Turn we now to Lucretia Mott, one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived in America. Born in Nantucket in 1793, the daughter of a sea-captain named Thomas Coffin, she was raised in the strict Quaker faith, to which her parents belonged. She began teaching while still a girl, and at the age of eighteen, married a fellow teacher, James Mott. It was not long after that, that she developed the "gift" of speaking at the Quaker meetings, simply, earnestly and eloquently. The Quakers had always opposed slavery and Lucretia Mott was soon working heart and soul against it. When the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in 1833, she was one of four women who joined it, and she proceeded immediately to organize the Female Anti-Slavery Society, the first organization of women in America working for a political purpose. Years of abuse followed, for in those days anti-slavery lecturers were tarred and feathered, their homes burned, and many other indignities heaped upon them. Throughout all this, Mrs. Mott never lost her serenity, and never suffered bodily injury. On one occasion, the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, in New York, was broken up by a mob, and some of the speakers were roughly handled. Perceiving that some of the women were badly frightened, Mrs. Mott asked her escort to look after them.
"But who will take care of you?" he asked.
"This man will," she said, and smilingly laid her hand upon the arm of one of the leaders of the mob. "He will see me safe through."
The rioter stared down at her for a moment, his conflicting thoughts betraying themselves upon his countenance, then his better nature triumphed and he led her respectfully to a place of safety.
She seems to have possessed the power of charming any audience, and carried her anti-slavery campaign even into Kentucky, where she commanded respectful attention. She was one of the first to take up the question of woman suffrage, and in 1848, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a few others, called the first Woman's Suffrage 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 from the hearts of men. The insane were regarded with fear and loathing, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that such men as Dr. Channing began to insist on the presence in human nature, even in its most degraded condition, of grains of good.
It was from Dr. Channing 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 master the whole question of insanity, its origin, its development, and its treatment, so far as it was then known. Enlisting the aid of a number of broad-minded men, among them Charles Sumner, she went to work. In one prison, she found two insane women, each confined in a small cage of planks; others were locked in closets, cellars, and stalls; some of them were naked, some were chained, some were regularly beaten and scourged. With all her data at hand, she addressed a memorial to the Massachusetts legislature, setting forth, in page after page, the details of these almost incredible horrors, which she herself had witnessed.
It exploded like a bombshell, for it was a terrific arraignment of the whole state. Her statements were denounced as untrue and slanderous, but a little investigation proved their truth, and with such men behind her as Channing, Horace Mann, and Samuel G. Howe, it was soon apparent that something 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 made by the legislature to provide proper quarters and proper treatment for insane persons. So Miss Dix won her first great victory, the forerunner of similar ones in almost every state in the union; for she travelled from state to state making the same investigations she had in Massachusetts, arousing public opinion, and compelling legislature after legislature to make adequate provision for the insane. The vastness of this campaign 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 appointment and assignment. 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.