Part 16 (1/2)
The rioter stared down at her for athemselves upon his countenance, then his better nature triumphed and he led her respectfully to a place of safety
She see any audience, and carried her anti-slavery can even into Kentucky, where she commanded respectful attention She was one of the first to take up the question of woe, and in 1848, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a few others, called the first Woe Convention ever held in this country For fifty years she continued her public work, until she grew to be one of the best known and best loved women in the country
She lived to see the slave freed, and when she died, a great concourse followed her body silently to the grave As they stood there with bowed heads, a low voice asked, ”Will no one say anything?”
”Who can speak?” another voice responded, ”The preacher is dead”
In this day of pitying and enlightened treatment of the insane, it is difficult to realize the barbarities which they were called upon to endure a century ago They were regarded almost as wild beasts, were kept chained in foul and loathsome places, fed with mouldy bread, filthy water, and allowed to die the most miserable death For everyone used to believe that insanity was a mark of God's displeasure, and the outcast from His heart became equally an outcast froarded with fear and loathing, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that such an to insist on the presence in hurains of good
It was fro that Dorothea Lynde Dix drank in this theory with passionate faith, and proceeded at once to convert it into action
She was governess of Dr Channing's children, and had long been interested in bettering the condition of convicts; but now her attention was turned to the insane and she proceeded at once to in, its development, and its treat the aid of a nu them Charles Sumner, she went to work In one prison, she found two insane woe of planks; others were locked in closets, cellars, and stalls; soularly beaten and scourged
With all her data at hand, she addressed aforth, in page after page, the details of these almost incredible horrors, which she herself had witnessed
It exploded like a bonment of the whole state Her statements were denounced as untrue and slanderous, but a little investigation proved their truth, and with such , Horace Mann, and Sa would be done The obstructions and delays of politicians were swept away before a steadily rising tide of public indignation, and a large appropriation was islature to provide proper quarters and proper treatreat victory, the forerunner of similar ones in almost every state in the union; for she travelled froations she had in Massachusetts, arousing public opinion, and coislature to make adequate provision for the insane The vastness of this can which Miss Dix planned deliberately and which she carried through until she had visited every state east of the Rocky Mountains, gives evidence to her extraordinary character During the Civil War, she was superintendent of hospital nurses, having the entire control of their appointnment
But the care of the insane was her life work She resumed it at the close of the war, and carried it forward until her death
We have already referred more than once, in the course of these chapters, to the anti-slavery agitation which ended in the Civil War
During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it was the one great political question in America, upon which men were compelled to take one side or the other From the first, there existed in the north a band of abolitionists--of men, in other words, who believed that the only solution of the slavery question was to put an end to that institution at once and forever Of the persecutions which were visited on the abolitionists we have spoken when telling the story of Lucretia Mott Social ostracism was the least of them
Perhaps no one person in Aainst slavery than Lydia Maria Child An author at the age of seventeen, and writing continuously until her death, co early under the influence of Williareat leader of the abolitionists, it was inevitable that she should employ her pen to assist the cause In 1833 appeared her ”Appeal for that class of Americans called Africans,” the first anti-slavery work printed in A Mrs Stowe's ”Uncle Tom's Cabin” by nineteen years It attracted wide attention, enlisting the interest of such , alked from Boston to Roxbury to thank the author But it was not without its penalties, for society closed its doors to Mrs Child, many of her friends deserted her, and she was made the subject of much cruel comment However, she became more and more interested in the anti-slavery crusade, edited the ”National Anti-Slavery Standard,” and wrote pamphlet after pamphlet When John Broas taken prisoner, she wrote him a letter of sympathy, which drew forth a courteous rebuke froinia, and a letter froitive slave law, threatening her with future damnation These letters were published and had a circulation of three hundred thousand copies Wendell Phillips paid an eloquent tribute to her character and influence, at her funeral: ”She was the kind of woman,” he said, ”one would choose to represent woman's entrance into broader life Modest, womanly, sincere, solid, real, loyal, to be trusted, equal to affairs, and yet above them; a companion with the password of every science and all literature”
But however valuable the services of women like Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stoere in the fight against slavery, the leader and high priest of the movement was William Lloyd Garrison
Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805, his was an unhappy boyhood, for his father, a sea-captain of intemperate and adventurous habits, left his faain
The th of character, went to work to earn a living for herself and her son, and it was to her careful training that his develope, he was apprenticed to a printery and served until he was of age From the first he was remarkable for his firmness of moral principle and for an inflexible adherence to his convictions, no matter at what cost to himself
He soon showed, too, that he was destined for so more than a printer--a man who puts in print the ideas of others--that he had ideas of his own His apprenticeshi+p over, he started a paper of his own, but it was too reformatory for the taste of the day, and proved a failure
Thein connection with it was the publication of some poems which had been sent in anony their merit, discovered to be the work of John G Whittier, then entirely unknown He visited the poet, encouraged hi, and laid the foundation of a friendshi+p which was broken only by death
Going to Boston after the failure of his paper, Garrison for a time edited the ”National Philanthropist,” devoted to prohibition This paper, too, was a failure, but at Boston Garrison ed the whole course of his life His name was Benjamin Bundy He was a Quaker, and at that tie He was a saddler by trade, but for thirteen years had devoted his life to the anti-slavery cause, for a little monthly paper with a portentous name--”The Genius of Universal Emancipation” Bundy, whose holand in the hope of interesting the clergy in the cause In this he was bitterly disappointed, but heGarrison, who soon became his ally and afterwards his partner in the conduct of the paper His vigorous editing of it was soon a national sensation He had seen with disreat issue--an indifference grounded on the belief that slavery was intrenched by the constitution and that all discussion of it was a menace to the Union He realized that this indifference could be broken only by heroic , every slave had a right to instant freedom, and that immediate emancipation was the duty of the master and of the state
Baltimore was at that time one of the centres of the slave trade There were slave-pens on the principal streets, and Garrison soon witnessed scenes which would have touched a less tender heart In the first issue of his paper, he denounced this traffic as ”do them a vessel-owner of his on of Newburyport This ross and uilty, fined fifty dollars and costs, and as there was no one to pay this, was thrown into prison
Garrison took his ih, but his old friend, John G Whittier, was deeply distressed and appealed to Henry Clay to secure the release of the ”guiltless prisoner” This Clay would probably have done, but he was anticipated by another friend of Garrison's, Arthur Tappan, of New York, who sent the ain, after an imprisonment of forty-nine days He had not been idle while in prison, but had prepared a series of lectures on slavery, which he proceeded at once to deliver Then, on the first day of January, 1831, he began in Boston the publication of a weekly paper called the ”Liberator,” which he continued for thirty-five years, until its fight on and slavery was abolished
Hoell that fight aged history has shown In his first number he announced: ”I will be as harsh as truth and as unco as justice On this subject I do not wish to think, to speak, or write with ive a radually extricate her babe froe me not to use moderation in a cause like the present I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard”
And heard he was The whole land was soon filled with excitement; the apathy of years was broken Fro hiia offered a reward of 5,000 for his apprehension In the north, anti-slavery societies were forreat rapidity, in spite of powerful efforts to crush it There were riots everywhere Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his body and his life was saved only by lodging him in jail; Elijah Lovejoy was slain at Alton, Illinois, while defending his press; Marius Robinson, an anti-slavery lecturer, was tarred and feathered in Mahoning County, Ohio; in the cities of the south, mobs broke into the postoffice and made bonfires of anti-slavery papers and pamphlets found there Quarrels and dissension in the anti-slavery ranks developed in time, but when the Civil War was over, the leaders of the Republican party united with Garrison's friends in raising for him the sum of 30,000, and after his death the city of Boston raised a statue to his memory Perhaps no better estimate of hiovernor of Massachusetts: