Part 19 (1/2)
It is scarcely necessary to say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a ed them on to such noble purposes in life Children entered there spoiled by indulgence, selfish, uncontrolled, sometimes vicious Their teachers studied theained, weaknesses sounded, elevation measured Very slowly often, and with infinite patience and perseverance, but successfully in nearly every case, these children were redeemed The idle became industrious, the selfish considerate, the disobedient and ard repentant and gentle Sometimes the fruits of all this labor and forbearance did not show themselves immediately, and in a few instances the seed sown did not ripen until the boy or girl had left school and led with the world Then the contrast between the cos of their Eagleswood otten lessons of truth and honesty and purity were rethened; worldly expediency gave way before thesubserviency before independent ratitude, and appreciation of what had been done to make true men and women of them, which were received by the Welds, in many cases, years after they had parted from the writers, were treasured as their most precious souvenirs, and quite reconciled theh which such results were reached
A short ti Belleville, Mrs Weld and Sarah adopted the Blooreater freedo raed its adoption on others Mrs Weld, it is true, wrote a long and eloquent letter to the Dress Reform Convention which met in Syracuse in the summer of 1857, but it was not to advocate the Bloomer, but to show the need of some dress more suitable than the fashi+onable one, for work and exercise She also urged that as woer ”allantry,” or ”his petted slave whoes, whilst robbing her of intrinsic rights,” but was ehts as a huinning to answer the call to a life of useful exertion and honorable independence, it was tie ”I regard the Bloomer costume,” she says, ”as only an approach to that true wourated We ether suitable Man has long enough borne the burden of supporting the women of the civilized world When woman's temple of liberty is finished--when freedom for the world is achieved--when she has educated herself into useful and lucrative occupations, then s_, not ht to dress elegantly if they wish, but they will discard cuth”
Sarah says, in a letter to a friend, that the Bloomer dress violated her taste, and was so opposed to her sense ofthe residence at Eagleswood, both sisters discarded it altogether
The John Brown tragedy was of course deeply felt by Sarah and Angelina, and the bitter and desperate feelings which inspired it fully syelina was made quite ill by it, while Sarah felt her soul boith reverence for the deluded but grand old lass, ”what a glorious spectacle is now before us The Jeroue of our country, the John Huss of the United States, now stands ready, as they were, to seal his testiht I went in spirit to the e to enter into sy to my measure, into the depths where he has travailed, and feel his past exercises, his present sublies back, two of John Brown's leswood and there quietly interred The pro-slavery people of Perth A up the bodies, but the uarded the graves so faithfully, that the threat could not be acco out of the war found the Welds in deep fa anxiously by the sick bed of a dear son, with scarcely a hope of his recovery Of Sarah's absolute devotion, of her ceaseless care by day, and her tireless watching by night, during the h which that precious life flickered, it is needless to speak She took the delicatein her faith and hope, gave strength and hope to the heart-stricken parents, sustaining them when they were ready to sink beneath the avalanche of their woe And when at last, though life was spared, it was evident that the invalidtie stood steadfast There was no sign of faltering With a resignation almost cheerful, she took up her fresh burden, and, intent only on cheering her dear patient and coot her seventy-one years and every grief of the past
”I try,” she writes, ”to accept this, theand bitter dispensation of my checkered life, as what ittowards a better preparation for a higher life”
Chiefly on account of this son and the quiet which was necessary for hileswood, to the deep regret of all who knew them and had children to educate They settled themselves temporarily in a pleasant house in Perth A for the soldiers, they watched the progress of events which they had long foreseen were inevitable
Sarah speaks of the war as a retribution ”Hitherto,” she says, ”we have never been a republic, but one of the blackest tyrannies that ever disgraced the earth”
She calls attention to the fact that the South, by starting out with a definite and declared purpose, added reat revolutions,” she says, ”confusion in popular ideas is fatal The South avoided this She set up one idea as parareat principle and uttered it She shouted the talismanic words, 'Oppression and Liberty,' and said, 'Let us achieve our purpose or die!' The ht the spirit of the leaders, and verily believe they are struggling for freedoreat truth as the cause of our uprising We have no great idea to rally around, and know not e are fighting for”
Later she expresses herself very strongly concerning the selfishness of the politicians, North and South
”It is true there are so this war to lorious band who are fighting for huovernment, with Lincoln at its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave I want the South to do her oork of emancipation She would do it only froher motive, and the South will feel less exasperation if she does it herself”
In another letter in 1862, she writes:--
”The negro has generously cos, and offered to help to defend the country against those who are trying to fasten the chains on the white as well as the black We have iht of citizenshi+p, and have virtually said, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou' I pray that victory ro stands in his acknowledged manhood side by side in this conflict with the white man, until we have the nobility to say that this war is a war of abolition, and that no concession on the part of the South shall save slavery fro on the war to accoe his innocent people”
About this tis she ever wrote, ”A Declaration of War on Slavery” She and Sarah also drew up a petition to the government for the entire abolition of slavery, and took it around then it; and they were proposing to canvass, by ents, the entire North, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued
With their Charleston relatives, Mrs Weld and Sarah had always kept up a rather irregular, but, on one side, at least, an affectionate correspondence Their rief of her Northern daughters, her slave-holding principles to the last The few re members of the family were settled in and around Charleston, and were, with one exception, in co of the war This exception was their brother John, as infirm, and had outlived his resources and the ability to elina sent him from their slender incomes a small annuity, sufficient to keep him fro the war, until his death, which occurred in the latter part of 1863 Their sisters, Mary and Eliza, wrote very proud and defiant letters during the first two years of hostilities, and declared they were secure and happy in their dear old city But gradually their tone changed, and they did not refuse to receive, through blockade-runners, a variety of necessary articles from their abolition sisters As their slaves deserted them, and one piece of property after another lost its value or was destroyed, they saw poverty staring them in the face; but their pride sustained them, and it was not until they had lived for nearly a year on little else but hominy and water that they allowed their sisters to know of their condition But in inforness to die ”for slavery and the Confederacy”
”Blind to the truth,” writes Sarah, ”they religiously believe that slavery is a divine institution, and say they hope never to be guilty of disbelieving the Bible, and thus rendering thelad,” she adds, ”to have this lesson of honest blindness It showsa false God of their own creation”
Of course relief was sent to these unhappy women as soon as possible; and when hostilities ceased, more than two hundred dollars' worth of necessaries of every kind was despatched to theent invitation to come and accept a home at the North Some time before this, however, the Welds had htfully located, owning their house, and surrounded by kind and congenial neighbors But much as they all needed entire rest, and well as they had earned it, they could not afford to be idle Sarah becaer, while Mr and Mrs Weld accepted positions, in Dr Dio Lewis's faed to leave home every Monday and return on Friday
The Charleston sisters refused for soiven theoaded by necessity, they finally consented They made their preparations to leave Charleston; but in the midst of them, the older sister, Mary, who had been very feeble for some time, was taken suddenly ill, and died Eliza, then, a most sad and desolate woe to New York alone There Sarah met her, and accompanied her to Hyde Park, where she was received with every consideration affection could devise She seems to have soon made up her mind to make the best of her altered circuratitude to those who had so readily overlooked her past abuse of them Sarah writes of her in 1866:--
”My sister Eliza is well and so cheerful She is a sunbeam in the family, but the failure of the Confederacy and the triu crushed the right”
This sister was tenderly cared for until arrangements were made for her return to Charleston with Mrs Frost There she died in 1867 This was only one of the ht about by the Nemesis of the civil war Sarah overnment taxes at Beaufort, SC, was made from the verandah of the Edmond Rhett House, where, more than ten years before, the rebellion was concocted by the veryunder the hammer And the chairman of the tax committee was Dr Wm H Brisbane, who, twenty-five years before, was driven from the State because he would liberate his slaves
Quietly settled in what she felt was a permanent home, and with, no cares outside of her fae her taste for scribbling, as she called it She sent, from time to time, articles to the New York _Tribune_, the _Independent_, the _Woman's Journal_, and other papers, all or She also translated from the French several stories illustrative of various social refor then seventy-five years old, she ed translation of Laraphy of Joan of Arc This was Sarah's reat enthusiasm ”Sometimes,” she writes, ”it seems to infuse into my soul a mite of that divinity which filled hers Joan of Arc stands pre-eminent in my mind above all other mortals save the Christ”
When the book was finished, Sarah was et it published, ”in order,” she writes, ”to revive the memory in this country of the extraordinary woe, fortitude, and love rarely equalled and never excelled”
But she haddeiven up the project, when a gentlees of the narrative He was so much pleased with it that he undertook to have it published It was brought out in a feeeks by Adams & Co, of Boston, in a prettily bound volue sale
Several long and many short notices of it appeared in papers all over the country, all highly complimentary to the venerable translator