Her connection with certain political transactions exposed her for a time to much censure and mortification. But there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of her declarations with regard to the motives that influenced her conduct. Many of her unobtrusive charities testify to her sympathy with her suffering countrymen. She not only visited the cottages in her neighborhood with supplies of clothing, provisions, or medicines for the inmates, but while General Howe had possession of Philadelphia, she sent a quantity of linen into the city, spun with her own hands, and directed it to be made into shirts for the benefit of the American prisoners taken at the battle of Germantown.
Another instance of her benevolence is characteristic. On hearing, in one of her visits to the city, that a merchant had become reduced, and having been imprisoned for debt, was suffering from want of the comforts of life, she sent him a bed, and afterwards visited him in prison, and put twenty dollars into his hands. She refused to inform him who was his benefactor; but it was discovered by his description of her person and dress. At this time her annual income, it is said, was reduced to a very limited sum. Many other secret acts of charity, performed at the expense of her personal and habitual comforts were remembered by her friends, and many instances of her sensibility and tender sympathy with all who suffered.
Her husband being engaged in the British service, she was favored by the loyalists, while treated with respect at the same time by the other party as an American lady who occupied a high social position. *
* The reader is referred to the Life and Correspondence of President Reed, by his grandson, William B. Reed. Vol. i., 381. Mrs. Ferguson's letters are there quoted, with her narrative, at length.
It was natural that she should be in some measure influenced by attachment to the old order of things, and respect for the civil institutions she had been accustomed to venerate; while her desire for the good of her countrymen led to ardent wishes that the desolations and miseries she witnessed might cease. It is said she often wept over newspapers containing details of suffering. The sensibility that could not bear to look on the woes even of the brute creation, must have been severely tried by the daily horrors of civil war. It is not surprising, therefore, that she should be eager to seize any opportunity that offered, of being instrumental in ending them.
Immediately after the British took possession of Philadelphia, Mrs. Ferguson was the bearer of a letter from the Rev. Mr. Duché to General Washington, which greatly displeased him, causing him to express to her his disapprobation of the intercourse she seemed to have held with the writer, and his expectation that it should be discontinued. At a later period she came again to Philadelphia, under a pass granted her by the Commander-in-chief, for the purpose of taking leave of her husband. She was at the house of her friend Charles Stedman, which chanced to be the place appointed for the residence of Governor Johnstone, one of the commissioners sent under parliamentary authority to settle the differences between Great Britain and America. She was in company with him three times; the conversation being general on the first two occasions. His declarations, she says, were so warm in favor of American interests, that she looked upon him as really a friend to her country. He wished, since he could not himself be permitted to pass the lines, to find some person who would step forward and act a mediatorial part, by suggesting something to stop the effusion of blood likely to ensue if the war were carried on. Mrs. Ferguson said repeatedly, that she believed the sentiment of the people to be in favor of Independence. "I am certain," were her words in the last conversation on the subject—"that nothing short of Independence will be accepted." Yet it does not appear that her own views were averse to a re-union of the two countries.
Governor Johnstone then expressed a particular anxiety for the influence of General Reed; and requested Mrs. Ferguson, "if she should see him," to convey the idea, that provided he could, "com-formably to his conscience and views of things," exert his influence to settle the dispute, "he might command ten thousand guineas, and the best post in the government." In reply to Mrs. Ferguson's question, if Mr. Reed would not look upon such a mode of obtaining his influence as a bribe, Johnstone immediately disclaimed any such idea; said such a method of proceeding was common in all negotiations; and that one might honorably make it a man's interest to step forth in such a cause. She on her part expressed her conviction that if Mr. Reed thought it right to give up the point of Independence, he would say so without fee or reward; and if he were of a different opinion, no pecuniary emolument would lead him to give a contrary vote. Mr. Johnstone did not see the matter in this light.
A day or two after this communication was suggested, Mrs. Ferguson sent by a confidential messenger a note to General Reed, at head-quarters, requesting an hour's conversation previous to her going to Lancaster on business, and desiring him to fix a place where she could meet him without the necessity of passing through the camp. She stated that the business on which she wished to confer with him could not be committed to writing.
The note was received on the 21st of June, after General Reed's arrival in the city, which had been evacuated three days before by the British. He sent word by the bearer that he would wait upon Mrs. Ferguson the same evening. At this interview, the conversation treating of Governor Johnstone's desire of settling matters upon an amicable footing, and his favorable sentiments towards Mr. Reed, General Reed mentioned that he had received a letter from him at Valley Forge. Mrs. Ferguson then repeated, in all its particulars, the conversation that had passed at the house of Mr. Stedman. Her repetition of the proposition of Governor Johnstone brought from General Reed the prompt and noble reply: "I AM NOT WORTH PURCHASING; BUT SUCH AS I AM, THE KING OF GREAT BRITAIN IS NOT RICH ENOUGH TO DO IT."
General Reed laid before Congress both the written and verbal communications of Governor Johnstone; withholding, however, the name of the lady, from motives of delicacy, and reluctance to draw down popular indignation upon her. An account of the transaction was also published in the papers of the day. It was useless to attempt concealment of her name; suspicion was at once directed to her; and her name was called for by a resolution of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania. *