
mid-day there rose a cloud southwest attended
with a high wind, thunder and lightning. The
rain quickly penetrated through between the
poles and brought down the sand that covered
[69]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
them over, which seemed to threaten to bury
us aHve. The hghtning and claps were very
awful and lasted a good space of time. I do
not remember to have seen a much severer
gust than that was. I believe we all sincerely
wished ourselves again at Belfast. But this
fright was soon over, and the evening cleared
up, comfortable and warm.
" The boat that brought up the goods
arrived at the ' King's Tree.' People were
much oppressed in bringing their things, as
there was no horse there. They were obliged
to toil hard, and had no other way but to
convey their beds, clothing, chests, provi-
sions, tools, pots, etc., on their backs. And
at that time there were few or no roads,
and every family had to travel the best way
they could. . . . We had a great deal of trouble
and hardships in our settling, but the few in-
habitants continued still in health and strength.
Yet we were oppressed with fears on divers
accounts, especially of being massacred by the
[701
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
Indians, or bitten by snakes, or torn by wild
beasts, or being lost and perishing in the woods.
Of this last calamity there were three in-
stances." ^
From the first this migration into the dense,
untraveled wastes of the Alleghany foot-hills
bred a race of heroes — and of heroines. Cour-
age, self-reliance, and the spirit of initiative
were by no means confined to the men who
in those painful years of the mid-eighteenth
century conquered the forests and invaded
the mountains. Frenchwoman and German,
Scotchwoman and Irish lass, all played a won-
derful role. Often they set brilliant examples
of individual courage and hardihood.
Thus, Christine Zellers, the wife of a German
immigrant who, in 1745, settled near Lebanon
in Pennsylvania, is credited with having planned
and superintended the construction of a fort,
or " house of refuge," built to protect the col-
^ C. A, Hanna's " The Scotch-Irish in America," vol. ii,
pp. 26-28.
[71]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
onists of the vicinity. She is also the heroine
of a piquant tale of Indian adventure.
One day, when the settlers were at work in
the fields, the fort was raided by a band of red
men, who fancied that it was unoccupied
and that they could plunder it at their leisure.
Mrs. Zellers was quite alone at the time, but
instead of calling for help, she calmly picked
up an ax and awaited the entrance of the in-
truders. Luckily for her, instead of attempting
to break through the door, which was stoutly
bolted, they decided to climb in by an open
window. The first to show himself was felled
with a blow that brought instant death. A
second was served in like fashion, and so was
a third. Believing that the fort was strongly
garrisoned after all, the rest now fled in terror,
leaving the victorious Mrs. Zellers at liberty
to throw down her blood-stained ax and return
to the household duties which their coming
had interrupted.
The Indian was, indeed, a still greater menace
[721
OLD INDIAN FORT NEAR NEWMANSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA.
Page 72.
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
to the settlers of the inland hills and valleys
than he had been to the early colonists of the
tide- water region. And for the reason that, be-
ginning in 1689 and continuing more than sev-
enty years, he was systematically incited to
attack by the authorities of New France, who
rightly feared that, unless checked, the people
of the English colonies would in time overflow
into the fertile Mississippi Valley, to which
the French laid claim.
Throughout the forgotten half-century, and
even after the conquest of Canada, the Ameri-
can border north and south was harried by
Indian war-parties. It is impossible to say
how many lives were sacrificed in this cruel
conflict, how many peaceful settlements blotted
out. But it is certain that, for all his cunning
and savagery, the red man was unable to terror-
ize the people of the frontier into abandoning
their foothold in the wilderness.
When the storm was most severe, the colo-
nists might, it is true, bend before it, and seek
[73]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
refuge among the more populous settlements
nearer the sea. But always they returned to
rebuild their ruined homes, and assume once
more their task of extending the limits of civil-
ization. Always they mocked at the buffetings
of fate, and faced the future with sublime hope
and confidence.
True of the men, this was fully as true of
the women. There are many narratives that
might be told to illustrate their unfailing op-
timism under the most discouraging circum-
stances.
As impressive as any is the tale of Mrs.
Hannah Dennis's escape from captivity among
the Ohio Indians.^ In its way, her achievement
was no less remarkable than that of the more
celebrated Mrs. Hannah Duston of early days.
Mrs. Dennis was the wife of Joseph Dennis,
a settler who came to Virginia about the middle
of the eighteenth century, and built a home
1 A. S. Withers's " Chronicles of Border Warfare " (Edi-
tion of 1831).
[74]
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
in the beautiful but at that time sparsely
settled region around the headwaters of the
James River. Hither, shortly before the sign-
ing of the treaty which brought to a close the
long war between the English colonists and
the French and their Indian allies, came a
band of Shawnees, who passed with great ra-
pidity from farm to farm, and left behind them
a trail of blood and ashes.
The Dennis homestead was among those
ravaged, Mr. Dennis and their only child
being slain, and Mrs. Dennis taken prisoner
and forced to accompany the Indians on the
hard journey to their distant village in Ohio.
From the first her mind was busy plotting
means of escape, but she soon realized that
escape would be impossible unless she found
a way of inducing the Indians to relax the
vigilant watch they kept over her.
To this end, she pretended that she had lost
all desire to rejoin her kindred across the moun-
tains. She learned the Indian language, dressed
[75]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
in Indian garb, and painted herself like any
squaw. Still her captors remained suspicious.
She then resolved to work on their superstitious
terrors, and one day proclaimed that she had
acquired magical powers and could heal the
sick. A few lucky cures, brought about by the
use of simple herbs, worked a complete change
in the attitude of the Indians. They no longer
kept her under a close guard, but permitted her
to roam at will, in search of the herbs which
she told them were essential for her " incan-
tations."
At first, fearing that they might be secretly
spying on her, Mrs. Dennis was careful to re-
turn to the village every evening. But at
last, nearly two years after her captivity had
begun, she felt satisfied that she had completely
lulled suspicion, and that the time had come
to make her bid for freedom.
One beautiful June morning she left the village
as usual, waving a gay farewell to its inhab-
itants. Between her and " home " stretched
[761
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
hundreds of miles of wilderness. Pursuit, she
knew, would be swift and certain; and she
was confronted besides with the risk of death
in many forms. Yet she did not for an instant
lose hope.
With a cunning born of long contact with
the savages, her first care was to " break " her
trail as much as possible; and for this purpose
she three times crossed the Scioto River, on
which the Indian village was located.
Early in the morning of the next day, when
she was about to cross the river for the fourth
time, she heard exultant shouts on the other
side, and, looking up, saw a group of warriors
awaiting her. As she turned to flee, she slipped
on a stone and fell, cutting her foot badly;
at the same moment the Indians fired, but not
a bullet so much as grazed her. Plunging into
the undergrowth, her quick eye espied a huge,
hollow sycamore, and into this she hastily
crawled. For hours her pursuers searched
through the surrounding forest, and, as she
[77]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
afterward related, were often within touching
distance of her. Finally, satisfied that she had
eluded them, they gave over the hunt and
started for the Ohio, thinking to intercept
her when she reached its banks.
For three days Mrs. Dennis remained hidden
in the sycamore, coming out only to seek food
and dress her wounded foot. Then, already
greatly exhausted but courageous and hopeful
as ever, she once more started on her flight.
Traveling only at night, she reached the Ohio
in safety, and succeeded in crossing it with the
aid of a log of driftwood.
Thereafter she had comparatively little fear
of recapture by the Indians, but she still had
to cope with many perils, of whicli starvation
was not the least, as she had been able to bring
no supplies with her. Herbs, roots, green
grapes, wild cherries — such was the food on
which she lived for almost three weeks, and
not merely lived but contrived to make head-
way in her long pilgrimage. Always, however,
[781
LATER COLONIAL BELLES
her steps grew more feeble; but always she
struggled on, confident that she would reach
her journey's end.
And her confidence was not misplaced.
Dragging herself wearily along, a pitiful shadow
of the sturdy woman who had so bravely set
out from the Indian village in the far-away
Ohio country, she one morning heard the wel-
come sound of English voices. It was a party
of settlers who had gone into the wilderness to
hunt. Joyfully she called to them, and tenderly
they cared for her when they heard her pathetic
story. A little later and, strengthened and re-
freshed, she was again among friends who had
long mourned her as dead.
Now, Hannah Dennis was an exceptional
woman only in so far as she proved herself
equal to an exceptional test. All over the coun-
try — in the cities and towns of the North, on
the plantations of the South, and among the
rude settlements of the far-reaching frontier —
were women who, in their own way, were as
[79]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
buoyant, determined, and resourceful. These
women, of every section and every walk in
life, were the mothers of the men who won the
American Revolution. It is surely unnecessary
to point out that the sons of such mothers
could not but be good fighters.
[80
CHAPTER III
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
THE American woman of colonial times,
as we have already seen, was conspicuous
for many notable characteristics. She was pre-
eminently courageous and resourceful, able
to depend on herself and think for herself.
Whether in the older communities along the
Atlantic, or among the straggling settlements
of the mountain frontier, she displayed a won-
derful readiness in adapting herself to condi-
tions, and in meeting emergencies. There was
no peril which she did not face dauntlessly,
no obstacle she deemed too great to be over-
come. If occasion demanded, as was often
the case, she did not shrink from tasks and dan-
gers usually falling to men. And, for all her
hardihood and energy, she remained essentially
[811
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
womanly, finding her chief interest in her home,
her husband, and her children. It was for
them she toiled and sacrificed, directing her
every effort to the upbuilding and preservation
of a happy home life.
All these traits became manifest in the Ameri-
can woman at a very early date, and with the
passage of time they were accentuated rather
than diminished. The truth of this is strikingly
shown by the course she pursued during the
great struggle which ended only with the com-
plete separation of the colonies from the
mother country, and the establishment of the
free and independent United States of America.
From the first mutterings of the approaching
storm, women were quick to urge their hus-
bands and sons to oppose vigorously the slight-
est infringement of what they held to be their
rights. Women were enthusiastic supporters
of the early measures of resistance — non-im-
portation agreements and the like — by which
it was hoped to convince the British govern-
[82]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
ment of the folly of attempting to impose on
the colonists laws not of their own making
and contrary to their desire.
V In every colony, matrons and maids resumed
the old-fashioned industry of making home-
spun clothing, and banded themselves into
associations to forego, at no matter what per-
sonal inconvenience, the use of imported goods.
" Liberty tea," brewed of loosestrife, sage,
ribwort, strawberry, currant, raspberry, or
plantain leaves, became a popular beverage. No
discomfort was too great for the women of
America to undergo in their effort to help the
men prove that England need not expect to
do business with her colonies so long as she
dealt with them unjustly and oppressively^
And when this usually powerful argument of
appeal to the purse failed — when England,
instead of yielding gracefully and meeting the
colonists in a conciliatory spirit, chose instead
to send over troops to dragoon them into sub-
mission — the wives and daughters of the
[831
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" rebels " were zealous as before in counseling
resistance, if need be to the death.
Nor did they falter when the gage of battle
was actually thrown down — when the news
from Lexington, carried by swift riders from
colony to colony, announced that war had at
last become inevitable. With splendid prompt-
ness of decision, they hastened to make ready
their men for the fray, to send them forth well-
armed, well-clothed, and strengthened by the
knowledge that they were leaving at home
not weeping and despairing women, but women
whose greatest hope was that their loved ones
would indeed acquit themselves like men.
Typical of the prevailing spirit is a letter
written by a Philadelphia lady in the first
year of the war, and addressed to a British
officer with whom she was well acquainted.
In part she wrote to him:
" I will tell you what I have done. My only
brother I have sent to the camp with my
prayers and blessings. I hope he will not dis-
[84]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
grace me; I am confident he will behave with
honor, and emulate the great examples he has
before him; and had I twenty sons and brothers
they should go. I have retrenched every
superfluous expense in my table and family;
tea I have not drunk since last Christmas, nor
bought a new cap or gown since your defeat at
Lexington; and, what I never did before, have
learned to knit, and am now making stockings
of American wool for my servants; and this
way do I throw in my mite to the public good.
" I know this — that as free I can die but
once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of
life. I have the pleasure to assure you that
these are the sentiments of all my sister Ameri-
cans. They have sacrificed assemblies, parties
of pleasure, tea drinking and finery, to that
great spirit of patriotism that actuates all
degrees of people throughout this extensive
continent. If these are the sentiments of
females, what must glow in the breasts of
our husbands, brothers, and sons! They are
[851
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
as with one heart determined to die or to be
free. . . . Heaven seems to smile on us; for
in the memory of man, never were known such
quantities of flax, and sheep without number.
We are making powder fast, and do not want
for ammunition."
Many a tale is told ^ of the Spartan spirit
shown by the women of the American Revol-
ution. Mary Draper, of Dedham, Massachu-
setts, at the first call to arms, not only bade her
husband hurry to his country's aid, but strapped
a knapsack on the back of her son, a lad of six-
teen, and thrust a gun into his hands with the
remark that, young as he was, America needed
him and he must go. In South Carolina,
when Judge Gaston's many sons volunteered
in a body, Mrs. Katherine Steel, who already
had one son in the patriot army, ordered his
younger brother to enlist, telling him: " You
must go now and fight the battles of our coun-
1 Especially in Mrs. E. F. Ellet's " Women of the American
Revolution," from which the above letter is quoted.
rsei
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
try with John. It must never be said that
old Squire Gaston's boys have done more for
the Hberty of their country than the Widow
Steel's." Another Revolutionary mother,
whose name has faded from recollection, in-
sisted that her two young sons volunteer, and
when one complained that he had no rifle, she
grimly assured him that he would find plenty
of spare weapons on the battle-field.
It is pleasant to recall, too, the brave words
spoken by Mrs. Sidney Berry, of New Jersey.
Her home was for a time the headquarters of
Washington, and her husband was one of
Washington's officers. One morning the order
was issued to march to an attack, and to Mrs.
Berry's mortification the command of her hus-
band's men had to be given to another, as
Berry was away from home on some private
business. Shortly after the departure of the
troops, however, he came galloping up, eagerly
inquired which road the soldiers had taken,
obtained a fresh mount, and started after them.
[871
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
As he rode off, Mrs. Berry threw open an
upper window, leaned out, and cried: " Sidney!
Sidney! " Back he galloped to receive her
parting admonition: " Remember, Sidney,
to do your duty. I would rather hear that you
were left a corpse on the field than that you
had played the part of a coward."
Thus, throughout the long years of warfare,
the patriot soldiery were spurred to countless
deeds of valor by the self-sacrificing devotion
of the heroic and liberty-loving women of
America. And it was not simply moral support
that they received from the women, who la-
bored actively in many ways for the suc-
cess of the American cause, at times going
so far as to fill the warrior's role them-
selves.
An instance of this occurred at the very be-
ginning of the war. After the battle of Lex-
ington, when the minutemen of the Massachu-
setts-New Hampshire border had started for
Boston in response to the appeal for troops,
[881
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
a rumor spread that British regulars were ad-
vancing to destroy the border towns. Scarcely
one able-bodied man was to be found fot miles
around, but the women of Groton, Pepperell,
and other neighboring places, promptly made
it evident that they did not need men to defend
them.
Meeting in convention, exactly as the men
were accustomed to do, they elected a com-
mander — Mrs. David Wright, of Pepperell —
dressed themselves in suits belonging to their
absent husbands, seized whatever arms they
could find, and marched to a bridge over the
Nashua River between Groton and Pepperell,
where they awaited the foe. Luckily rumor, as
is so often the case, proved false; no enemy ap-
peared, and the day ended without a battle.
But before dispersing to their homes, the fair
volunteers had the satisfaction of capturing
a well-known Tory, who was carrying des-
patches to the British authorities at Boston.
His despatches they forwarded to the Committee
[89]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of Safety, and himself they brought in triumph
to Groton as a prisoner.
This, of course, was an impromptu affair,
as was most of the fighting done by women
during the Revolution. Not even the case of
the famous " Captain Molly " is exceptional
in this respect. She was the wife of a gunner
in the patriot army, a young Irishwoman of
twenty-two, sturdy, red-haired, and freckled,
but handsome nevertheless. Following the
army for months, she gave a signal display
of bravery at the defense of Fort Clinton, when,
her husband having abandoned his gun and
joined in the retreat, she took his place and
discharged the last cannon fired before the fort
fell into the hands of the British.
Still more dramatic was her conduct on the
field of Monmouth. While carrying a bucket
of water to her husband — in fact, when al-
most at his side — a shot from the enemy
stretched him dead at her feet. With the cry
of an enraged tigress, she dropped the bucket,
[901
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
seized the rammer from his stiffening fingers,
and swore to avenge his death. All through
the battle she worked his cannon desperately,
to the wondering admiration of her fellow-gun-
ners, and the amazement of every officer who
chanced to see her.
There was at least one woman, however, who
regularly enlisted for the war, served in the
ranks several months, was seriously wounded,
and in the end was given an honorable discharge.
This was the Massachusetts heroine, Deborah
Sampson. Just what motives led her to don
man's clothing and enter the army will in all
probability never be known. Patriotism, we
may feel sure, was among them, as also a zest
for adventure and novelty; for, from her ear-
liest youth, she had shown herself uncommonly
adventurous and daring. Of humble birth,
the daughter of a hard-working fisherman who
lost his life at sea while she was still a little
girl, Deborah was obliged to earn her own living
at a tender age, and found employment as a
[91]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
household servant with a Middleboro family.
Here she remained until she was eighteen,
when, having contrived to pick up a smattering
of education, she turned school-teacher for
a couple of years.
By this time the Revolution was far advanced
and all the land was ringing with war's alarms.
Deborah — always bold, enterprising, and fear-
less — listened breathlessly to the tales of
feats at arms performed by the sons of liberty;
and secretly longed to strike a blow for her
country and for freedom's sake. Out of this
longing there gradually grew the resolution
to pose as a man and wear a soldier's uniform.
One or two preliminary trials in masculine
attire — including, it is said, a night excursion
to a near-by tavern — convinced her that she
would have little difficulty in concealing her
sex; and accordingly, late in May, 1782, she
sought a recruiting-officer and enlisted for
three years under the assumed name of Robert
Shurtliffe.
[92]
DEBORAH SAMPSON.
From an old engraving.
Page 92.
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
Mustered in at Worcester, she was soon sent
to West Point with some fifty other fledgHng
soldiers; and from West Point, clad in the
picturesque blue and white uniform of the
Fourth Massachusetts, she was immediately
ordered on scouting duty in the country around
New York. None for a moment suspected that
the good-looking, lithe, beardless young soldier
was a woman. On the contrary, it was felt that
one so vigorous and alert was peculiarly qual-
ified for the hazardous work of a scout. Thus
it came about that, although the last important
campaign of the Revolutionary War had been
fought before Deborah enlisted, she still found
adventures in plenty.
On her very first expedition she was badly
wounded during a skirmish near Tarrytown
between her company and a contingent of
Delancy's cavalry. For a skirmish, it was
quite a sanguinary affair. Deborah's left-hand
neighbor was shot dead at the enemy's second
volley, and she herself received a bullet in
[93]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the thigh, besides a flesh-wound in the head.
Her first thought was that discovery of her sex
could no longer be avoided; but, by pretending
that the flesh-wound was her only injury, and
personally dressing the wound in her thigh,
she managed to keep her secret from even the
hospital surgeon.
Dread of discovery, however, hurried her
back into the service long before the thigh
wound had properly healed. As she afterward
declared: "Had the most hardy soldier been
in the condition I was when I left the hospital,
he would have been excused from military
duty."
Fortunately, soon after returning to camp
she obtained permission to nurse a sick com-
rade, and this gave her opportunity to recu-
perate. After which she again went scout-
ing — or raiding, to be exact — and displayed
great zeal in ferreting out and capturing loyal-
ists. Still later, in November of 1782, she
took part in Schuyler's expedition against the
[94]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
Indians of upper New York, an expedition
which sorely taxed both her courage and her
strength.
Then followed an uneventful winter and
spring; in the early summer, a journey to
Philadelphia with troops sent for the purpose
of repressing the mutinous soldiers who threat-
ened to compel Congress at the bayonet's
point to pay their arrears of wages; an attack
of fever while on duty in Philadelphia, and the
long-dreaded discovery that Robert Shurt-
liffe was a woman, not a man.
Happily for Deborah the discovery was made
by a prudent, kind-hearted surgeon named
Binney, who instead of noising abroad the sen-
sational fact confided it only to the matron of
the hospital. Indeed, so soon as Deborah was
well enough to be moved she was taken to
Doctor Binney's house and shown every kind-
ness by him, her secret being guarded so well
that ere long she actually found herself in-
volved in a love-affair with a Baltimore girl,
[95]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
who had fallen a victim to the pseiido Robert
Shurtliffe's fascinating ways.
This had the effect of increasing Deborah's
desire to leave Philadelphia and rejoin her
regiment; but, on the eve of her departure,
Doctor Binney gave her a letter — addressed
to General Patterson, at West Point, whither
she was bound — containing the revelation
of her sex. Naturally, her discharge from the
army speedily followed. Accepting it philo-
sophically, though with sincere regret, the re-
markable young woman — she was still less
than twenty-three years old — laid aside her
handsome uniform, returned to Middleboro,
and settled down to domestic life, within a
few months marrying Benjamin Gannett, of
Sharon, where she made her home until her
death in 1827.^
From the point of view of concrete helpful-
ness in encouraging and stimulating the sol-
* A biography of Deborah Sampson under the title of
" The Female Review," was published by H. Mann in 1797.
f961
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
diers of America, it need hardly be pointed out
that Deborah Sampson's bravery counted for
extremely little, for the sufficient reason that
at the time nobody knew she was a woman.
Far greater value attaches to the courage and
endurance of a little group of officers' wives
who, without taking up arms, exposed them-
selves to the horrors of war for the sake of
being near and being of aid to their husbands.
Bonnie Catharine Greene, wife of General
Nathanael Greene, was one of this number,
sustaining the hardships of that terrible winter
at Valley Forge as cheerfully as, at an earlier
day, she had turned her beautiful Rhode
Island home into an army hospital. Lucy
Knox, who separated from her loyalist rela-
tives to share the fortunes of her " rebel "
lover, afterward General Henry Knox, was
another who graced army headquarters with
her genial presence.
So, too, was Martha Washington, whose
proud boast in after years was that it had been
[97]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
her fortune to hear the first gun at the opening
and the last at the closing of the most important
campaigns of the long war. It would be im-
possible, in the space at my command, to give
an adequate account of the manifold services
rendered to the cause of America by this noble
wife of the great commander. Some idea may
be gained, however, by glancing at two pic-
tures of her life at headquarters, as drawn by
women who were brought into intimate contact
with her. The first of these sketches was given
to Mrs. Washington's biographer, Benson J.
Lossing, by a Mrs. Westlake, a resident of the
Valley Forge country.
" I never in my life," Mrs. Westlake told
Lossing, " knew a woman so busy from early
morning until late at night as was Lady Wash-
ington, providing comforts for the sick soldiers.
Every day, excepting Sunday, the wives of
officers in camp, and sometimes other women,
were invited to Mr. Potts' — Washington's
Valley Forge headquarters — to assist her in
[98]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
knitting socks, patching garments, and making
shirts for the poor soldiers, when materials
could be procured. Every fair day she might
be seen, with basket in hand, and with a
single attendant, going among the huts, seek-
ing the keenest and most needy sufferers, and
giving all the comforts to them in her power.
I sometimes went with her, for I was a stout
girl, sixteen years old. On one occasion she
went to the hut of a dying sergeant, whose young
wife was with him. His case seemed to par-
ticularly touch the heart of the good lady, and
after she had given him some wholesome food
she had prepared with her own hands, she knelt
down by his straw pallet and prayed earnestly
for him and his wife with her sweet and solemn
voice. I shall never forget the scene."
No less impressive, in its way, is the viva-
cious description given by Mrs. Troupe, of
Morristown, of a visit paid to Mrs. Washing-
ton when the latter was living with her hus-
band in winter quarters at the Arnold Tavern.
[99]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" Several of us," said Mrs. Troupe, in re-
lating her experience to the wife of the Rev-
erend Joseph F. Tuttle, to whom the present
generation owes this interesting side-light on
Revolutionary history, " several of us thought
we would visit Lady Washington, and as she
was said to be so grand a lady we thought we
must put on our best bibs and bands. So we
dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles
and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship.
And don't you think! We found her knitting
and with a specked apron on ! She received us
very graciously and easily, but after the com-
pliments were over she resumed her knitting.
There we were without a stitch of work, and
sitting in state, but General Washington's
lady with her own hands was knitting stockings
for herself and husband.
" And that was not all. In the afternoon
her ladyship took occasion to say, in a way that
we could not be offended at, that at this time
it was very important that American ladies
flOOl
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
should be patterns of industry to their coun-
trywomen, because the separation from the
mother country will dry up the sources whence
many of our comforts have been derived. We
must become independent by our determina-
tion to do without what we cannot ourselves
make. Whilst our husbands and brothers
are examples of patriotism, we must be pat-
terns of industry."
Throughout the country were women who
shared to the full this sentiment of Martha
Washington's, and as a result the Revolution-
ary period was distinctly a time when women
toiled at every imaginable sort of task. In all
the colonies were women who — like Dorcas
Matteson and Anne Aldrich, of Rhode Island
— thought nothing of cradling their infants
among , the branches of a tree, while they
labored in the fields, making hay, harvesting
corn, hoeing potatoes, and in many other ways
doing the work of their absent farmer husbands
who had answered their country's call.
[101]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Bertha Louise Colburn, who has made a
special study of the part played by New Hamp-
shire women in the Revolution/ mentions
particularly the wives of James Aiken, of Bed-
ford; William Hawkins, of Wilton; Charles
Glidden, of Northfield, and George Reid, of
Londonderry, as skilful and energetic adminis-
trators of their husbands' farms while the
latter were at the front. Mrs. Abigail Butler,
of Nottingham, managed not only a farm but
a tavern during the absence of her husband
and two sons, all of whom were in the patriot
army. So did Mrs. Abigail Reed, whose hus-
band and two oldest sons fought at Bunker
Hill and elsewhere. Of another remarkable
New Hampshire wife and mother, Mrs. Peter
Coffin, of Boscawen, the same investigator
reports in more detail:
" Mrs. Coffin was a woman of firm convic-
tions and intensely patriotic, so when the duty
was laid upon tea she put away the few ounces
* In The New England Magazine, February, 1912.
[1021
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
she had in her caddy, and would not have any
of it used until the tax was repealed.
" At the time when the men were hurrying
away to Ticonderoga, in July, 1777, Mrs.
Coffin heard that two soldiers who had been
ordered to march the next morning had no
shirts. She had a web partially woven in her
loom. Seizing her shears, she cut away what
she had woven, and sitting up all night, cut
and made the two shirts ready for the men in
the morning.
" Ten days later she gave birth to her fifth
child, Thomas, and in a month, at the news
of Bennington, her husband, who had been
out in the previous campaign, started once
more, leaving to her the care of the farm. The
wheat was dead-ripe, and the birds were de-
vouring it, but how was it to be harvested.?
Nearly every able-bodied man in town had
hastened to Vermont to drive away the enemy.
" Then Mrs. Coffin remembered that Mr.
Enoch Little had older boys. So leaving her
[103]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
four oldest children under the care of a boy
of seven, she took her infant in her arms,
mounted her horse, and proceeded towards
the cabin of Mr. Little. Three sons were away
in the army, and there was left at home only
Enoch, a lad of fourteen.
" ' He can go,' said Mrs. Little, * but he has
no clothes.'
" Mrs. Coffin looked at Enoch, clad in worn
tow-and-linsey trousers and ragged shirt.
" ' I can provide him with a coat,' she said.
" Taking a meal-bag she cut in it three holes,
X j one for his head and two for his arms, and in
the latter she sewed for sleeves the legs of two
of her own stockings! Then she went out into
the field, and, laying her infant under a tree,
bound the sheaves; and thus the grain was
harvested."
Mary Draper, the Dedham matron of whom
we have heard already, was a woman of the
same resourceful type. No sooner had she
started her husband and son on their way to
[1041
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
the front, than she summoned her daughter and
began to bake loaves by the score for the hun-
gry soldiers, who soon were passing her door
on their way to Boston. Again it was Mary
Draper who, when Washington appealed to
the people of New England to sacrifice their
lead and pewter for the purpose of giving the
army an adequate supply of ammunition, not
merely contributed generously from a store of
pewter ornaments that included many heir-
looms, but herself molded the precious ma-
terial into bullets.
Nursing wounded and invalid soldiers, vis-
iting patriots immured in British prisons, and
providing the army with clothing and other
necessaries, formed another noteworthy phase
of woman's work in the Revolution. Not a
few women paid with their lives for their sub-
lime devotion to the demands of pity, charity,
and patriotism.
Andrew Jackson's mother was one of these,
for she was stricken with fever after a journey
[105]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
to Charleston to carry clothes and provisions
to friends on the prison-ship in that port. Only
a few months before, following the rout and
slaughter of Buford's men by Tarleton's troop-
ers, she had fled from her home on the Waxhaw.
Now, in a ragged tent in the midst of the Caro-
lina wilderness, she breathed her last and was
buried in an unmarked grave by the roadside,
leaving to her little Andrew, the future hero
of New Orleans and President of the United
States, a legacy of naught but bitter and un-
ending hatred for England and all things Eng-
lish.
Another woman who laid down her life for
America — a heroine who literally wore her-
self out by good works — was Esther Reed
of Philadelphia. It was her distinction to or-
ganize the women of Philadelphia in their con-
certed and wonderfully successful efforts to
raise funds for the relief of Washington's
distressed army in the gloomy year 1780. As
president of the relief association, the brunt of
[1061
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
its labors fell on Mrs. Reed, but she bore them
cheerfully, and in fact enthusiastically. At
her solicitation contributions poured in from
many sources — ranging in amount from the few
shillings offered by a poor colored woman to
the hundred guineas in specie donated by
Lafayette, in behalf of his wife, in a character-
istically gallant letter. Lafayette wrote, ad-
dressing Mrs. Reed:
" Madame, in admiring the new resolution
in which the fair ones of Philadelphia have
taken the lead, I am induced to feel for those
American ladies who, being out of the continent,
cannot participate in this patriotic measure.
I know of one who, heartily wishing for a per-
sonal acquaintance with the ladies of America,
would feel particularly happy to be admitted
among them on the present occasion. Without
presuming to break in upon the rules of your
respected association, may I most humbly
present myself as her ambassador to the con-
federated ladies, and solicit in her name that
[107]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Mrs. President be pleased to accept of her offer-
ing."
This letter was written on the twenty-fifth
of June, 1780. Less than three months later,
her frail body shattered by her unremitting
exertions in behalf of the American army,
Esther Reed ended her earthly career at the
early age of thirty-four. All Philadelphia sin-
cerely mourned the passing of her gentle spirit,
patriot and loyalist for the moment sinking
their differences and uniting in a common senti-
ment of earnest grief.
Yet another way in which the women of
America advanced the cause of freedom, was
by conveying timely intelligence of the enemy's
plans and whereabouts to the leaders of the
American army; and, when occasion offered,
by deceiving the enemy as to the movements
of the patriot forces. Many instances of such
service are on record, but one or two illustra-
tions must suflSce.
As impressive as any is the story of the Phil-
[1081
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
adelphia Quakeress, Lydia Darrah. ^ At the time
— December, 1777 — the British under Howe
were in possession of Philadelphia, and Wash-
ington was encamped with his army some fifteen
miles north of that city at a place called White
Marsh. The Darrah house in Philadelphia
was a roomy, comfortable building, and was
frequently used by the British officers as a
council-hall. One day, Mrs. Darrah was noti-
fied that a meeting would be held that evening,
and the officer informing her added signifi-
cantly:
" You need not await our departure. In fact,
be sure to go to bed early, you and all your
family. When we are ready to leave, I will
knock at your door, that you may rise and
close after us."
It needed nothing more to convince the quick-
witted Quakeress that business of special im-
^ First made public in The American Quarterly Review,
and there stated as given on the authority of several of Lydia
Darrah's friends.
[109]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
portance was on foot; and, being at heart a
" rebel " of the deepest dye, she resolved to
play eavesdropper. Waiting impatiently until
the secret council was well under way, she left
her bedroom, stole down-stairs in stockinged
feet, and put her ear to the keyhole. At first
she heard only a confused murmur of voices.
Then, suddenly, some one read an order re-
lating to an expedition which, in twenty-four
hours, was to be unexpectedly launched against
the American camp at White Marsh.
Here, clearly, was the purpose of the con-
ference — to arrange the details of the pro-
jected surprise. Slipping back to bed, Mrs.
Darrah vehemently told herself that Washing-
ton must be warned. But how? She could
trust her message to no one. All night she
tossed and fretted, but by morning her mind
was made up. Pretending that she wished to
procure some flour from the mill at Frankford,
she readily obtained a pass through the British
lines, and once outside of Philadelphia made
[110]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
all haste toward the American camp. On the
way she met one of Washington's aides, who
knew her well, and promptly asked what had
brought her so far from the city.
" I have something to tell you," said she,
in a whisper; " follow me closely as I walk, yet
not too closely, for you must not seem to be
with me, as otherwise my life might be forfeit.
The British plan to attack you to-morrow."
And, speaking hurriedly, she told him all
she had overheard.
Late that night, as she lay in bed, the sound
of receding hoof-beats came to her ears, and
she knew that the secret expedition was leav-
ing Philadelphia. But she also knew that Wash-
ington was expecting it, and that on the morrow
the British would return — as they did — a
thoroughly discomfited army. As the oflScer
who had notified her of the meeting, afterward
said to her, in a tone of mingled amazement
and wrath:
" I cannot imagine who carried news of
[1111
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
our intended attack to General Washington.
When we got near his camp, we found cannon
mounted, gunners ready, and troops under
arms — everything so well prepared that there
was nothing for us to do but face about and
ride back like a parcel of fools."
In similar fashion, Mrs. Jane Thomas, of
the South Carolina backwoods, chanced one
day to hear of a projected raid against a patriot
camp at Cedar Springs, leaped on a horse,
rode nearly sixty miles, and arrived in time to
alarm the " rebels," who included several of
her own large family of sons. By the time the
loyalist raiders made their appearance a counter-
surprise was arranged, with the result that
although greatly superior in numbers the in-
vaders were repulsed with heavy loss.
This Jane Thomas, by the way, was a veri-
table Amazon. Once, after her husband and
some of his friends had hastily fled before an
oncoming party of loyalists, Mrs. Thomas and
her daughters, aided by a Josiah Culberson
[112]
THE WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
who had refused to seek safety by flight, beat
back the assailants when they attempted to
take the Thomas log cabin by storm.
Unquestionably, she was animated by the
same spirit which, also in South Carolina,
found expression in Isabella Ferguson's bold
defiance of her loyalist brother-in-law. Colonel
James Ferguson:
" Yes, I am a rebel! My brothers are rebels!
And our dog Trip is a rebel, too! "
Finally, it must not be forgotten that not
all the women of America sympathized with
the patriot cause. There were many who,
like their husbands and sons, clung steadfast
in their allegiance to the British Crown, and
suffered fearfully for their faithfulness. As
historians are now beginning to realize, the
patriot men and women had no monopoly
of heroism in the stirring years of the Revolu-
tion. The loyalists for their part — and the
women equally with the men — proved that,
so far as spirit, endurance, and bravery were
[113]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
concerned, they, too, were of the stuff of true
Americans.
It was true Americanism that prompted the
loyalist women of New York to subscribe
money for the fitting out of a privateer to be
called the Fair American — a name which
evoked from a local bard these effusive lines:
Assured be that every honest man
Will idolize the Fair American.
Brave loyal tars, with hearts of oak, will vie,
For you to fight, to conquer, live, or. die.
Like true Americans, the loyalist women
served the cause to which they had given them-
selves with a zeal, earnestness, and unselfish-
ness fittingly comparable with that shown by the
patriot wives and daughters. And when the
end came, when victory had definitely crowned
the patriot cause, and independence was finally
achieved, these loyalist heroines unfalteringly
followed their loved ones into a bitter exile.
Patriot or loyalist — the women of the Ameri-
can Revolution were indeed superb.
[1141
CHAPTER IV
HEROINES OF THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
IT is a most impressive coincidence that the
year which witnessed the beginning of the
War for Independence also saw the conquest
of the mountain barrier that had so long con-
fined the American people to the country bor-
dering on the sea. In 1775 — the year of
Lexington, Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill —
Daniel Boone and his daring little company
of trail-makers blazed the famous Wilderness
Road leading from the rock-ribbed region of
the lower Appalachians to the rich lands of
the Mississippi Valley. It was as though Des-
tiny, in nerving the Americans to strike for
freedom, had been careful to prepare the way
for their future growth as a nation.
Certainly, the opening of the Wilderness
Road was the signal for the commencement
[115]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of a mighty migratory movement. It began
the year the Road was cleared, and it exercised
a distinct influence on the outcome of the Rev-
olution; since, thanks to those over-the-moun-
tain settlers who took up arms under the leader-
ship of such men as George Rogers Clark and
John Sevier, the British and their Indian allies
were prevented from dealing deadly rear at-
tacks against the insurgent colonies.
After the Revolution, the westward move-
ment increased so rapidly in volume that the
traveler, Morris Birkbeck, watching a long
line of caravans passing through the Pennsyl-
vania forests, could wittily declare that " Old
America seems to be breaking up and moving
westward." The significant fact was that the
passage of the mountains was not a retreat
but an advance, an unconscious serving of
notice that the nation had outgrown its earlier
limits and had begun its forward march to
the waters of the Pacific.
Nor, especially in the first years of the move-
[116]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
ment, could anything testify more forcibly
to the courage, hardihood, and virility of the
men and women of America. If the people
of the coast and of the foot-hills were menaced
by the British redcoat and the Hessian hire-
ling, those who turned their faces toward the
West and plunged into the ocean of forest and
mountain were confronted by far more for-
midable dangers. Death in an agonizing
form at the hands of the savage Indian, at
the fangs of some wild beast, from exhaustion
or from starvation, was a constant peril.
And this no matter what road they took,
whether the long, tortuous Wilderness Road
from the Watauga settlements of North Caro-
lina to the Falls of the Ohio, where Louisville
stands to-day, or the easier but more dangerous
Ohio River route from Fort Pitt in western
Pennsylvania. When their journey's end was
reached, danger still overshadowed them. They
had to be ceaselessly on guard against the cruel,
copper-colored foe; had to build forts, block-
[117]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
houses, houses of refuge; had, often, to trust
to the bounty of nature to supply them with
food, cut off as they were from the well-devel-
oped East by hundreds of miles of wilderness.
Yet in they came — at first by little companies,
but soon by hundreds and thousands.
History, in fact, was repeating itself in this
great movement across the mountains, with
the single but important difference that the
new generation of emigrants, unhke those who
had flocked from Europe to America in the
time of the founding, were not fugitives from
oppression. Like their predecessors, however,
they were essentially home-seekers, a circum-
stance which more than any other has had a
determining influence on the history of the
United States. They were in quest not of gold
or of adventure, but of land which they might
call their own, untilled wastes which they could
convert into profitable pastures and grain-
fields. This was their ideal — to make a home
and to own it. And, as they well knew, it was
[118]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
an ideal that could not be fully realized with-
out the loving assistance of their wives, who
gladly volunteered to face the perils of the
unknown wilds by the side of those they
loved, and were indeed women worthy of
remembrance as makers and winners of the
West.
Many pressed forward even after they had
learned by some tragic experience the immen-
sity and danger of their undertaking. It was
thus, for example, with the Boones, perhaps
the most celebrated of all pioneer families.
Daniel Boone, the head of the family, was a
native of Pennsylvania, but emigrated at an
early age to the fertile Yadkin Valley in north-
western North Carolina. There he met, wooed,
and married Rebecca Bryan, a bonnie, black-
eyed Scotch-Irish lassie of seventeen.
For some years they lived quietly on the
Yadkin, but in 1769, fired by the tales of a wan-
dering fur-trader, Boone organized an exploring
expedition to visit Kentucky, at that time a
[1191
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
no-man's land, without a single white inhab-
itant and used by the Indians merely as a
hunting-ground. What he saw so delighted
him that he resolved to make Kentucky his
home, and on returning East induced a number
of his neighbors to remove thither with him.
September 25, 1773, the start was made, the
emigrants forming a picturesque cavalcade as,
mounted on horses and driving a herd of cattle
before them, they waved a last farewell to their
Yadkin Valley friends and wound their way up
a steep mountain trail.
Travel by wagon was impossible, for the
route lay mainly by Indian paths and buffalo
traces through a mountainous and heavily
wooded country. Nor, for the same reason,
could they take with them anything except the
barest necessaries — simple household goods,
farm implements, and the like. All of these
were transported on the backs of pack-horses,
where the children too small to sit a saddle but
too big to be carried in their mothers' arms,
[120]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
were also stowed away, securely strapped among
bedding, pots, and pans. At night the entire
company slept around a camp-fire under the
open sky. It was primitive traveling, by a
primitive but great people.
The first feeling of depression at leaving
their old homes soon wore away, and by the
time Powell's Valley was reached, and they
approached Cumberland Gap, the broad gate-
way to the West, all were in the highest spirits,
eagerly anticipating their arrival in Kentucky,
which Boone had pictured as an earthly para-
dise.
But it chanced that, all unknown to them,
an Indian war-party was passing through
Powell's Valley, fresh from a raid against the
villages of some hostile tribe. Sighting some
of the emigrants, who had temporarily sepa-
rated from the main body, and seeing in them
not peaceful travelers but their hereditary
foes, the inevitable happened. Boone's oldest
son, a bright, sturdy youth of seventeen, fell
[121]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
at the first fire, and several other men were
killed.
Here was a speedy and fatal intimation of
the many similar tragedies to be enacted in
later times along the blood-won road to Ken-
tucky. Boone himself, notwithstanding the
death of his son, wished to proceed, and his
faithful wife, drying her tears like the mothers
of ancient Sparta, announced her readiness
to accompany him. But in spite of entreaties
the others turned back, leaving the Boones,
who took up their residence in a deserted cabin,
to await another opportunity of recruiting
volunteers for the opening up of the Western
lands.
More than a year passed before the chance
came. Then Boone was engaged to serve as
pilot and road-maker for a company of wealthy
Carolinians who had undertaken to colonize
Kentucky. Setting out at the head of a care-
fully chosen party of thirty expert backwoods-
men, he traveled for nearly a month, painfully
[122]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
hewing out the historic Wilderness Road ^
over which so many thousands of sturdy pio-
neers were to adventure within the next few
years.
Onward Boone's men marched and chopped
and fought — for the Indians were eager to
shut up the path — until, on April 1, 1775,
they reached the Kentucky River. There,
in the heart of the Blue Grass region, they built
a settlement which they fittingly named Boones-
borough; and thither, so soon as he had cleared
a patch of land, sown some corn, and built a
cabin, Boone brought his wife and their seven
boys and girls.
" My wife and daughters," as he was proud
to recall in his old age, " were the first white
women to set foot on the banks of Kentucky."
But he had brought them to a hard and peril-
1 A detailed account of the opening up of this first great
highway to the West will be found in the present writer's
" Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road/' a book intended
to serve the dual purpose of a biography of Boone and a his-
tory of early Western settlement.
[123]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
ous life. The killing of their son had been a
warning of what might be expected in Kentucky;
the narrow escape of fourteen-year-old Jemima
Boone from Indian captivity, showed still
more plainly the vital need for constant watch-
fulness. Indeed, it was the first notification
received by the settlers of Boonesborough,
which had grown rapidly, that they were
threatened by a disastrous Indian war.
One summer afternoon in 1776, Jemima
Boone and two sisters named Callaway, while
boating on the Kentucky, allowed their canoe to
drift close to the opposite bank. Here, behind
a bush, five Shawnee warriors were in hiding,
and although the spot was not more than a
quarter of a mile from Boonesborough, one
of the Shawnees struck boldly out into the
water, seized the canoe, and dragged it to shore
with its screaming occupants.
Once in the power of the Indians, however,
these youthful daughters of the wilderness
betrayed a wonderful self-possession and re-
[124]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
sourcefulness. They knew enough of In-
dian customs to reahze that if their strength
failed them, and they should prove unequal
to the long march to the Shawnee towns on the
Ohio, they would be slaughtered mercilessly.
So they stifled their sobs, and calmly accom-
panied their captors without protest or struggle.
At every opportunity, though, they secretly
tore little pieces from their clothing and attached
them to bushes on the trail. Nothing more
was needed to inform Boone and his fellow
settlers, who had quickly started in pursuit,
that they were on the right track, and on the
second day of the captivity they caught up
with the Indians. A volley laid two Shawnees
low, the rest fled, and by the close of another
day the girls were safe in the arms of their
thankful mothers.
This was but the beginning of unnumbered
woes for the people of Boonesborough, Harrods-
burg, and the other hamlets and forts which
by this time dotted central Kentucky. Indian
[125]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
skirmishes, raids, battles, and sieges became
part of the daily routine of life, and great were
the losses inflicted by the red men, roused to
fury by the invasion of their ancestral hunting-
grounds and, at all events during the Revolu-
tion, incited against the settlers by the British
authorities at Detroit.
But the storm of their hostility did not blot
out the pioneers and their habitations. Meet-
ing the foe unflinchingly, both men and women
rose at times to sublime heights of heroism
and devotion. There was many a woman who,
like Rebecca Boone, learned to do and dare
as much as, and sometimes more than, a man
would in the face of dire need and impending
catastrophe. For these mothers of the frontier
were not easily daunted. Rather, the harder
pressed they were, the more conspicuously they
rose to the occasion.
This was demonstrated time and again in
the seven years of almost perpetual warfare
waged between the Western settlers and the
[126]
P5 o '^
e
o
' ^'W^
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
Indians during the Revolution. One of its most
striking instances was the heroism shown by
EHzabeth Zane ^ at the time of the second
siege of Wheehng, to-day the chief city of
West Virginia.
The Zanes were among its founders, Eben-
ezer Zane, EHzabeth's brother, having been the
first pioneer to build a cabin at the spot where
Wheeling Creek empties its waters into the
Ohio. Five years later, at the beginning of
the Revolutionary War, some twenty-five fam-
ilies were living there protected by Fort Henry,
a stockaded structure located on a hill overlook-
ing the settlers' cabins and corn-fields. It had
no armament other than a single cannon, a
relic of the French and Indian War, but with
its stout palisades, its overhanging block-houses,
and its many port-holes manned by unerring
^ There are several versions of this heroic exploit. I
have followed that most generally accepted, and found in
Wills De Hass's " History of the Early Settlement and
Indian Wars of Western Virginia," published at Wheehng
in 1851.
[1271
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
marksmen, it was quite strong enough to with-
stand Indian raiders, and it proved its worth
in 1777, when four hundred redskins laid siege
to it in vain.
Thereafter the people of Wheeling, unlike
the people of the Kentucky settlements farther
south, were comparatively free from Indian
alarms until near the close of the Revolution.
But early in September, 1782, a mixed force
of Shawnees, Delawares, and soldiers from the
British post at Detroit, nearly three hundred
men in all, under the command of a Captain
Andrew Pratt, made a sudden descent upon the
fort. Luckily for the settlers, half an hour
earlier scouts had brought word of the enemy's
approach, and this gave time for all to seek
shelter behind the stockade.
For some reason Ebenezer Zane and his
family did not accompany the rest. The tradi-
tion is that Zane's house had been burned by
the Indians at the siege of 1777, and that this
so exasperated the impetuous woodsman that
[1281
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
he vowed he would never again abandon his
dweUing-place to the torch. It was a thick-
walled, substantial building, a miniature cita-
del in itself, and was moreover well within
range of the fort's cannon, a circumstance which
aided greatly in its defense.
But it had a pitifully small garrison, including
only Ebenezer Zane, his brother Silas, two bor-
derers named Green, and a negro slave, together
with three women, Mrs. Ebenezer Zane, Eliz-
abeth Zane, and a Molly Scott. All, men and
women alike, prepared for a desperate struggle.
Before making any attack, however, the inva-
ders marched through the corn-fields about
the deserted cabins, and into an open space
at the foot of the fort hill. A halt was ordered
and the commanding oflScer demanded the
surrender of the fort, promising, rather ambig-
uously, " the best protection King George
could afford."
The sinister hint of possible inability to
restrain his savage followers from an indis-
[129]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
criminate massacre, even if the settlers should
surrender, was not lost on them; and in any
event they had no intention of yielding. With
mocking cries and jeers they bade Pratt do
his worst, emphasizing their remarks by an oc-
casional rifle-shot. A second summons to
surrender met with a similar response, and just
before sundown an attack in force was ordered.
The Indians had not failed to note the soli-
tary cannon mounted on a platform which
overtopped the stockade, but they imagined
it was simply a " Quaker cannon " — that is
to say, a log fashioned and painted in the like-
ness of a cannon. So, without giving it a mo-
ment's thought, they advanced in a compact
body. Finger on trigger, the garrison patiently
waited until certain that every shot would
count. Then, from the line of port-holes,
tongues of fire burst forth, while at the same
instant the dull boom of the cannon resounded
overhead, venting a ball that plowed through
the crowded ranks.
[130]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
" Stand back! " cried Captain Pratt. " Stand
back! There's no wood about that! "
To quicken the retreat came an angry buzzing
from Ebenezer Zane's house, a hornetlike sing-
ing of bullets, every one of which found its
billet in some red man's breast.
Baffled, but not beaten, the attacking army
fled to cover, whence, in small parties, they
presently emerged to renew, not once but many
times, the attempt to storm the fort. Always
they were driven off, with heavy loss. Nor
did they fare better when they tried to silence
the incessant rifle-fire from the Zane house,
where the women with tireless dexterity loaded
the rifles almost as fast as the men could dis-
charge them. Thus the night passed, without
rest to besieged or besiegers, and not until
noon of the next day did the enemy cease firing
for the purpose of taking a brief sleep.
It was then that Elizabeth Zane performed
the feat which won for her imperishable renown
in the annals of the border. So continuous
[131]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
had been the battle that the supply of ammu-
nition in her brother's house had become almost
exhausted. The only source of a fresh supply
was the magazine in the fort, and there was
not an inch of sheltered ground between the
Zane house and the hill on which the fort
stood. It seemed madness to attempt the
journey, but one of the Greens promptly vol-
unteered. Then Elizabeth Zane spoke up.
" No," said she, " none of you men shall go.
I will. I am only a woman, and should I be
killed, I can better be spared than any of you."
Her brother and the rest sought vainly to
dissuade her. Every cabin, as they pointed
out, was now filled with Indians, who would
almost certainly kill or capture her. But her
mind was made up. Throwing open the door,
she ran at utmost speed to the stockade-gate,
while the Indians, as though stupefied by her
audacity, stood watching her in silent wonder.
Friendly hands grasped her, drew her into
the fort-yard, and shut fast the gate.
[132]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
" Powder," she whispered, to the amazed
men and women who crowded about her,
" give me powder, all I can carry in my apron."
Ten minutes more and the brave young
woman was again in the open, darting toward
the house. Now the bullets began to fly after
her, while the men at the port-holes blazed
angrily back, seeking to cover her return.
Nearer she came, steadily nearer, and still un-
harmed. A moment more and she would be
safe. Ebenezer Zane, working his rifle with
desperate intensity, shouted words of loving
encouragement.
Again the bullets sang past her head. Not
once faltering, Elizabeth Zane fled on, reached
the house, and fell forward, breathless but un-
hurt, into her brother's arms. It is good to
be able to add that the powder secured at such
hazard enabled the Zanes to hold out until
relieved of all danger by the hasty retreat of
the enemy at news that a powerful expedition
was advancing against them.
[133]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
But it was in Kentucky — and particularly
against the cluster of settlements in the Blue
Grass region, connected with the farthermost
settlements of the East only by the thin, two-
hundred-mile thread of the Wilderness Road —
that the Indians delivered their deadliest
blows. Even after the Revolution it was years
before Kentucky — veritably a dark and bloody
ground — became entirely free from the danger
of Indian raids. Every little fort and station
had its history of battle and siege, its death-
roll of slaughtered victims. Nevertheless,
the settlers manfully held their ground, led
by such famous Indian fighters as Daniel
Boone, George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Logan,
and Simon Kenton.
There were Indian fighters, too, among the
women, though comparatively few of their ex-
ploits have come down to us.^ A raid on Innis'
* The stories that immediately follow are based on accoimts
found in two old works, Lewis Collins* " History of Ken-
tucky," and John A. McClung's " Sketches of Western Ad-
venture."
[134]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
settlement, three or four miles from Frankfort,
was rendered memorable by the bravery of
the wives of Jesse and Hosea Cook, two brothers
who had imprudently built their cabin homes
at an isolated spot. Surprised by Indians
while shearing sheep, Jesse Cook was shot dead,
and Hosea mortally wounded. But he man-
aged to stagger to the cabin where his wife and
sister-in-law then were with their infant chil-
dren, and with his last breath called to them
to secure the door.
Ordinary women thus bereft would have been
incapable of action, but the Cooks were ex-
traordinary women. While Mrs. Hosea vainly
sought to revive her husband, who had fallen
just inside the entrance. Mrs. Jesse barred the
door, which fortunately was unusually strong.
Outside, the Indians hammered upon it, in-
sistently demanding admittance.
Picking up a rifle, Mrs. Jesse Cook loaded
it, peered through a chink in the wall, and
sighting an Indian seated on a near-by log,
[1351
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
took careful aim and fired. The Indian leaped
into the air with a horrible yell and fell dead,
while his companions, threatening a fearful
vengeance, climbed nimbly upon the cabin
roof and set fire to it. Calling to her sister-in-
law to hand her a bucket of water, Mrs. Jesse
rushed up the ladder leading to the cabin attic,
and put out the flames. Again the Indians
kindled a blaze, and again she extinguished it.
And so for a third time.
More than once the Indians sent bullets
through the cabin walls, but without doing any
injury. Finally, afraid that if they lingered
longer they might be surrounded by a strong
force of settlers, they descended from the roof
and vanished into the forest, leaving the heroic
women to bury their dead husbands.
Mrs. John Merrill, of Nelson County, was
another Kentucky woman who met and over-
came the Indian foe, by her unaided strength
and quick wit defeating no fewer than six red
men, if tradition speaks the truth. One night,
[136]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
when she and her husband were alone in their
cabin, they were awakened by a loud barking
of their dog, and upon opening the door Mr.
Merrill received the fire of half a dozen Indians
who were in hiding outside. Badly, though
not fatally wounded, he fell to the floor, while
his wife sprang out of bed and closed the door
just in time to shut out the whooping savages.
She knew that it would take them only a
few minutes to cut an entrance, ^and seizing
an ax she made ready for a defense to the death.
As the first Indian forced his way in through
the narrow opening made by their tomahawks,
she swung her ax with Amazonian strength,
and down the Indian tumbled, dead at the
instant. Two others she similarly killed. The
rest then tried to enter by way of the chimney,
but Mrs. Merrill proved herself no less resource-
ful than courageous. Ripping open a feather
bed she set fire to the feathers, making a furious
blaze and dense smoke which brought down two
Indians gasping for breath.
[137]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
With a couple of powerful blows she des-
patched them, and turned in time to meet the
single surviving Indian, who had crept in un-
noticed through the break in the door. Leaping
at him with the fury of a wildcat, she swung
her ax once more, laid open his cheek to the
bone, and sent him out into the night shrieking
dismally. Some months afterward a returned
prisoner from the Shawnee towns brought
word that the wounded Indian had spread
far and wide marvelous tales of the prowess
and ferocity of John Merrill's " long-knife
squaw."
Even little girls became imbued with phenom-
enal bravery and strength in those grim years
of warfare. One morning a Lincoln County
pioneer named Woods, who had settled on a
lonely heath, paid a visit to the nearest station,
leaving at home a family consisting of his wife,
his daughter, scarcely in her teens, and a
crippled negro servant.
No Indian " signs " had been seen for some
[138]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
time, and Mr. Woods felt that all would be well
during his absence. But toward noon his wife,
while working in an outbuilding, saw several
Indians running toward the house. Screaming
loudly to give the alarm she sought to reach
the house before them, but could not run fast
enough to enter and close the door before the
arrival of the nearest Indian.
As soon as he came in, the crippled negro
heroically grappled with him, and together
they rolled about the floor, the negro holding
the Indian so tightly that he could do no damage.
But neither could the negro free a hand to kill
him. Mrs. Woods, meanwhile, was exerting
all her strength to keep the door closed against
the other Indians. Seeing that she could not
possibly come to his aid, the negro called to
her young daughter:
" Get that sharp ax under the bed and chop
this man's head off."
Trembling with nervousness, but pure grit
in every ounce of her little body, the girl picked
[139]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
up the ax, while the Indian, in a panic, strove
madly to shake off his black antagonist. The
first blow of the ax missed him completely,
but the little girl struck again, and this time
inflicted so severe a wound that the negro was
able to rise and make an end of the Indian.
At the same moment the sound of firing was
heard outdoors. A party of white hunters
had heard the tumult and had galloped to the
rescue.
By all odds the most notable display of
female heroism during the Indian wars in
Kentucky, however, was made in connection
with the siege of Bryan's Station in 1782. This
stockaded settlement had been founded three
years previously by four brothers of that name
from North Carolina, and stood on the North
Fork of the Elkhorn, a few miles from Lexing-
ton. In 1780 the original settlers had abandoned
it, following Indian raids on neighboring
stations, and the killing of the oldest Bryan
brother; but it was soon re-occupied, this time
[1401
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
by immigrants from Virginia, and at the time
of the siege it contained twelve famihes, be-
sides twenty-five or thirty men — scouts, hunt-
ers, and surveyors — who were temporarily
making it their headquarters.
Until midsummer of 1782 it had almost
entirely escaped attack, and its occupants
were beginning to feel that the Indians, who
had been comparatively quiet since an invasion
of their country by George Rogers Clark two
years before, would no longer menace the pros-
perity of that part of Kentucky. But, at
sunset of August 15, a messenger arrived with
news that a large force of Wyandots and Shaw-
nees had surprised and defeated a party of
settlers from another station, and that every
available man was expected to turn out the
next day to hunt for, and give battle to, the
savages.
No one dreamed that the real object of the
Indians in thus entering once more the Blue
Grass region was to conquer and destroy Bry-
[1411
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
an's Station itself, at that time the largest and
one of the most strongly fortified stations in
Kentucky. In blissful ignorance of the fate
threatening them, the garrison began to make
preparations for an early departure. In the
overhanging, port-holed block-houses, which
stood like many-eyed sentinels at the four
corners of the stockade, men took down their
rifles from the racks on the walls, filled bullet
pouches and powder-horns, and vigorously
sharpened their hunting-knives. In the inter-
vening cabins, by the light of buffalo-tallow
candles, bare-armed women molded bullets,
prepared food, and mended clothing. Thus
every one toiled, far into the hot summer night;
and meantime, approaching ever closer, crept
an army of five hundred copper-colored warriors
headed by a British oflScer named Caldwell and
a notorious American renegade, Simon Girty.
Sunrise found the station on the Elkhorn
completely surrounded by the Indians, not
one of whom, however, was visible from the
[142]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
stockade. Girty, never suspecting that the
settlers were planning to march out of their
own accord, and thus clear the way for an easy
victory, had devised a crafty scheme to lure
them to destruction. At his orders the main
body of the invaders remained concealed in
weeds, long grass, and growing corn between
the back of the station and the river, while a
small company was posted along the trail that
led past the front gate of the stockade, the inten-
tion being that they should keep hidden until
daylight, when they were boldly to show them-
selves. It was thought that the garrison would
then rush out to attack them, and would pursue
them along the trail, while their comrades at
the same time would storm the station from
behind.
A few years earlier this scheme would un-
doubtedly have proved effective. But the
Kentuckians had learned wisdom from bitter
experience, and, instead of blindly rushing out,
orders were at once issued to make ready to
[143]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
withstand a siege. More than this, a counter-
plot was quickly formed. Ten or twelve vol-
unteers were to be sent to engage the Indians
on the trail, while the rest of the garrison,
posted at the port-holes facing the river, were
to reserve their fire until the real assault from
the rear was made. Then the assailants were
to be greeted with a volley which, it was not
doubted, would greatly decimate their ranks
and send them scurrying back to cover.
One problem remained, and a most serious
one. Like most of the Kentucky settlements
of that early time, Bryan's Station depended
for its water supply on a spring some distance
from the stockade, the custom being for the
women and girls to go to the spring early in
the morning and carry in enough water to last
through the day. In the case of Bryan's
Station, the spring was located at the foot of
a slope leading from the stockade to the river,
and in the very midst of the trees and shrubs,
cane and weeds where the Indians lay concealed.
[144]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
Yet water the defenders must have. But how
to obtain it?
If a party of men went out it was certain the
Indians would fall upon and overwhelm them.
If, on the other hand, the women of the settle-
ment were to make the attempt, visiting the
spring in accordance with their daily custom,
there was a bare possibility that they might
not be molested if they could only deceive
the Indians into thinking that their presence
was still undetected. Of course, though, the
risk would be great, and the question was would
the women be willing to take it.
Called together in one of the block-houses to
discuss the situation, and being plainly in-
formed that without water it would be hopeless
to attempt a defense, their decision was soon
made. Stepping forward without a moment's
hesitation, one of them — Mrs. Jemima Suggett
Johnson, the mother of five children, including
the future hero of the Battle of the Thames and
Vice-President of the United States, Richard
H451
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
M. Johnson, then an infant peacefully slumber-
ing in a rough-hewed cradle — put her hand
on the shoulder of her ten-year-old daughter,
Betsy, and said:
" I will go for water, and my girl Betsy will
go with me. And we shall not have to go alone."
The half-challenge, half-invitation in her
words was instantly accepted by the other
women of the station. One after another they
promised to follow her, and pledged the assist-
ance of their daughters. From cabin to cabin
they ran in search of water vessels, heavy
pails for the grown women and the older girls,
and for the younger ones little piggins and nog-
gins with their quaint single and double up-
right staves for handles.
When all was in readiness the back gate
of the stockade was opened, and out they walked
— twenty-eight women and girls, chatting and
laughing and singing as though they had not
the faintest suspicion that their deadliest foes
were hovering near. Down the sloping hill-
[146]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
side they made their way, through the tall
weeds and charred stumps of the clearing,
by a path so narrow that two could not walk
abreast. A few moments more, and they were
lost to sight in a cane-brake high enough to give
cover to a man on horseback. Still their
voices rang merrily, carrying assurance to the
anxious men in the stockade, and completely
deceiving the Indians, who crouched lower
in their hiding-places.
It was a marvelous display of self-control,
of resolute intrepidity, but it was hard indeed
for the women and girls to keep up their show
of unconcern. Here and there, in the cane and
weeds and long grass, they caught the glitter
of a rifle barrel, the tremulous quivering of a
war feather, the gleam of an evil eye. They
could hear a low whispering, which they rightly
interpreted as the furtive consultation of the
Indians, perplexedly asking one another whether
it was not wiser to make a beginning of the
struggle there and then. Small wonder if, as
[1471
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
they neared the spring, the laughter of some
died away, the voices of others grew more sub-
dued.
Swiftly, yet without appearance of haste,
they bent to their task. The girls, some of
whom were not much older than little Betsy
Johnson, were the first to fill their piggins and
noggins and buckets and start on the homeward
journey. After them came the women, several,
like Mrs. Johnson, returning with a pail in
each hand and a third on the head. Through
the cane they hurried back, with firm tread,
glancing neither to the right nor to the left,
lest, in their now intense excitement, the merest
glimpse of a tawny form might betray one of
them into a shriek that would bring the Indians
upon them. And thus, with their hearts ever
beating faster beneath their shabby linsey-
woolsey dresses, they regained the clearing,
passed up the hill to the stockade gate, and
through the gate, their noble deed accomplished.
With their return the defenders hastened
[1481
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
into action. Each man leaped to his appointed
post, in block-house or by stockade port-hole,
the front gate was opened wide, and out dashed
the squad of volunteers, blazing away at the
Indians on the trail, who answered with a volley,
then fled with taunting cries. After them
sped the volunteers, firing as they ran, shout-
ing and hallooing, and, in short, contriving to
make as much noise as though they were half
a hundred instead of but a dozen men. Inside
the stockade perfect silence reigned.
Then the expected happened. Up from the
the grass and weeds, out from the corn
and cane-brake, lithe, hideously-painted forms
emerged, Girty at their head. Up the hill
they raced, at first in a wide, semi-circular
line, but massing together as they neared the
gate. On they came, until every detail of
their gaunt, malevolent features was plainly
visible. Not until then did the cry ring out:
"Fire!"
With that first volley victory was practically
[149]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
assured. When the smoke cleared, fallen
Indians dotted the hillside, inert shapes or
writhing horribly, while the uninjured had
once more vanished into the thickets by the
river. The volley, too, was the signal for the
return of those who had sallied out to give
sham battle to the decoy detachment. Not at
once, to be sure, did the Indians give over the
attempt that had begun so disastrously for
them. Urged by Girty, they returned again
and again to the attack, until a warning reached
them that a powerful relief expedition had been
raised and was on its way to the station.^
Such an exhibition of unflinching valor ob-
viously presupposed innate characteristics of
great forcefulness, and it cannot be too strongly
emphasized that the pioneer women of the early
West brought with them from the East qual-
ities of the utmost importance to the welfare
^ Colonel Durrett's " Bryant's Station," published as
No. 12 of the Filson Club's publications, contains accounts of
this siege by both Colonel Durrett and George W. Ranck, two
Kentucky historians.
[150]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
of the prosperous, progressive commonwealths
which they assisted to upbuild.
For the most part the early West — by which
is meant West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ten-
nessee—was settled from the frontiers of
Virginia and the Carolinas, and by people of
the so-called Scotch-Irish race. The women of
this stock were a strong-limbed, clear-eyed folk.
Their predominant trait was a stubborn,
unflinching courageousness, manifest alike in
times of great crisis, and in the ordinary vicis-
situdes of life.
W^en Mrs. Joseph Davies of Virginia, to
give an illustration, broke her arm at the cross-
ing of the Cumberland River, but continued
on the road to Kentucky, riding her horse and
carrying her baby as though no injury had be-
fallen her, she but typified the innate pluck
and determination common to the women who
settled the West. There were no weaklings
among them — weaklings could never have
crossed the well-nigh trackless mountains, to
[151]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
say nothing of withstanding the ordeals of
the wilderness existence.
They were, too, wonderfully self-reliant
women, and women in whom the spirit of in-
itiative was strongly developed, as we already
know from our study of the border women of
the " forgotten half -century." Many were in-
strumental in inducing their husbands and
sons to seek new homes in the West.
It was thus that William Whitley, the noted
Indian fighter, was led to settle in Kentucky.
Reports of the remarkable fertility of the Blue
Grass country had reached the Virginia settle-
ment where he had always lived, and one night,
after a hard day's work on the farm, Whitley
remarked to his wife that if Kentucky were all
it was painted it would pay them to remove to
it. " Well, Billy," was her quick response, " if
I was you, I would go and find out." In two
days he was Westward-bound, with rifle and
ax and plow.
Similarly, Rebecca Boone gave a signal dis-
[1521
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
play of the self-reliant, enterprising spirit of
the Western women, when her husband was cap-
tured by the Indians in 1778 and taken to
Detroit to be put on exhibition as one of the
most redoubtable of border fighters. Believing
him dead, she decided to return with her chil-
dren to the North Carolina home of her kins-
folk, packed her belongings, loaded them on
horses, and actually traversed without assist-
ance the difficult and dangerous Wilderness
Road and the equally arduous trails from Cum-
berland Gap to the Yadkin Valley. It was
there that Boone found her after his escape
from captivity, and thence, willingly as ever,
she again accompanied him to Kentucky, even
while the Indian wars were still raging.
The mother of Sam Houston was another
woman who, for the sake of her children, haz-
arded the dangers of the wilderness journey
without the protection of a man's strong arm.
She must have justified to the full the eulo-
gistic description penned of her by Houston's
[153]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
friend and biographer, C. Edwards Lester,
who portrayed her as "an extraordinary
woman, distinguished by an impressive and
dignified countenance, and gifted with intellec-
tual and moral qualities which elevated her in
a still more striking manner above most of
her sex."
The death of her husband left Mrs. Houston
in rather poor circumstances and with a grow-
ing family of six sons and three daughters.
Knowing that many of her neighbors who had
gone West had prospered exceedingly, she de-
termined to follow their example in order that
her children might get a good start in life, sold
her Virginia farm, and journeyed to Tennessee,
ending her migration only when within eight
miles of the boundary between the settlements
of the whites and the wigwams of the Cherokees.
There she erected a rude cabin, with the
help of her oldest boys, and there she labored
diligently to bring up her children to be useful
men and women. It was for them that she
[154]
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT
toiled and prayed and denied herself, person-
ifying in her devotion another trait of the
mothers of the early West.
However poor they might be, they were
women of lofty ambitions and high ideals.
Their huge sunbonnets and faded gowns re-
flected only the exterior poverty of their lives;
in their motherly love, their capacity to sym-
pathize with the sick and suffering, their pro-
found religious faith and noble moral principles,
they were truly rich.
And this is why, despite all the hardships
and privation that attended the westward
movement, the children of the pioneers were
born to a goodly inheritance, if not of the things
of this earth, assuredly of the greater blessings
of a strong physique, a sane, healthy outlook
on life, and a real greatness of soul.
[155]
CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
THE distinctive traits of the American
woman — her abihty to rise subhmely to
great occasions and meet a crisis unflinchingly,
her willingness to give the best that is in her
for the sake of those she loves and for the noble
cause of patriotism, and her marvelous ca-
pacity to endure hardship, suffering, and pri-
vation — have never been more convincingly
revealed than in the long struggle over slavery,
which gradually divided the nation into two
hostile camps and at last culminated in a co-
lossal war.
On both sides in that terrible conflict, the
women of the country proved themselves worthy
descendants of the splendid matrons who had
wrought so nobly for America in bygone times.
[156]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
And even in the earliest stages of the struggle,
in the period of agitation from 1820 onward,
when the American people were only dimly
beginning to perceive that the presence of the
bondsman on American soil involved problems
which menaced the peace and welfare of the
republic, women were to the fore in pointing
out the path of destiny and duty.
Anti-slavery agitation, of course, was by
no means confined to the forty years immedi-
ately preceding the Civil War. Protests were
heard almost so soon as the first slaves were
imported into the English colonies in 1619,
and throughout the colonial period the subject
was intermittently discussed. It formed a
ground for heated controversy in the Constitu-
tional Convention of 1787, and for a time
threatened to wreck the labors of the constitu-
tion makers. But, although the process of
emancipating slaves steadily continued in the
States of the North, there was no systematic
movement looking to the abolition of slavery
[1571
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
throughout the United States until Benjamin
Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison began the
crusade that speedily drew upon them the
wrath of those who believed that the holding
of slaves was morally, politically, and eco-
nomically justifiable. On the other hand, from
the moment that Garrison raised his powerful
voice and wielded his trenchant pen in behalf
of the slave, recruits hastened to enlist under
the standard he had raised, and within a re-
markably short time hundreds of ardent ad-
vocates of universal emancipation were to be
found in all parts of the country.
The rapidity with which the movement
spread may be indicated in a few sentences.
In 1831 Garrison founded his emancipation
newspaper, The Liberator, and within another
twelve months a New England Anti-Slavery
Society was established. During the next year
subsidiary societies sprang up in so many cities
and towns that by December, 1833, it was
deemed advisable to organize an American
[1581
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
Anti-Slavery Society for the purpose of uniting
and concentrating the agitation of the entire
country. By 1840 this central organization
was directing the work of no fewer than two
thousand local societies, with a membership
of between one hundred and fifty thousand
and two hundred thousand men and women.
And this, be it clearly understood, despite the
bitterest opposition in the North as well as
in the South — an opposition that in many
instances took the form of mob violence, in
response to the cry of the politician and the
pro-slavery advocate that the Union could not
endure unless the abolitionists were silenced.
In New York, for instance, there was a riot
as early as October, 1833, when Clinton Hall,
the place selected for an abolition meeting,
was raided by opponents of the movement.^
1 A. B. Hart's " Slavery and Abolition," published as vol.
xvi of the " American Nation " co^roperative history of the
United States. This book may be recommended as giving
an excellent modern account of the development of the ab-
olition movement.
[159]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Other riots in July of the following year re-
sulted in the sacking of the home of Lewis
Tappan, a wealthy New York abolitionist,
and the destruction of several other houses and
churches. In similar riots in Philadelphia
there was even greater damage to property,
forty-four houses being injured or totally des-
troyed in a single outbreak in 1834. Four
years later, in the same city, a mob burned
Pennsylvania Hall, a handsome structure which
the abolitionists had erected because of the
difficulty experienced in leasing suitable quar-
ters for their meetings. It had been officially
opened only three days when the mob, not-
withstanding the pleadings of the mayor,
broke in by a side door, started a fire, and then
fought off the firemen sent to save the build-
ing.
In Boston, anti-abolition feeling rose to
fever heat upon the arrival, in the autumn of
1834, of a forceful English abolitionist, George
Thompson, who came from abroad in the hope
[1601
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
of helping Garrison arouse a more favorable
public sentiment by the power of his remark-
able oratory. The announcement that he
was to speak at a meeting of the Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society brought out, on the morn-
ing of the day set for the meeting, a vicious
hand -bill that was distributed throughout the
city. It openly incited its readers to violence,
in these words:
" That infamous foreign scoundrel Thomp-
son will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator
office, No. 48 Washington Street. The present
is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union
to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest
between the abolitionists and the friends of
the Union. A purse of one hundred dollars
has been raised by a number of patriotic cit-
izens to reward the individual who shall first
lay violent hands on Thompson so that he
may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark.
Friends of the Union, be vigilant! "
Thompson was not present at the meeting,
[161]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
but Garrison was, and on him fell the fury of
the mob. After wrecking the office of The
Liberator, they tied a rope around Garrison
and dragged him through the streets to the
city hall, where the mayor comniitted him to
jail, ostensibly as a " disturber of the peace,"
but in reality to save his life. A similar scene
was enacted at Cincinnati in 1836, when the
office of The Philanthropist was gutted, and a
determined effort made to kill its editor, James
G. Birney. And the next year, at Alton, 111.,
anti-abolition hatred actually culminated in
murder, Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of a little
abolition paper, being deliberately shot down
by a mob, twelve of whom were afterward
tried for the crime but acquitted after only ten
minutes' deliberation by the jury.
In spite of all this — perhaps partly on
account of it, for persecution has always
strengthened worthy causes — the abolition
movement, as was said, grew apace, being
carried forward by an ever increasing army
[162]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
of enthusiasts, both men and women. Women,
indeed, were among the most earnest, eloquent
and indefatigable champions of emancipation.
They formed societies of their own — chief
among which was the already mentioned Bos-
ton Female Anti-Slavery Society, of whose
leading spirit, Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman,
the gifted and beautiful wife of a wealthy Boston
merchant, it has been said that she was " second
to none in her lieutenancy to Garrison, the
captain of the great reform " — and at the
cost of no matter what personal sacrifice they
labored to promote a cause which appealed to
their profoundest moral instincts.
Strange as it may seem, the two women who
were especially prominent at the time when
abolition was most in disfavor — from 1833 to
1840 — were Southerners, Sarah and Angelina
Grimke, the daughters of Judge John F.
Grimke, of Charleston, one of the most in-
fluential men in South Carolina. That South-
ern women generally did not sympathize with
[163]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the emancipation movement is not at all sur-
prising, neither is it to their discredit. Like
the men of the South, they had been brought
up to consider slavery a fixed and necessary
institution; they saw little or nothing of its
worst side, and they were disposed to re-
gard the condition of the negro in slavery as
infinitely better than would be his lot were he
liberated and compelled to shift for himself.
To put it otherwise, training and environment
alike constrained the Southern women to
look at the question from a point of view dif-
fering radically from that of the women of the
North.
But Sarah and Angelina Grimke, notwith-
standing that they were born into a family of
slaveholders, and at one time owned slaves
of their own, seem to have viewed slavery
with abhorrence from early youth. " Slavery,"
wrote Sarah, " was a millstone about my neck,
and marred my comfort from the time I can
remember myself." They left home and re-
[164]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
moved to Philadelphia, where they joined the
Quakers, and where, in 1836, Angelina, the
younger but the more talented of the two sis-
ters, wrote a pamphlet entitled " An Appeal
to the Christian Women of the South." It
was a vigorous anti-slavery document, and
caused a tremendous sensation. The profound
impression it made on abolitionists may be
judged from a letter written to its author by
Elizur Wright, then secretary of the American
Anti-Slavery Society.
" I have just finished reading your Appeal,
and not with a dry eye," wrote Mr. Wright.
" Oh, that it could be rained down into every
parlor in our land. I know it will carry the
Christian women of the South if it can be
read, and my soul blesses that dear and glo-
rious Saviour who has helped you to write it."
And, according to Catherine H. Birney,
the biographer of the Grimke sisters, Mr.
Wright also spoke of it as "a patch of blue
sky breaking through the storm-cloud of public
[1651
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
indignation which had gathered so black over
the handful of anti-slavery workers."
Published as an official pamphlet of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, the " Appeal "
was sent broadcast through the land, and es-
pecially through the South. Of its reception
in Miss Grimke's native State, and of the in-
dignation it stirred up against her, an inter-
esting contemporary account is in existence,
written by the man whom she afterwards
married, the abolitionist Theodore Weld:
" When it came out, a large number of
copies were sent by mail to South Carolina.
Most of them were publicly burned by post-
masters. Not long after this, the city authci-
ities of Charleston learned that Miss Grimke
was intending to visit her mother and sisters,
and pass the winter with them. Thereupon
the mayor called upon Mrs. Grimke and de-
sired her to inform her daughter that the
police had been instructed to prevent her
landing while the steamer remained in port,
[166]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
and to see to it that she should not communi-
cate, by letter or otherwise, with any persons
in the city; and, further, that if she should
elude their vigilance and go on shore, she would
be arrested and imprisoned until the return of
the vessel.
" Her Charleston friends at once conveyed
to her the message of the mayor, and added
that the people of Charleston were so incensed
against her that if she should go there despite
the mayor's threat of pains and penalties, she
could not escape personal violence at the hands
of the mob. She replied to the letter that her
going would probably compromise her family,
not only distress them, but put them in peril;
which she had neither heart nor right to do;
but for that fact, she would certainly exercise
her constitutional right as an American cit-
izen, and go to Charleston to visit her relatives,
and if for that the authorities should inflict
upon her pains and penalties, she would willingly
bear them, assured that such an outrage would
[167]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
help to reveal to the free States the fact that
slavery defies and tramples alike upon consti-
tutions and laws, and thus outlaws itself." ^
Thenceforward both sisters became active
workers in behalf of abolition, laboring for the
great cause by word of mouth as well as by
word of pen. In fact, it was as speakers that
they embarked on their joint crusade, when,
a few months after the publication of the " Ap-
peal," they accepted an invitation from the
American Anti-Slavery Society to visit New
York and lecture on slavery as they had seen
it in South Carolina.
At the time it was not customary for women
to take the platform at public gatherings,
and accordingly the Grimkes held their meet-
ings in private, and admitted only their own
sex. But those who attended carried home
such glowing reports, particularly of Angelina
Grimke's eloquence, that men began to slip
in quietly to hear them, and soon their lectures
1 Catherine H. Bimey's " The Sisters Grimke," pp. 149-150.
[168]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
became public in the fullest sense. Bitter
opposition at once developed, some Congrega-
tional clergymen of Massachusetts taking the
lead in denouncing " women preachers." But
the Grimkes valiantly persevered, with the
result of gradually forcing public acquiescence
in the right of women to free speech. They
spoke throughout the Eastern States, and so
large did their audiences become that it often
was necessary to hold overflow meetings in a
separate hall, Sarah Grimke addressing one
meeting while Angelina was addressing an-
other.
" At one place," says their biographer,
" where over a thousand people crowded into
a church, one of the joists gave way; it was
propped up, but soon others began to crack,
and, although the people were warned to leave
that part of the building, only a few obeyed,
and it was found impossible to persuade them
to go, or to consent to have the speaking
stopped.
[1691
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
" At another place ladders were put up at
all the windows, and men crowded upon them,
and tenaciously held their uncomfortable po-
sitions through the whole meeting. In one
or two places they were refused a meeting-
house, on account of strong sectarian feeling
against them as Quakers. At Worcester they
had to adjourn from a large Congregational
church to a small Methodist one, because the
clergyman of the former suddenly returned from
an absence, and declared that if they spoke in
his church he would never enter it again.
" At Bolton, notices of their meetings were
torn down, but the town hall was packed not-
withstanding, many going away, unable to
get in. The church here had also been refused
them. Angelina, in the course of her lecture,
seized an opportunity to refer to their treatment,
saying that if the people of her native city
could see her lecturing in that hall because
every church had been closed against the
cause of God's down-trodden creatures, they
[1701
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
would clap their hands for joy, and say : * See
what slavery is doing for us in the town of
Bolton.' "
Like most abolitionists of the period, they
had some thrilling experiences. More than
once they were attacked by angry crowds,
armed with sticks, stones, and rotten eggs.
They were witnesses of the burning of Pennsyl-
vania Hall. In fact, the night before the burn-
ing, Angehna — who had been married to Mr.
Weld just three days previously — addressed a
crowded audience in the doomed edifice, while
a mob raged outside, shouting, jeering, and
hurling stones through the windows.
*' With deep solemnity," we are told, " and
in words of burning eloquence, she gave her
testimony against the awful wickedness of
an institution which had no secrets from her.
She was frequently interrupted by the mob,
but their yells and shouts only furnished her
with metaphors which she used with unshrink-
ing power. More stones were thrown at the
[1711
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
windows, more glass crashed, but she only
paused to ask:
" ' What is a mob? What would the break-
ing of every window be? Any evidence that
we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and
wholesome institution? What if that mob
should now burst in upon us, break up our
meeting, and commit violence upon our per-
sons — would this be anything compared with
what the slaves endure? No, no; and we do
not remember them ** as bound with them " if
we shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling
to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their
sake. . . .'
" Here a shower of stones was thrown through
the windows, and there was some disturbance
in the audience, but quiet was again restored,
and Angelina proceeded, and spoke for over
an hour, making no further reference to the
noise without, and only showing that she no-
ticed it by raising her own voice so that it
could be heard throughout the hall. Not once
[1721
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
was a tremor or change of color perceptible,
and though the missiles continued to fly through
the broken sashes, and the hootings and yellings
increased outside, so powerfully did her words
and tones hold that vast audience that, im-
minent as seemed their peril, scarcely a man
or woman moved to depart. She sat down amid
applause that drowned all the noise outside." ^
This was her last appearance in public.
Soon afterward she had an accident that so
severely injured her nervous system as to make
retirement to private life inevitable; and in her
withdrawal from the arena of public agitation
and controversy she was accompanied by her
sister.
Compared with other advocates of abolition,
theirs was a brief career; but while it lasted
it was meteoric, and contemporary judgment
is unanimous as to its influence in shaping pub-
lic opinion. Moreover, too much credit cannot
be given the sisters for the sacrifice they made
1 Catherine H. Bimey's "The Sisters Grimke," pp. 240-241.
[173]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
in renouncing for all time the happiness and
advantages of their luxurious Southern home.
It may be added that both lived to see the
dream of their youth realized and the negro
set free, Sarah Grimke living until 1873, and
Angelina until 1879.
Another woman who made a very real sac-
rifice in championing the slave was Mrs. Lydia
Maria Child. Perhaps no other sacrificed so
much. Unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " — published at a far later
day, when abolition had become more popular
— was the making of her literary reputation,
Mrs. Child's hopes and plans as a writer were
irretrievably ruined by her advocacy of freedom
for the negro. She was easily the favorite
authoress of the day up to the time she brought
out her " Appeal in Favor of that Class of
American called Africans." In speaking of
her work even the conservative North American
Review said:
" We are not sure that any woman of our
[174]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
country could outrank Mrs. Child. This lady
has been before the public as an author with
much success. And she well deserves it, for
in all her works nothing can be found which
does not commend itself by its tone of healthy
morality and good sense. Few female writers
if any have done more or better things for our
literature in the lighter or graver depart-
ments."
Wherever in the Union books were read, she
commanded an enthusiastic following. But
the moment her " Appeal " was issued, the
market was closed against her writings, and
obloquy took the place of adulation.
In the preface to the " Appeal " occurs a
pathetic little passage which shows how clearly
Mrs. Child appreciated the penalty she would
have to pay. " Should it be the means," she
bravely wrote, " of advancing even one single
step the inevitable progress of truth and jus-
tice, I would not exchange that consciousness
for all of Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's
[175]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
fame." There were indeed those to whom the
" Appeal " came with convincing force. John
A. Andrew, afterward the celebrated war
governor of Massachusetts, bought it, wept over
it, and gave it to his sisters to read. Samuel
J. May, who became one of abolition's stanch-
est supporters, testified publicly that it made
an abolitionist of him. *' After reading it,"
said he, " I could not be anything but an abo-
litionist."
Mrs. Child herself, having taken the first
and most difficult step, entered enthusiastic-
ally into the struggle to promote the spread
of abolition ideas. For a while she edited the
National Anti-Slavery Standard, and under her
direction it became an increasingly vigorous
organ. Besides which, innumerable pamphlets
and articles contributed to other periodicals
testify to the energy with which she worked.
To the end of her long and useful life she
retained a particularly warm spot in her heart
for " the oppressed African." In 1864, the
[176]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
waning of anti-abolition prejudice in the North
having allowed her to regain in some measure
her former popularity as an author, she pub-
lished a book, " Looking Toward Sunset,"
designed, as she put it, " to present old people
with something cheerful." It was issued during
the holiday season and proved unexpectedly
successful, four thousand copies being sold
within a very short time. Although by no
means a woman of wealth, Mrs. Child is said
to have devoted every penny of the profits to
the freed negroes of the South, sending four
hundred dollars as a first instalment.^ Besides
this, she prepared a volume, " The Freedman's
Book," which she published at her own ex-
pense, and of which she gave twelve hundred
copies to the freedm_en. The story is also told
that she once sent Wendell Phillips a cheque
for one hundred dollars for the freedmen's
fund, and on his protesting that, as he well knew,
1 S. C. Beach's " Daughters of the Puritans." This work
contains several excellent biographical sketches of notable
American women of the Civil War period.
[177]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
she could not afford to give such a sum, re-
sponded by insisting on doubhng the amount
of her contribution. As still further indicating
the intensity of her devotion to the cause of
the negro, a passage may well be quoted from
a letter written by her to a friend during the
Civil War:
" Every string that I can get sight of I pull
for poor Sambo. I write to the Tribune about
him; I write to the Transcript about him; I
write to private individuals about him; and
I write to the President and members of Con-
gress about him; I write to Western Virginia
and Missouri about him; and I get the articles
published too. This shows what progress the
cause of freedom is making."
Most of the women, however, who attained
distinction as pioneers in the movement to
set free the slaves, carried on their propaganda
from the public platform rather than from the
quiet of the library or editorial sanctum. It
was thus with Lucretia Mott, Abby Foster,
[178]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
and Sallie Holley, who were three of the most
conspicuous standard-bearers of emancipation.
Mrs. Mott was an abolitionist even before
Garrison entered the hsts, having been a reader
of Benjamin Lundy's newspaper, The Genius
of Universal Emancipation, ahnost from its
start in 1821. She was a Pennsylvania Quaker,
and a woman of great eloquence. Some idea
of the ardor with which she devoted herself
to abolition may be gathered from the fact
that in a single tour she traveled more than
twenty-four hundred miles, mostly by stage-
coach, and spoke at seventy -four meetings.
Mrs. Foster, better known to her own gen-
eration as Abby Kelley, was another member
of the Society of Friends, that religious body
which, since the days of the unfortunate Mary
Dyer, has done much to advance ideals of
freedom in America. She was the first woman,
after the Grimke sisters and Mrs. Mott, to
enter the field as an anti-slavery lecturer; and
she was a familiar figure on abolition platforms
[179]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
in New England, New York, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio, playing a particularly prominent
role in the organization of the Western Anti-
Slavery Society.
Sallie Holley was the daughter of Myron
Holley, the New York reformer who was one
of the principal originators of the Liberty party,
the forerunner of the Republican party. Bom
in 1818, she was too young to take part in
the abolition crusade during its stormiest days,
but from 1850 onward she was an indefatigable
worker in the ranks of the Anti-Slavery So-
ciety, having become interested in the eman-
cipation movement while a student at Oberlin
College. Nor did her interest in the negro
cease with his complete emancipation. After
the Civil War she removed to Virginia, and,
in conjunction with Carolina Putnam, also
a veteran abolitionist, opened a school for
colored children.
The reception she met from the former slave-
holders of the vicinity was in striking contrast
flSOl
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
with that accorded another woman, Prudence
Crandall, who, some years before, attempted
to conduct a similar institution not in the
South but in one of the " free " States of the
North. Her story forms one of the most pa-
thetic chapters in the history of early anti-
slavery days.
She was a Connecticut woman, a resident
of the town of Canterbury, where, in 1832,
she established a girls' school. From the start
it promised to be a great success, being patron-
ized by Canterbury's leading citizens. One
day a young colored girl applied for admission,
explaining that she wished to fit herself to
teach the neglected children of her race. She
was promptly received, and as promptly the
parents of the white pupils informed Miss
Crandall that they would withdraw their
daughters if she did not dismiss the colored
girl.
Refusing to do this, she soon found herself
the mistress of an empty school. Now, for
[181]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the first time, she began to appreciate the dif-
ficulties in the way of every negro, free or en-
slaved, who sought an education; and she
determined henceforth to do her part toward
meeting what she felt to be a very real need.
Advertising in Garrison's Liberator that she
was about to open a school at Canterbury " for
young ladies and little misses of color," she was
before long giving instruction to twenty col-
ored girls from New York, Philadelphia, Bos-
ton, and Providence.
Their arrival caused a lively commotion,
and a deputation of prominent residents
waited upon Miss Crandall to protest formally
against having a " nigger school " planted
in their midst. But she quietly replied that
she was only doing her duty, and intended to
continue doing it. Then began a campaign
of bitter and unrelenting persecution. Trades-
men refused to supply her with provisions,
former " friends " crossed the street to avoid
speaking to her, she and her pupils were hooted
[182]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
at whenever they appeared in pubhc. It was
a whole town against one friendless woman.
Still she refused to surrender. In despair, the
people of Canterbury appealed to the Connecti-
cut legislature for aid, and actually succeeded
in securing the enactment of a law forbidding
the establishment of any school for colored
persons not inhabitants of the State, unless
first written permission were obtained from the
selectmen of the town where such a school
was to be located.
This law, though general in its terms, was
aimed directly at Miss Crandall, and she was
forthwith arrested and hurried to jail, being
thrown into a cell that had just been vacated by
a condemned murderer. News of the outrage
quickly spread, and a wealthy New Yorker,
fired with indignation, subscribed a large sum
for her defense. When put on trial the jury
disagreed, but her persecutors were merciless,
and a second trial resulted in a verdict of guilty.
An appeal was at once taken to the Supreme
[1831
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Court, whose members, to their everlasting
credit, refused to sustain the conviction. Mean-
while lawlessness had succeeded where legal
measures failed, a mob armed with clubs and
iron bars breaking into the school and almost
completely demolishing it. Realizing that it
was useless to keep up the struggle, and being
without further means. Miss Crandall reluc-
tantly abandoned her philanthropic undertaking
and left Canterbury.^
The spirit of unreasoning, savage animosity
which thus manifested itself was in evidence
everywhere until about 1840, when the growing
gulf between North and South was appreciably
widened by the conflict over the annexation
of Texas. Thereafter the people of the North
viewed with steadily decreasing rancor and
bitterness those who insistently demanded the
emancipation of the slave. By 1850 it required
only some unusual stimulus to provoke a pop-
1 A more detailed account of Miss Crandall's experiences
will be found in John C. Kimball's " Connecticut's Canter-
bury Tale," published, as a pamphlet, at Hartford in 1886.
[184]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
ular upheaval along the lines of abolition teach-
ings ; and such a stimulus, as everybody knows,
was provided by the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law. Fast on its heels, and appearing
at precisely the moment to produce the great-
est effect, came " Uncle Tom's Cabin," with
its heartrending pictures of the life of the slave.
There can be no question that with this
single volume the daughter of Lyman Beecher
accomplished more than had any or all of
her predecessors — the Grimke sisters, Mrs.
Child, Mrs. Mott, and their greatly sacrificing,
greatly daring fellow-workers. They, however
had prepared the way. Had it not been for
their preliminary labors, " Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
in spite of all its inherent power and interest,
would have been given scant attention. As
it was, it became epoch-making.
Tn vain the people of the South protested
that it grossly maligned them, and that it con-
veyed a wildly distorted idea of the conditions
of slavery. The people of the North brushed
[185]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
their protests aside, and insisted on accepting
Mrs. Stowe's book at face value. Within
three weeks of publication twenty thousand
copies were sold, and within three months
the sales had risen to eighty thousand. Before
the year was out eighteen English editions
were on the market, and Harriet Beecher
Stowe's fame had become world-wide.
The work of a woman, " Uncle Tom's
Cabin " made an especial appeal to women.
It found its way into hundreds of thousands
of homes, not merely in the larger cities and
towns but in remote and isolated hamlets where
the cry of the abohtionist had never penetrated.
Among Northern women it both extended and
intensified anti-slavery sentiment, and it helped
them to contemplate the coming crisis with
equanimity and determination.
Once the crisis had actually been reached,
with the firing on Fort Sumter, they did not
need any incentive other than love of country
to inspire them to an instantaneous and effect-
[186]
THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVERY
ive response. Like the women of the Revolu-
tion, one hundred years before, they bade
their husbands and sons and brothers go forth
and fight; and, having started them on the
journey from which so many were never to re-
turn, they bravely set to work, in a thousand
different ways, to strengthen and sustain
them.
[187]
CHAPTER VI
woman's work in the civil war
THE Reverend Henry W. Bellows, head of
the United States Sanitary Commission
which did such excellent work throughout the
Civil War, did not exaggerate when he de-
clared that as soon as a resort to arms became
inevitable there was no more general uprising
among the men of the Northern States than
among the women. Soldiers' aid societies
sprang up simultaneously with the enlisting
of troops in every city, town, and village, the
distinction of having been the first to organize
for systematic work in behalf of the army fall-
ing to the women of Bridgeport, Connecticut,
and Charlestown, Massachusetts, where, on
April 15, 1861, the day on which the President's
[188]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
call for troops was issued, the women of those
cities formed societies for the purpose of afford-
ing relief and comfort to the volunteers.
A few days later similar societies were formed
in the Ohio city of Cleveland and in Lowell,
Massachusetts; and within ten days after the
call for troops, so clearly and readily was the
need for united effort appreciated, the Woman's
Central Association of Relief was organized in
New York, to guide and supervise the labors of
all local aid societies. After a time this associ-
ation became subsidiary to the Sanitary Com-
mission, with branches established in all the
larger cities and managed almost without ex-
ception by women.i ^'hen it is said that these
branches and the different minor organizations
1 " Among the numerous and devoted women who labored
in the forming and 'directing of these auxiliaries," says Doctor
Bellows, in his account of the Sanitary Commission, it
may be allowed without invidiousness to name Miss May
and Miss Stevenson at Boston, Miss Collins and Miss Schuy-
ler at New York, Mrs. Grier and Mrs. Moore at Philadelphia
Mrs. Rouse and Miss Brayton at Cleveland, Miss Campbell
at Detroit, and Mrs. Hedge and Mrs. Livermore at Chicago.
[189]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
collected and distributed money and supplies
amounting in value to more than fifty million
dollars, the magnitude of woman's work in the
Civil War will be better understood.
The Sanitary Commission itself was essen-
tially the product of woman's enterprise. It
was established by the Government in response
to a petition presented by a committee of the
Woman's Central Association of Relief, the
idea being to maintain careful oversight of
the health of the United States forces by
means of " a scientific board, to be commissioned
with ample powers for visiting all camps and
hospitals, advising, recommending, and, if
need be, enforcing the best-known and most
approved sanitary regulations in the army."
As finally organized, it became the great
national channel through w^hich the women of
the North worked with the Government in
promoting the war.
Nothing was left undone to achieve its
great aim of maintaining the soldiers' health.
[190]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
It established depots for the receiving of sup-
plies of clothing, medicine, and delicacies for
the camps and hospitals, and for forwarding
them promptly to the points where they were
most needed. It employed experts to coop-
erate with the regimental surgeons in choosing
sites for camps, regulating the drainage, and
inspecting the cooking. It fitted up hospital
steamers on the Mississippi, and established
a system of soldiers' refuges, where the sick
and convalescent would receive the best of
care on their way home from the front.
Wherever the army went, officers and help-
ers of the Sanitary Commission followed, with
wagons, food, medical supplies, and nurses
for the care of the wounded. Perhaps its most
notable service in the field was rendered after
the battle of Antietam, when the train carry-
ing the regular medical stores of the army was
blocked near Baltimore. For four days the
ten thousand wounded at this great battle
had as their only means of relief the provisions
[1911
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of the Sanitary Commission, whose wagons
were quickly on the battle-ground, so well
equipped that they were able to provide over
twenty-eight thousand shirts, towels, pillows,
etc.; thirty barrels of lint and bandages, three
thousand pounds of farina, two thousand pounds
of condensed milk, five thousand pounds of
beef stock and canned meats, three thousand
bottles of wine, several tons of lemons, and an
abundance of crackers, tea, sugar, rubber cloth,
tin cups, and other necessaries. In the whole
course of the war, it has been estimated, the
Sanitary Commission furnished four million
five hundred thousand meals to sick and
wounded soldiers. And all this, bear in mind,
was rendered possible through the tireless
devotion of the women of the Union.
It is out of the question to attempt to depict
in adequate language the spirit of sacrifice
and patriotism that animated those who, worl:-
ing in groups or as individuals, contributed so
nobly to the common cause. Many a woman,
fl921
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
obliged to toil all day to earn her livelihood,
sat up until late into the night, for months
together, making bandages and shirts and socks
for the boys in blue. Others who had no money
to contribute, cheerfully surrendered precious
heirlooms to swell the relief fund. In numerous
instances women denied themselves meat and
tea and sugar in order to be able to give some-
thing to the army — something that might,
who could tell, save a wounded soldier's life,
or make his last moments comfortable.
Even the aged and infirm vied in generous
rivalry with the young and strong. In many
barrels of hospital clothing, socks were found
having inscriptions like the following: "The
fortunate owner of these socks is secretly in-
formed that they are the one hundred and
ninety-first pair knit for our brave boys by
Mrs. Abner Bartlett, of Medford, Massachu-
setts, now aged eighty -five years." A home-
spun blanket was ticketed: "This blanket
was carried by Milly Aldrich, who is ninety-
[193]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
three years old, down-hill and up-hill, one
and a half miles, to be given to some sol-
dier."
Innumerable anecdotes might be related
illustrative of this universal eagerness to do
and give for country's sake. In a lonely and
mountainous New England farming section
lived a widow and two daughters who, although
desperately poor, were resolved that nothing
should prevent them from aiding in the relief
work. They learned that at the county-seat,
twelve miles away, a depot had been opened
where women might obtain material to make
into hospital clothing. Borrowing a neighbor's
horse, they drove to town by an almost im-
passable road, secured some cloth, and hastened
home. Two weeks later they were back for a
fresh supply; and thus they came and went,
regularly once a fortnight. Anxious to ascer-
tain the secret of their zeal, the manager of the
local Relief Association drew the daughters
aside one day and asked them:
[194]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
" I suppose you have a relative in the war
— your father, or a brother? "
" No," they answered, " not now. Our only
brother fell at Ball's Bluff."
" Then," said the manager, " why do you
feel so deep an interest in this work? "
" Our country's cause," came the reply,
** is the cause of God, and we would do what
we can for His sake."
Another impressive incident, made public by
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, of the Northwestern
Branch of the Sanitary Commission, affords
convincing proof of the determination with
which women, no matter how unfavorably
situated, contrived to give effect to their
patriotic impulse.
" Some farmers' wives living in the north
of Wisconsin, eighteen miles from a railroad,"
said Mrs. Livermore, in telling the story, " had
given to the Commission of their bed and table-
linen, their husbands' shirts and drawers, their
scanty supply of dried and canned fruits, till
[195]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
they had exhausted their abihty to do more in
this direction. Still they were not satisfied.
So they cast about to see what could be done
in another way. They were all the wives of
small farmers, lately moved to the West, all
living in log cabins, where one room sufficed
for kitchen, parlor, laundry, nursery, and bed-
room, doing their own housework, sewing,
baby-tending, dairy-work, and all. What could
they do.^
*' They were not long in devising a way to
gratify the longings of their motherly and
patriotic hearts, and instantly set about carry-
ing it into action. They resolved to beg wheat
of the neighboring farmers, and convert it
into money. Sometimes on foot, and some-
times with a team, amid the snows and mud
of early spring, they canvassed the country
for twenty and twenty-five miles around,
everywhere eloquently pleading the needs of
the blue-coated soldier boys in the hospitals,
their eloquence everywhere acting as an open
[196 J
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
sesame to the granaries. Thus they labored
till they had accumulated nearly five hundred
bushels of wheat. This they sent to market,
obtained the highest market-price for it, and
forwarded the proceeds to the Commission.
As we held this hard-earned money in our hands,
we felt that it was consecrated, that the holy
purpose and resolution of these noble women
had imparted a sacredness to it."
The holding of gigantic fairs was another
means by which the women of the North raised
money to carry on relief work among the sol-
diers. In this they followed the example set
by the early abolition women, particularly of
Boston and other New England cities, whose
annual " anti-slavery fairs " are memorable
as having brought to America many articles
that had never before been imported — rare
Honiton laces, magnificent Paisley shawls,
fine porcelain figures, costly Swiss carvings,
and much else contributed by foreign sym-
pathizers. But where the " anti-slavery fairs "
[197]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
had raised one dollar, the " soldiers' aid fairs "
raised a hundred, so vast was the scale on
which they were conducted, and so generous
the response.
The first of these fairs was held in Chicago,
where the women of that city hoped to raise
by it a contribution of twenty-five thousand
dollars. The proceeds enabled them to send
to the Sanitary Commission three times that
amount. The women of Cincinnati at once
followed with a fair by which they proposed
to raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
and they did it. More than a million dollars
was raised by fairs in New York and Brooklyn,
and another million by a fair in Philadelphia.
Altogether upwards of five million dollars was
added in this way to the resources of the San-
itary Commission.
Besides the fairs, the women of many cities
interested themselves in the establishment
and maintenance of soldiers' hospitals and
** homes," while in Philadelphia a unique chan-
[198]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
nel for patriotic enterprise was found in the
so-called " refreshment saloons," where sol-
diers passing through the city were given meals.
There were two of these saloons, both being
in the vicinity of the navy yard, and whenever
a regiment reached Philadelphia a cannon was
fired. At the signal, whether it came in the
daytime or in the middle of the night, scores of
women hastened to the saloons to prepare and
distribute food. More than six hundred thou-
sand meals were served at one saloon, and four
hundred thousand at the other. Both had
hospitals attached to them for sick and wounded
soldiers. Mrs. Eliza Plummer, a widow who
turned her home into a soldiers' hospital, Mrs.
William M. Cooper, Mrs. Sarah Ewing, Mrs.
Elizabeth Vansdale, Miss Anna M. Ross, Mrs.
Mary Wade, Mrs. Ellen Lowry, Mrs. Margaret
Boyer, and Mrs. Priscilla Grover were among
the women most prominent in this work.
The manner in which they cared for the
soldiers who came to their " saloons " is quaintly
[1991
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
depicted in Doctor James Moore's " History
of the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment
Saloon," a now little known volume published
almost immediately after the close of the war:
" In the extensive area of the Cooper Shop
were placed six tables, of which, with a space
between their ends, but in a continuous line,
three ran the entire length of the saloon. On
the left side, in like manner, ran two tables
two-thirds the length of the saloon, while on
the right of the entrance was a table for the
officers. The room was strictly clean and tidy,
and every article shone by the careful hands of
the active housekeepers who ministered to
our braves. In the extensive fire-place was a
huge boiler for preparing the coffee, one for
boiling hams, etc., and all the required utensils
of the culinary art.
" While the vegetables were cooking, and
the viands preparing, each table was laid with
a clean white linen cloth, on which were arranged
plates of white stone china, mugs of the same,
[2001
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
knives and forks, castors, and all that was nec-
essary to table use. Bouquets of flowers, the
gifts of visitors, were frequently added, and
lent their fragrance to the savory odors. The
bill of fare consisted of the best the market
could supply, and was not, in the articles
provided, inferior to that of any hotel in the
country. At all meals the fare was abundant;
consisting of ham, corned beef, Bologna sau-
sage, bread made of the finest wheat, butter
of the best quality, cheese, pickles, dried beef,
coffee and tea, and vegetables.
" The ladies were always in attendance.
The viands were placed in dishes on a side-
table, from which due distribution was made.
In a word, when all was ready, the commanding
oflScer being notified, the men formed in line
at the ready word of command, and the hardy
veterans, whose heroic valor never hesitated
to obey the strictest order, marched, in all the
order of dress parade, to the well-supplied table,
and, deploying to the right and left, took their
[2011
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
stand, each in his place, before the table, and
partook of the meal so invitingly spread before
them.
" The committee, constantly anticipating
their wants, produced a fresh supply of what-
ever was required, and, in the words of Homer,
* No desire was unfulfilled in the well-propor-
tioned banquet.' Meanwhile, the officers at
another table partook of the fare thus pro-
vided. The renewed vigor imparted by timely
nourishment enabled them to proceed refreshed
in mind and body. When one table was served,
another was prepared, and none were sent
away empty."
Then, too, there was the noble army of
nurses, that heroic and devoted band of women
who, conquering their instinctive horror of
warfare and bloodshed, ministered to the
stricken soldier, often amid the thunderous
crashing of shot and shell. In the military
hospital, on the trains and boats transporting
the wounded, in tents by the side of the road
[2021
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
that led to the battle-field, and on the battle-
field itself, they were to be found — black-
robed and gentle-faced Sisters of Mercy, daugh-
ters of the rich and of the poor, widows, school-
teachers, farmers' wives — all coming together
with but one thought, the relief of suffering.
It was difficult work, arduous, dangerous
work, but there was no lack of volunteers.
From the moment the Woman's Central As-
sociation of Relief was organized, it was flooded
by hundreds of applications from women eager
to serve. The difficulty was not to secure
nurses, but to select only those best fitted to
stand the terrific strain they would have to
undergo. Confronted by this problem, the
United States Government, as every American
woman should remember with a thrill of pride,
solved it by entrusting the task of selection
to a woman — Dorothea L. Dix.
As the sequel proved, a better decision
could not have been reached. Miss Dix was
a keen judge of human nature, and a woman
[2031
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of rare executive ability, with a remarkable
talent for mastering details. She was a born
philanthropist, and had all her life been en-
gaged in good works for the sick, the suffering,
and the oppressed, with results perhaps un-
equaled by any other individual reformer in
the history of the United States. While still
a very young woman, living in Boston, a con-
versation which she chanced to overhear in
the street drew her attention to the deplorable
condition of the convicts in the State prison
at Charlestown. This led her to investigate
Massachusetts' public institutions in general,
and she discovered such urgent need for re-
forms that she set herself to awaken the popular
conscience and compel the legislature to enact
laws insuring better treatment of the State's
prisoners, paupers, and insane. Having gained
her end in Massachusetts, she started on a
similar campaign in other States, touring al-
most the entire country, visiting prisons, alms-
houses, and asylums, unsparingly revealing
[204]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
the abuses she found, and bringing about
much amehorative legislation.
Her reformative zeal even carried her to
foreign parts. In Rome, the Pope expressed
his admiration and gratitude that she, " a
woman and a Protestant, had crossed the seas
to call his attention to these cruelly ill-treated
members of his flock." The safeguarding of
the lives of sailors was another problem that
aroused her sympathetic interest. But, outside
of her labors in behalf of public dependents,
her chief activity was in hospital work. She
is credited with having founded thirty-two
hospitals, besides many, including two in Japan,
that indirectly owed their inception to her in-
fluence.
In the hands of a woman like Dorothea
Dix, the United States Government could not
but feel confident that the needs of the army
would be well looked after; and from the be-
ginning to the end of the war she was unre-
mitting in her endeavor to place the nursing
[205]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
of the soldiers on a sound, broad, and alto-
gether sufficient basis; to supervise closely
the nurses whom she appointed, and to main-
tain their efficiency and enthusiasm.
This last, however, was the lightest of the
many burdens that she willingly assumed.
Every nurse was an enthusiast, from " Mother "
Bickerdyke, Clara Barton, Amy Bradley,
Margaret Breckinridge, and Helen Gilson to
the least known of the multitude of self-effacing
heroines who risked their lives in fever-hospital
or on the firing-line. Only enthusiasm of the
rarest, highest, noblest type, coupled with the
loftiest sense of duty, could have sustained
them in the terrible ordeals through which they
were called upon to pass.
The picture of " Mother " Bickerdyke, lan-
tern in hand, groping at midnight among Fort
Donelson's dead, on the chance of finding
some wounded man whom she could succor,
but typifies the glorious — one might almost
say, divine — enthusiasm that pervaded the
[206]
MOTHER " BICKERDYKE.
From an engraving.
Page 207.
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
whole body of nurses. Many of them sincerely
felt, indeed, that they were called by God to
their task of alleviation, as is impressively
evidenced by a tale told of Mrs. Bickerdyke.
After the battle of Shiloh she managed, though
not attached to the Sanitary Commission, to
procure some supplies from its stores, and at
once set about doing everything in her power
for the relief of the wounded. Says Mrs. Liver-
more, the narrator of the incident:
" One of the surgeons found her wrapped in
the gray overcoat of a Confederate soldier,
and wearing a soft slouch hat, having lost her
inevitable Shaker bonnet. Her kettles had
been set up, the fire kindled underneath, and
she was dispensing hot soup, tea, crackers,
whiskey and water, and other refreshments to
the shivering, fainting, wounded men.
** * Where did you get those things? ' the
surgeon inquired. * And under whose authority
are you working? '
" She paid no attention to his interrogations,
[207]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
and probably did not hear them, so completely-
absorbed was she in her work of compassion.
" Watching her with admiration for her
varied skill — for she not only fed the wounded
men, but temporarily dressed their wounds
in some cases — he questioned her again :
" ' Madam, you seem to combine in your-
self a sick-diet kitchen and a medical staff.
May I inquire under whose authority you are
working? '
" Without pausing in her work, she replied:
" * I have received my authority from the
Lord God Almighty. Have you anything
that ranks higher than that? ' "
Many a nurse — and notably " Mother "
Bickerdyke, who was present at nineteen
battles — moved among the fallen, dressing
wounds and assisting at amputations, while
the storm of conflict was still raging with un-
diminished stress. It was thus with Clara
Barton, who equipped a hospital-train to
follow the Army of the Potomac, and served
[208]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
with the surgeons on the battle-field of Antie-
tam — when, as said above, ten thousand
wounded soldiers were for four days cared for
by the agents of the Sanitary Commission.
After Antietam Miss Barton continued with
the army almost throughout the campaign
which culminated so disastrously at Fredericks-
burg.
In the same campaign was Helen Gilson,
who had been rejected by Miss Dix on account
of her youth, but nevertheless managed to
get to the front and soon won recognition as
a daring and capable nurse. She was on the
field at Fredericksburg, Chancellor sville, and
Gettysburg, and crowned her labors by faithful
service under Grant in the long and bloody
campaign from the Rapidan to Petersburg and
Richmond. It was Miss Gilson to whom Doctor
Bellows referred when, describing his experi-
ences at Gettysburg, he said:
" I went out to the field hospital of the Third
Corps, where two thousand four hundred men
[2091
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
lay in their tents, a vast army of mutilated
humanity. One woman, young and fair, but
grave and earnest, clothed in purity and mercy
— the only woman in that whole vast camp —
moved in and out of the hospital tents, speaking
some tender word, giving some restoring cordial,
holding the hand of a dying boy, or receiving
the last words of a husband for his widowed
wife. I can never forget how, amid scenes
which under ordinary circumstances no woman
could have appeared in without gross inde-
corum, the holy pity and purity of this angel
of mercy made her presence seem as fit as though
she had indeed dropped out of Heaven. The
men themselves, sick or well, seemed awed and
purified by such a resident among them."
There was scarcely another nurse so beloved
by the soldiers, and the secret of her popularity
is plainly indicated in a brief but telling word-
picture drawn by Doctor W. H. Reed, one of
the Sanitary Commission's physicians. It
describes his first meeting with Miss Gilson,
[2101
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
at Fredericksburg, in May, 1864, when that
city was the place to which the wounded were
brought for treatment before being sent to the
hospitals at Washington and Baltimore. Doc-
tor Reed writes as follows:
*' One afternoon, when the atmosphere of
our rooms was close and foul, and all were long-
ing for a breath of our cooler Northern air,
while the men were moaning in pain, or were
restless with fever, and our hearts were sick
with pity for the sufferers, I heard a light step
upon the stairs; and, looking up, I saw a
young lady enter, who brought with her such
an atmosphere of calm and cheerful courage,
so much freshness, such an expression of gentle,
womanly sympathy, that her mere presence
seemed to revive the drooping spirits of the
men, and to give a new power of endurance
through the long and painful hours of suffering.
First with one, then at the side of another, a
friendly word here, a gentle nod and smile
there, a tender sympathy with each prostrate
[2111
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
sufferer, a sympathy which could read in his
eyes his longing for home love, and for the pres-
ence of some absent one — in those few minutes
hers was indeed an angel ministry.
" Before she left the room she sang to them,
first some stirring national melody, then some
sonnet or plaintive hymn to strengthen the
fainting heart; and I remember how the notes
penetrated to every part of the building.
Soldiers with less severe wounds, from the
rooms above, began to crawl out into the entries,
and men from below crept up on their hands
and knees, to catch every note, and to receive
the benediction of her presence — for such it
was to them. Then she went away. I did not
know who she was, but I was as much moved
and melted as any soldier of them all. This
is my first reminiscence of Helen L. Gilson."
Bearing in mind that Doctor Reed wrote
of a period when Miss Gilson had been working
for the soldiers for more than two years, and
most of the time under the strenuous conditions
[2121
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
of active campaigning, it becomes possible
to appreciate the devotion and wonderful
powers of endurance and self-mastery which she
displayed. Yet, after all, hers was not an ex-
ceptional case. Not a few army nurses, to
be sure, like Margaret Breckinridge and Ara-
bella Barlow, succumbed to the fearful strain
put upon them, and, no less truly than the
soldiers who perished in the trenches and on the
field, gave their lives for their country. But
there were many — notable among whom were
Miss Dix and Miss Barton, of whose splendid
record in Red Cross work the world is well
aware — who not only served through the
war without any impairment of either their
zeal or their strength, but continued to busy
themselves for years afterwards in labors
scarcely less exacting and no less valuable to
the nation.
The same is true of Julia Ward Howe, who
shortly before her death two years ago was
reverently acclaimed " the most distinguished
[213]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
woman in the United States," and whose
unique contribution to the Union cause — her
immortal " Battle Hymn of the Republic " —
will always be reckoned among the noblest
songs of American patriotism. It was written
in the autumn of 1861, during a visit to Wash-
ington. While there Mrs. Howe, with a party
of friends, attended a review of Northern
troops on the Virginia side of the Potomac,
and chanced to witness a sudden attack by the
enemy, thus getting a glimpse of real warfare.
On the way back to the capital the party
sang a number of war songs, including " John
Brown's Body," and one of them remarked
how much better the tune of that song was
than the words. Mrs. Howe, under the in-
spiration of what she had seen that afternoon,
determined to write something of her own
that would be more appropriate to the stirring
melody; and that same night the " Battle
Hymn " was composed, with its wonderful
lines:
[214]
JULIA WARD HOWE IN 1865
From a photograph.
Page 214.
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath
are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift
sword:
His truth is marching on.
" I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling
camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and
damps;
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring
lamps.
His day is marching on.
" I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
* As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace
shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his
heel.
Since God is marching on.*
" He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call
retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-
seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
[2151
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
*' In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on."
Finally, to complete the record of woman's
patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism in the
colossal conflict of the sixties, something must
be said of the manner in which the women of
the South responded to what was to them fully
as much as to the women of the North, a clarion
call to their best endeavors. Nothing could
be farther from the truth than to imagine, as
some writers on the Civil War seem to have
imagined, that they contented themselves with
waving dainty handkerchiefs at the marching
men in gray, and then sat idly down to await
the outcome. They could not have done this
had they wished — for it was at their doors
that the war was fought — and there was not
a woman among them who did so wish. From
the wives and daughters of the old Southern
aristocracy to the girl in calico of the strag-
[2161
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
gling mountain settlements, they gave them-
selves with one accord to the task of aiding
their army by every means at their com-
mand.
To them, in truth, the torments and horrors
of the war were brought home with far more
immediate force than to their Northern sisters.
The husband or son to whom in the morning
they gave a fond adieu might ere night be car-
ried to them stark and cold in death. They
themselves, during the long sieges, were con-
stantly exposed to the perils of the bombard-
ment. In the last stages of the war they were
on the verge of starvation, and many actually
perished for want of food. Yet all the time
they kept up a brave heart, held back the tears
of bitterness and bereavement, and, even when
their resources were lowest, nobly strove, just
as the Northern women were striving, to sup-
port and comfort and relieve their soldier
boys.
All over the South soldiers' aid societies
[2171
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
were formed similar to those of the North, an-
imated by the same enthusiasm, though pre-
vented by circumstances from accompHshing
as much in the way of concrete results. There
was no sacrifice which they were unwilling
to make for the Confederacy and for the Con-
federacy's soldiers.
" When war raised a loud cry for need,"
exclaimed John Dimitry, in an eloquent tribute
to the women of Louisiana, " Beauregard was
calling upon his sisters who spoke French and
his other sisters who spoke English to send
him metal for his guns. Quick to the melter
and blacksmith's forge! Are these your fretted
brass candelabra, madame? Brought across
seas, and handed down from one generation
to the next, you say? What of that.'^ Beaure-
gard calls, his need will not brook delay. This
tall, slender, lily-cupped candlestick, too, in
the young girl's chamber, let it be brought
out! And those massive polished andirons
Dorcas has been so proud of. Take down the
[2181
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
metal bell that rings the plantation signals.
Look well around ! " ^
In Virginia, in the Carolinas, in Georgia,
and Alabama, and Tennessee it was the same.
What can we do for the army? As in the North,
women hurried to the front to tend the wounded,
or labored in hastily improvised hospitals
created over night in private homes, hotels,
and warehouses. Mrs. Roger A. Pry or, in
her " Reminiscences of Peace and V^^ar," which
should be read by all who would know some-
thing of what the women of the South suffered
and achieved, has drawn graphic pictures of
scenes in one of these temporary hospitals
in Richmond, where the fairest and proudest of
the daughters of the Old Dominion performed
cheerfully the most menial and repellent tasks.
On the battle-field, whether in attendance as
volunteer nurses, or caught unawares like old
Allie McPeek, they could always be relied
^ In General C. A. Evan's " Confederate Military History,"
vol. X, pp. 285-286.
[219]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
upon to render cool, unterrified service. The
story of Allie McPeek ^ admirably illustrates
the spirit shared by all of high or low
degree.
She was a poor widow living on a little farm
two miles from Jonesboro, Georgia. When the
armies of Schofield and Hardee fought the
battle of Jonesboro, in September, 1864, her
house was for two days under fire. According
as the fortunes of war changed, it would be
for a time within the lines of the Union
troops, then within those of the Confederates,
and at times directly between both. Yet all
the while she remained in her ruined home,
converting it into a hospital, and for forty-
eight hours, regardless of her danger, kept
hard at work helping the surgeons of both
armies.
So nobly did she bear herself that when the
battle was over General Schofield, of the vic-
^ Southern Historical Society's " Papers," vol. xxiii, pp.
328-329.
[2201
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
torious Northern army, sent her a large wagon-
load of provisions, together with a long and
touching letter of thanks and a promise that
if, after the war, she presented his letter to
the United States Government she would be
compensated for her losses. Uncle Sam, it
is good to know, redeemed his general's pledge,
rejoicing the heart of old Allie McPeek with
a check for six hundred dollars.
Then there was the Tennessee mother who
gave five sons to the Confederacy, and who,
when Bishop Polk was endeavoring to console
her for the loss of the first to be slain, looked
him in the eye without a tear, and bravely
said:
** My son Billy will be old enough next
spring to take his brother's place."
Of still greater pathos is the story told by
Mrs. John R. Eggleston, concerning a friend
of hers, a widow, whose two sons, her only
support, fell in the hopeless struggle.
" Both my boys are gone," said she, " but
[221]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
if I had to do all this over again, I would not
act differently."
The famous " Mother " Bickerdyke had
her counterpart in the South in Mrs. Sallie
Chapman Law, born in the Yadkin River sec-
tion of North Carolina, which has given so
many great-hearted men and women to the
making of America. When the war broke out,
she was living in Memphis, where she became
an active worker in hospitals; and when noth-
ing more could be done in Memphis, she went
through the lines to labor 'mid the cannon
smoke. It was not without reason that Gen-
eral Joseph E. Johnston once paraded thirty
thousand of his weary and tattered veterans
in a review given in her honor.
Mrs. Newsom, of Arkansas, was another
devoted Southern nurse, a lady who " surren-
dered all the comforts of home to do what she
could for the suffering of our army." So was
Kate Gumming, of Mobile, whose brother
was in battle while she was nursing the wounded
[222]
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR
at Corinth. This lady has, in fact, left a most
informative record of her war-time experiences,
in her " Journal of Hospital Life in the Confed-
erate Army of the Tennessee," a book that
vividly, if fragmentarily, reveals the tremen-
dous handicaps under which the daughters of
the Confederacy performed their self-imposed
duties as nurses, and the courage with which
they faced the dangers to which they found
themselves from time to time exposed.
Thus, North and South the story is the same
— a record of quiet and unostentatious, but
glorious and sublime, self-sacrificing heroism.
223]
CHAPTER VII
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
IMPRESSIVE and often thrilling as has
been the story of woman's work and influ-
ence in past epochs of American history, it
is safe to say that never has she played a more
important part than she is playing to-day.
Within the space of a comparatively few years
she has extended her activities in directions
and to a degree undreamed by the noble matrons
and maids who in former times presented such
inspiring examples to their own and future
generations. In all walks of life — in business, in
professional pursuits, in the arts — the American
woman is more numerously and conspicuously
represented than ever before. Nor has she
thereby lost any of the distinctive charms of
her womanliness, or in any way weakened her
[224]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
claim on our affection, esteem, admiration,
and gratitude.
With increased freedom for individual self-
expression she has gained, and taken advan-
tage of, increased power to make her collective
influence felt for good in the life of the nation.
Nothing is more significant in this connection
than the growth of the so-called " woman's
club," which has been the subject of so much
ill-natured and ill-advised criticism. It has
been charged that the club movement among
women involved neglect of home duties, would
increase frivolity, and meant the ultimate dis-
ruption of family life. However well-grounded
these objections may be in the case of other
countries, they are glaringly erroneous when
applied to the United States. Here the woman's
club has developed into a most valuable and
powerful instrument for social betterment.
Its remote origin, as was said in the opening
chapter, may with some reason be traced to the
meetings of those early Puritan women who
[2251
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
used to assemble at Mrs. Anne Hutchinson's
home in seventeenth-century Boston and dis-
cuss theological and other burning questions
of the day. But it was not until the middle
of the nineteenth century that women's clubs
in the modern sense began to make their ap-
pearance with the organization of the Ladies'
Library Society, of Kalamazoo, Michigan,
and the Minerva Club, of New Harmony,
Indiana, the establishment of which speaks
volumes for the progressiveness of the women
of the Middle West.
Any immediate extension of the movement
thus set on foot was prevented by the outbreak
of the Civil War. Nevertheless, the woman's
club indirectly gained greatly from that tre-
mendous conflict. The notable services ren-
dered by the Sanitary Commission and its
subsidiary soldiers' aid societies, went far to
remove long-standing prejudices against the
participation of women in public affairs, and
at the same time helped women to realize the
[2261
THE WOMEN OF TO - DAY
progress they might hope to achieve by organ-
ized cooperation. There had long been a grow-
ing sentiment that the laws and customs of
the country worked to the disadvantage of
women, and after the Civil War this sentiment
crystallized and found expression, on the one
hand in an " equal suffrage " movement, and
on the other in the " club " movement, which
was definitely launched in 1868 by the founding,
almost simultaneously, of the New England
Woman's Club and the oddly named Sorosis. ^
The former owed its inception largely to
the genius of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who
had even then attained international reputa-
tion, not only as the author of the " Battle
Hymn of the Republic " but also as a zealous
humanitarian. Only the previous year she
and her husband, the great-hearted Doctor
Samuel G. Howe, had won the warm gratitude
of the people of Greece for visiting them and
aiding them in their struggle for national in-
dependence. Under the influence of Mrs.
[2271
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Howe and her associates — who included such
well-known women as Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs.
Mary A. Livermore, and Mrs. Edna P. Cheney
— the idea of social service was from the first
a leading principle in the New England Woman's
Club. Besides providing literary programmes
for the entertainment and cultural develop-
ment of its members, it struck out along phil-
anthropic lines, establishing a free employ-
ment bureau and a horticultural school for
girls.
In connection with the founding of Sorosis,
an interesting story is told. When Charles
Dickens made his second American visit, in
1867-1868, he was given a banquet by the Press
Club of New York. Mrs. Jane Cunningham
Croly, the brilliant newspaper woman whose
writings under the pseudonym of " Jennie
June " have delighted so many thousands
of readers, was at the time a member of the
editorial staff of the World, and it seemed to
her only right and fitting that she should
[2281
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
attend the Press Club's banquet, Her applica-
tion for a ticket met with a prompt refusal,
on the score of her sex.
Greatly disappointed, and not a little in-
censed, Mrs. Croly invited a number of her
friends — among whom were Mrs. Charlotte
B. Wilbour, Mrs. Eliza Botta, Kate Field, and
Alice and Phoebe Cary — to meet at her home
and discuss the formation of a club exclusively
for women. The result of their meeting was
the birth of Sorosis, in March, 1868, with Alice
Cary as its first president.
There were only twelve charter members,
but before the year was out, Sorosis had grown
remarkably both in numbers and influence.
Other women in other cities began to organize,
some along the lines of the New England
Woman's Club, but more taking the pioneer
New York club as their model. According to
a clubwoman of wide experience, Helen M.
Winslow, " no other club in the country has
been so much copied, imitated, and envied as
[2291
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the j&rst and famous Sorosis." Interest in the
club movement was intensified by the meeting
of a Congress of Women, convened in New York
in 1869, in response to a call from Mrs. Croly.
Four years later, and again mainly on the in-
itiative of Mrs. Croly, the Association for the
Advancement of Women was founded, under
the presidency of Mrs. Livermore, who was
afterward succeeded by Mrs. Howe. Than
these three women — Mrs. Croly, Mrs. Howe,
and Mrs. Livermore — none deserve greater
credit as constructive pioneers in promoting
the interests and extending the influence of
the women of present-day America^
Naturally enough, while many of the women's
clubs followed the example of the New England
organization and embarked in various phil-
anthropic enterprises, their chief concern at
first was to benefit their individual members
and to secure greater freedom of action for
women in general. But as time brought with
it increased recognition of " woman's rights,"
[2301
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
they became decreasingly self -centered. They
acquired, so to speak, a *' community conscious-
ness," and began to attack problems of impor-
tance to them not only as women and mothers,
but as residents of the cities and towns in which
they made their homes.
They undertook, for example, to study the
conditions of life among the poor, and to agitate
for sanitary and other reforms that would pro-
mote the health, happiness, and efficiency of
slum dwellers. They established and aided
educational institutions of all sorts — public
libraries, schools of domestic science, manual-
training schools, kindergartens. Some laid
stress on the need for reforms in municipal
government and administration. Others be-
came busy hives of cooperative industry, a
most impressive illustration being found in the
work of the Woman's Educational and Indus-
trial Union, a Boston organization which was
founded in the eighties, to-day boasts a mem-
bership of three thousand, and annually ex-
[2311
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
pends forty thousand dollars in helping the
poor to help themselves.
The next and inevitable step was a union
of the different clubs scattered in all parts of
the United States. This was foreshadowed
in 1889, when a few literary clubs, in response
to a call from Sorosis, federated with one an-
other. In the following year, likewise on the
invitation of Sorosis — and Mrs. Croly —
delegates met in New York to form what
has since become of nation-wide importance
as the General Federation of Women's
Clubs.
Beginning with a membership of less than
one hundred clubs, it has grown until, after
an interval of not yet a quarter of a century,
it comprises over five thousand clubs, with a
total membership of four hundred thousand
women. Add to these the members of organ-
izations independent of, but affiliated with,
the General Federation — such as the Inter-
national Sunshine Society, the Woman's Out-
[232]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
door Art League of the American Civic As-
sociation, the National Society of New England
Women, and the Woman's National Press
Association — and we have an army of more
than a million well-organized, well-directed,
and enthusiastic women whose watchwords
are " The Home, Patriotism, and Good
Government."
The presence of such an army is in itself
a guarantee of a happy future for the land in
which we dwell. All over the country the club-
women are waging a great battle for social
progress. They are fighting vice and crime,
ignorance and disease; they are demanding
humane legislation to protect the weak and
lowly; they make no compromise with greed,
brutality, or injustice; everywhere they are
carrying on a great educational campaign to
promote a higher cultural development, a
livelier civic sense, and a loftier morality in
the individual and in the nation. Their out-
look is in no way restricted. They labor for
[233]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
the welfare not only of the people of their own
day but of generations yet unborn.
" Except in the United States Congress,"
emphatically asserts Josiah Strong, president
of the American Institute for Social Service,
" I know of no body of men or women represent-
ing so much of intellect and heart, so much of
culture and influence, and so many of the
highest hopes and noblest possibilities of the
American people as the General Federation of
Women's Clubs."
Similar testimony comes from Ben. B. Lind-
sey, the Colorado man who has made such a
splendid record as judge of the juvenile court
in Denver. ** For the past few years," he says,
" I have been actively engaged in the interest of
better laws for the protection of the home and
the children. In this behalf I have visited some
twenty States. I have found wonderful prog-
ress, and scarcely without exception it has been
the members of the women's clubs who have
championed every good law and secured the
[234]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
passage of nearly all the advanced legislation
upon the statute books for the protection of
the home and the children."
" It would take a volume to give you ade-
quately a small portion of what I know as to
the beneficence of activities of women in con-
nection with American Civic Association work
and kindred work," writes J. Horace McFar-
land, president of the American Civic Associa-
tion, in a letter to the author. " Some things
they do so exceptionally well that I do not see
how the work could be done without them.
I have said a great many times on the platform,
in answering calls from communities for ad-
dresses intended to get those communities
started in practical work for better living con-
ditions, that I did not know of a successful
regenerative movement that was not inspired
or underwritten by the women of the com-
munity."
The facts bear out these glowing tributes.
To give a notable instance, the organized
[235]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
pressure brought to bear by clubwomen was
a potent factor in effecting the sorely needed
reform embodied in the Pure Food Law of
1906. The General Federation of Women's
Clubs declared for its enactment, as did the
State Federations in the General Federation
and individual clubs in the State Federations.
Committees were appointed for the express
purpose of educating public opinion to the im-
portance of the proposed law and persuading
reluctant Congressmen to vote the right way.
In the opinion of many good judges, the influ-
ence thus exercised was absolutely decisive.
And even to-day, six years after the victory
has been won, the pure food committees of
the General and State Federations are hard
at work, determined that there shall be no
evasion of the law, and agitating for further
reforms, particularly in the way of improving
the milk supply and improving sanitary con-
ditions in markets and provision stores.
Similarly, the clubwomen have thrown them-
[236]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
selves heart and soul into the movement now
under way for the conservation of America's
natural resources and scenic assets. The saving
of the Palisades on the Hudson River was chiefly
due to the energetic action of women's clubs
in New Jersey. The famous cliff dwellings of
Colorado would have been lost to the nation
had it not been for the beneficent activity of
a number of Colorado women who organized
a Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association, gained
the support of the General Federation of Wom-
en's Clubs, and instituted a successful campaign
for the creation of the Mesa Verde National
Park.
In Minnesota, women prevented a " land
grab," and afterward secured the enactment
of a State forestry law to put a stop to the depre-
dations of lumbermen and town-site operators.
The State Federation of New Hampshire lent
powerful aid m the struggle for the preservation
of the White Mountain forests. So, too, in
New York, where the State Federation has
[2371
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
battled bravely against the vandalism that
threatens to convert the Adirondacks and the
Catskills into barren wastes. Elsewhere, par-
ticularly in Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachu-
setts, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia,
Tennessee, and California, women's clubs
have done splendid work for forest preserva-
tion.
The movement to rescue Niagara Falls
from the rapacious grasp of commercialism
has been loyally supported by women in all
parts of the country.) Both through their
clubs and as individuals they are ably seconding
the efforts of the American Civic Association,
which has made the saving of Niagara its
special care. Mr. McFarland, from whom I
have already quoted, tells a good story illus-
trative of the interest and enthusiasm shown
by the women of the United States in attacking
the Niagara problem. As president of the
American Civic Association he had occasion to
attend several hearings in Washington. At
[238]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
one hearing, held in the War OflSce, President
Taft, then Secretary of War, after Hstening
to what Mr. McFarland had to urge in behalf
of Niagara, turned to him with some impatiencCj
and said: "Why, you have made even my
mother and aunt write me, begging me to save
Niagara Falls!" Well may Mr. McFarland
say, as he does, that women have been most in-
sistent for righteousness in this cause.
Another problem of national importance to
which the clubwomen are giving earnest and
productive thought is the securing of remedial
industrial legislation for women and children.
The industrial and child-labor committees of
the General and State Federations, and of
many of their clubs, have gone into the homes
of the workers, and into mills, factories, and
stores, investigating the conditions under which
women and children toil. Their aim is the
utter abolition of child labor, and the pro-
tection of working women from employers
who would overwork them, or compel them to
[239]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
labor under injurious conditions. In many
cases special agents are employed, men and
women quick to detect violations of existing
laws, and skilled in gathering data to reinforce
demands for reform. Of course they have met,
and will continue to meet, bitter opposition;
but they have already made appreciable prog-
ress in awakening the public conscience and
in compelling State legislatures to enact more
enlightened laws.
One phase of the " child rescue " campaign
in which they have been signally successful
is the creation of separate courts, reform schools,
and probation systems for dealing with youth-
ful offenders. The juvenile court plan origi-
nated less than fifteen years ago, in Illinois,
when the Chicago Woman's Club, horrified
at conditions found to exist in Cook County
jail, engaged a lawyer to draw up a bill which
should strike at the roots of the pernicious
system of herding young boys with hardened
criminals. The new method went on trial
[ 240 ]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
in 1899, and its merits were such that club-
women everywhere began to insist on its ex-
tension. It has since been adopted by so many
States that the day does not seem far distant
when the entire country will have abandoned
the old-time practice of " sending a boy to
school at the jailer's " — a practice which
virtually denies the juvenile delinquent any
chance of developing into a decent and useful
member of society.
Civil Service reform has received organized
support from the women of present-day America
since 1894, when there was founded in New York
the Woman's Auxiliary of the Civil Service
Reform Association. The General Federation
of Women's Clubs has a standing committee
on Civil Service reform, as have a majority
of the State Federations, and their influence
is constantly exercised toward a wider applica-
tion of the merit system of appointment to
public oflfice. Reform in municipal politics
is another problem enlisting their sympathetic
[2411
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
cooperation, and much good work has been ac-
complished in this field by such organizations
as the Woman's Municipal League of New York,
the Civic Club of Philadelphia, and the Civic
Federation of Denver.
Clubwomen have likewise entered ardently
into the movement to improve the sanitation,
appearance, and general living conditions of
American municipalities, and in many in-
stances reforms have been brought about en-
tirely as a result of their initiative. With
their traveling libraries and art galleries they
are reaching into remote communities, pro-
moting education in the most isolated regions,
fostering a love of the beautiful, and opening
up vistas of enjoyment and recreation to many
whose lives have formerly been a dreary monot-
ony of unending toil.
This brings me to a fact which, taken by
itself, would amply justify the woman's club
movement in the United States. In a very
real sense it is eradicating the last lingering
[2421
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
remnants of the sectionalism that has more than
once worked havoc to the nation. x\mong club-
women there is no East and West, or North
and South. They stand for a united people.
In the biennial conventions of the General
Federation of Women's Clubs they come to-
gether from all parts of the country to plan for
the good of the whole country. Even the per-
sonnel of the General Federation's officers
bears evidence to the absence of sectional
lines. The same principle obtains in the ap-
pointment of committees, and in the practical
working out of Federation business the national
idea is kept steadily to the fore, even when
it is a question of dealing with problems pri-
marily local rather than national in their
significance.
Thus, there stands in the heart of Georgia's
mill region a model country school where
children are taught, in addition to the three
R's, manual training, domestic science, and
gardening. It was founded and is maintained
[243]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
at the joint expense of the Georgia Federation
of Women's Clubs and the Massachusetts
Federation, which has long been aiding the
women of Georgia in combatting the evils of
child labor in that State. And similarly in
Tennessee, the Massachusetts Federation has
established at Happy Valley a settlement like
that established by the Tennessee Federation at
Walker's Valley for the purpose of teaching
the wives and daughters of the Tennessee
mountaineers cooking, sewing, and other homely
arts.
All this, of course, tends to the making of
a happier, better, and more progressive people.
Nor are the federated women's clubs by any
means the only organizations of women labor-
ing to the same beneficent end. While it is
true that no other organization approaches
the General Federation of Women's Clubs in
the scope of its activities, there are many which,
created for special objects, are rendering serv-
ices whose value to the nation it would be
[244]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
difficult to overestimate. Pre-eminent among
these is the National Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, with which will ever be as-
sociated the name of one of the noblest of
American women, Frances E. Willard, who was
its president for nearly twenty years. Its mem-
bership is almost as impressive as that of the
General Federation of Women's Clubs, having
grown from a few thousand at the time of its
founding, in 1874, to several hundred thousand
enthusiastic " white ribboners."
Perhaps their most noteworthy achievement
is seen in the success attending their efforts
to have the children of the United States —
the " citizens of to-morrow " — instructed in
the principles of scientific temperance. They
have secured mandatory laws to this effect
in every State in the Union, besides a Federal
law applying to the District of Columbia, the
Territories, and all Indian and military schools
supported by the government; and as a result
fully eighteen million children in our public
[245]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
schools — according to statistics for which I
am indebted to Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, the
present head of the National Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union — are now receiving
instruction as to the nature and effect of al-
cohol and other narcotics on the human system.
It is also estimated that at least sixteen million
children receive temperance teaching in the
Sunday schools of the country, and that five
hundred thousand of these are pledged total
abstainers.
i The recent remarkable growth of prohibition
sentiment, which has swung so many States
into the " dry " column, must unquestionably
be attributed in chief part to this policy of
beginning from the bottom upward by educa-
ting the future voter as to the harmful effects
of the use of alcoholic beverages. Besides which,
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union has
directly and powerfully contributed to all of
the prohibition victories, as has been frequently
and even officially recognized. A few years
[2461
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
ago, for instance, at the time Tennessee voted
for prohibition, the Legislature of that State
adopted a resolution declaring that " to the
good and consecrated women of the Tennessee
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, we
feel a debt of lasting gratitude, and are sen-
sitive to the whole work they have accomplished
even in the face of seemingly overwhelming
odds." And in Georgia chivalric prohibition-
ists insisted that " but for the untiring work
and constant prayers of the women of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the
victory would not have been won,"
Aside from its anti-liquor activities, the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union is
earnestly engaged in advancing many other
social reforms. It has done much for the great
principle of international arbitration. Ad-
vocates for better observance of the Sabbath
find in it an unfailing ally. It is lending efficient
aid to the movement to secure stricter laws for
the protection of women and children. The wel-
[247]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
fare of children, indeed, has always been one of
its principal objects. It has been instrumental
in securing legislation prohibiting the sale of to-
bacco to minors. It has encouraged the estab-
lishment of school savings banks. It has advo-
cated physical education in public schools, and
has cooperated with the General Federation of
Women's Clubs and other organizations in
promoting the extension of the kindergarten.
In all of this, it has been actuated by the
sound belief that the future of the country
depends on the kind of training its boys and
girls receive, and that by caring for their in-
terests it will best live up to its motto — " For
God and Home and Native Land." Altogether,
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
must be accounted among the nation's richest
assets.
Then, also quite apart from the club move-
ment, there are organizations of women for
the promotion of religion, benevolence, patriot-
ism, good government, education, and in fact
[248]
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY
every worthy cause that one might name. Be-
sides which, as need hardly be pointed out, the
influence of the women of present-day America
is immeasurably increased through their mem-
bership in societies composed of both men and
women. In such societies the latter often hold
most responsible positions, and can always
be depended upon to do their share in realizing
the aims of the organization. Frequently they
do far more than their share, as in the case of
the three thousand charitable organizations
of New York City, where the greater part of
the actual work of investigating and relieving
destitution is carried on by women.
Just how many women all told are thus en-
listed under the banner of social progress it
is impossible to say, although the number must
run far into the millions. It is still more out of
the question to attempt to estimate the influ-
ence which they exercise collectively and as indi-
viduals. Who can measure, for instance, the
influence exercised by Miss Helen Gould or
[249]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Miss Jane Addams? It is almost twenty years
since Miss Addams first took up her residence
in Hull House, and began her settlement work
among the toilers of Chicago. Under her able
direction Hull House has developed into a
center of the highest civic and social life.
Thousands of people visit it every week during
the winter months to attend lectures, debates,
and theatrical entertainments; to gain instruc-
tion in industrial arts; to take part in its
club life; and to study literature, science,
history, civics, the languages, and the fine
arts. Originally it comprised only four rooms
on the second floor of an old residence; to-day
it has spread out until it might figuratively
be called a city within a city. Its fame has gone
forth over the world, and the name of Miss
Addams is an inspiration to many who have
never seen her.
So with all American women, well known,
little known, or not known at all, who are
striving for the good of their country. One and
[2501
THE WOMEN OF TO - DAY
all they radiate an influence whose cumulative
effect must result, and will result, in the up-
building of a greater America than the America
of to-day.
There is the likelihood, too, that the American
woman of future generations will be in a better
position to make her influence felt than are
her sisters of to-day. Certainly the signs of
the times point unmistakably to her securing
at no distant period, that full and equal " right
to vote " for which the Grimke sisters, Lucy
Stone, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe, and
their feUow-pioneers in advocacy of " woman's
rights," so bravely fought in days gone by..
One after another the States of the Union are
recognizing the justice of their claims; are
recognizing that, in the light of all that woman
has done for America in the past, and all that
she is doing to-day, the giving of the vote to
women can only result in still greater good to
the Republic.
[251]
WOMAN IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Let me conclude by once more reminding
my readers of what that wise Frenchman,
Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote many years ago:
" If I were asked to what the singular pros-
perity and growing strength of the American
people ought mainly to be attributed, I should
reply — to the superiority of their women."
Were de Tocqueville alive to-day, and were
he to undertake a revision of his " Democracy
in America," that is one passage which he
assuredly would leave untouched.
9
[2521
INDEX
Abolition movement, early
history of, 157-162;
women in, 163-187.
Addams, Jane, and Hull
House, 250.
Aiken, Mrs. J., 102.
Aldrich, Anne, 101.
Aldrich, Milly, 193.
American Revolution, wom-
an's work in, 81-114.
Anthony, Susan B., and
equal suffrage movement,
251.
Austin, Ann, persecution of,
33-34.
Barlow, Arabella, Civil War
nurse, 213.
Bartlett, Mrs. A., 193.
Barton, Clara, with Army
of the Potomac, 208-209;
also mentioned, 206, 213.
*' Battle Hymn of the Re-
public," how written, 214;
text, 215-216.
Bellows, H. W., on woman's
work in Civil War, 188,
189 n.; account of Helen
Gilson by, 209-210.
Berry, Mrs. S., 87-88.
Bickerdyke, " Mother,"
Civil War nurse, 206-208,
222.
Birkbeck, M., on westward
movement, 116.
Birney, Catherine H., on
Grimk6 sisters, 165, 169-
171, 171-173.
Boone, D., and Wilderness
Road, 115, 123; and settle-
ment of Kentucky, 119-
123.
Boone, Jemima, Indian cap-
tivity of, 124-125.
Boone, Rebecca, 119, 122,
123, 126, 152.
Botta, Eliza, and founding
of Sorosis, 229.
Boyer, Margaret, 199.
Bradley, Amy, Civil War
nurse, 206.
Brayton, Miss, 189 n.
Breckinridge, Margaret,
Civil War nurse, 206, 213.
Brent, Margaret, first Ameri-
can "suffragette," 26-28.
Bryan's Station, siege of,
140-150.
Burnaby, A., on amusements
of Philadelphians, 47-48; on
New York society, 48-49.
Business women, early
American, 24-28, 54-58.
Callaway sisters, Indian cap-
tivity of, 124-125.
Campbell, Miss, 189 n.
"Captain Molly," 90-91.
Cave Dwellers in Pennsyl-
vania, 9.
253]
INDEX
Chapman, Maria W., and
abolition movement, 163.
Cheney, Edna P., and found-
ing of New England Wom-
an's Club, 228.
Child labor, 239-240.
Child, Lydia M., and aboli-
tion movement, 174-178.
Civic reform, 235, 241-242.
Civil Service reform, 241.
Civil War, woman's work in,
188-223.
Clubs, women's, origin and
development of, 225-232;
General Federation organ-
ized, 232; present-day
work of, 233-248.
Coffin, Mrs. P., 102-104.
Colburn, Bertha L., on work
of New Hampshire women
in American Revolution,
102-104.
Collins, Miss, 189 n.
Conservation of national re-
sources, 237-239.
Cook, Mrs. J. and Mrs. H.,
adventure with Indians,
135-136.
Cooper, Mrs. W. M., 199.
Crandall, Prudence, and ed-
ucation of colored chil-
dren, 181-184.
Croly, Jane C, and found-
ing of Sorosis, 228-229;
and formation General
Federation of Women's
Clubs, 232; also mentioned,
230.
Cumming, Kate, Civil War
nurse, 222-223.
Darrah, Lydia, Revolution-
ary exploit of, 109-112.
Davenport, Mrs. J., 25.
Davies, Mrs. J., Kentucky
pioneer, 151.
Dennis, Hannah, Indian cap-
tivity of, 74-79.
Dimitry, J., on devotion of
Louisiana women in Civil
War, 218-219.
Dix, Dorothea L., selected as
head of Union nurses, 203;
early philanthropic work of,
204-205; also mentioned,
209 213
Draper, Mary, 86, 104-105.
Drayton Hall, 54, 57.
Duston, Hannah, Indian cap-
tivity of, 13-16; also men-
tioned, 42, 74.
Dyer, Mary, convert to Qua-
kerism, 35; banished from
Massachusetts, 35; re-
turns, 36; sentenced to
death, 36; appeals to Gen-
eral Court, 36-39; re-
prieved, 40; again sen-
tenced, 41; executed, 42;
also mentioned, 179.
Education, 180-184, 231, 233,
242, 243, 246, 248.
Equal suffrage movement,
26, 28, 227, 251.
Ewing, Sarah, 199.
Ferguson, Isabella, 113.
Ferree, Mary, Pennsylvania
pioneer, 25.
Field, Kate, and founding of
Sorosis, 229.
Fisher, Mary, persecution of,
33-34.
Foster, Abby, and abolition
movement, 178, 179-180.
[254
INDEX
Garnson, W. L., and aboli- Indian captivities 13-23,
tion movement, 158, 161, 74-79, 124-125
162, 163, 179, 182.
Gilson, Helen, Civil War Johnson, Jemima S., Bryan's
rtr\a orvrv n-in G+«^ + ;^»^ T ; i^r t a rt
nurse, 206, 209-212.
Glidden, Mrs. C, 102.
Gould, Helen, 249.
Greene, Catharine, with Rev-
olutionary army, 97.
Grier, Mrs., 189 n.
Grimke sisters, and aboli-
tion movement, 163-173;
and equal suffrage move-
ment, 251.
Grover, Priscilla, 199.
Haddon, Elizabeth, New
Jersey pioneer, 25.
Hard, Elizabeth, experiences
in early Pennsylvania, 9-
10.
Hawkins, Mrs. W., 102.
Hedge, Mrs., 189 n.
Holley, Sallie, and aboli-
tion movement, 179, 180.
Houston, Mrs., and settle-
ment of Tennessee, 153-
155.
Howe, Julia W., and writing
of " The Battle Hymn of
the Republic," 213-216;
Station heroine, 145-148.
Juvenile courts, 234, 240-
241.
Kentucky, women's experi-
ences in early, 123-126,
134-153.
King Philip, 17, 22, 23.
Knox, Lucy, with Revolu-
tionary army, 97.
Law, Sallie C, Civil War
nurse, 222.
Leonardson, S., Indian cap-
tivity of, 14-16.
Lindsey, B. B., on woman's
club movement, 234-235.
Livermore, Mary A., on
work of Western women in
Civil War, 195-196; on
work of *• Mother " Bick-
erdyke, 207-208; and
founding of New England
Woman^s Club, 228; also
mentioned, 189 n., 230.
251.
Lovejoy, E. P., murder of,
162.
and founding o f N e w t ^^^^' t^,,^„ ,qq
England Woman's Club, j^lL ' • t^ i
227-228; also mentioned, ^Xi il3-llT '"^ "
230, 251.
Hull House, 250.
Hutchinson, Anne, first
American " clubwoman,"
28; troubles with Massa-
chusetts authorities, 29-
32; banished, 33; death,
33; also mentioned, 34,
42, 226.
[265]
Lundy, B., and abolition
movement, 158, 179.
Matteson, Dorcas, 101.
May, Miss, 189 n.
McFarland, J. H., on wom-
an's share in work of
American Civic ABSOcia-
tion, 236, 238-239.
INDEX
McPeek, Allie, heroine of
battle of Jonesboro, 220-
221.
Merrill, Mrs. J., adventure
with Indians, 136-137.
Moore, Mrs., 189 n.
Morris, Deborah, onElizabeth
Hard's experiences, 9-10.
Mott, Lucretia, and aboli-
tion movement, 178-179 :
and equal suffrage move-
ment, 251.
National Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, aims
and work of, 244-248.
Neff, Mary, Indian cap-
tivity of, 14-16.
New England Woman's
Club, 227-228, 229.
Newsom, Mrs., Civil War
nurse, 222.
Pennsylvania Hall, burning
of, 160, 171.
Philadelphia Dancing As-
sembly, founding of, 46.
Philadelphia '* refreshment
saloons," 199-202.
Pilgrim mothers, landing in
America of, 8-9.
Pinckney, Eliza L., and early
Southern plantation life,
54-58.
Plummer, Eliza, 199.
Poole, Elizabeth, and found-
ing of Taunton, Massachu-
setts, 24-25.
Pryor, Mrs. R. A., on hero-
ism of Southern women in
Civil War, 219.
Pure Food Law, 236.
Putnam, Carolina, and edu-
cation of colored children,
180.
Quakers, persecution of, 33-
42; also mentioned, 9, 109,
165, 179.
Reed, Abigail, 102.
Reed, Esther, and relief
work during Revolution,
106-108.
Reid, Mrs. G., 102.
Robinson, Hannah, love
story of, 59-64.
Ross, Anna M., 199.
Rouse, Mrs., 189 n.
Rowlandson, Mary, Indian
captivity of, 16-23; re-
moval to Connecticut, 23
n.; also mentioned, 42.
Sampson, Deborah, career in
American army, 91-96.
Sandys, Sir E., and settle-
ment of Virginia, 5-6.
Schuyler, Miss, 189 n.
Social life in the colonies, 46-
54.
Sorosis, 227, 228-229.
Stanton, Mrs., and equal
suffrage movement, 251.
Steel, Katharine, 86.
Stevenson, Miss, 189 n.
Stone, Lucy, and founding
of New England Woman's
Club, 228; and equal suf-
frage movement, 251.
Stowe, Harriet B., and
" Uncle Tom's Cabin."
185-186; also mentioned,
174.
256]
INDEX
Strong, J., on the General
Federation of Women's
Clubs, 234.
Thomas, Jane, 112-113.
Tocqueville, A. de, on wom-
an's work in the United
States, 1-2, 252.
United States Sanitary Com-
mission, organization and
work of, 190-192; how
money raised for, 197-198.
Vansdale, Elizabeth, 199
Virginia maids, 6-8.
Wade, Mary, 199.
Washington, Martha, with
Revolutionary army, 97-
101.
Westward movement, women
in, 115-155.
Wilbour, Charlotte, and
founding of Sorosis, 229.
Willard, Frances E., 245.
Winslow, Helen M., on in-
fluence of Sorosis, 229.
Witherspoon, R., account of
pioneering conditions in
South Carolina, 66-71.
" Woman's Rights," 28, 230.
Wright, Mrs. D., 89.
Zane, Elizabeth, heroism in
siege of Wheeling, 127-
133.
Zellers, Christina, Pennsyl-
vania pioneer, 71; adven-
ture with Indians, 72.
[257]
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