Such radical "reformers" as Susan B. Anthony, with her adoption of semi-masculine costume, just sufficiently masculine to render it unfeminine and nothing more, or Lucretia Mott, with her impracticable theories of "women's rights," presented in such form as to be repellent to all the better attributes of true womanhood, could win but ridicule, good-natured or acrimonious, as their portion; yet, in a sense, they were the leaders of the great movement which in altered guise was to come as a preponderant question of its day. Not in 1866, however, had that movement taken or even promised to assume any definite shape or one likely to win sufficient adherents to make it worthy of notice. As yet American womanhood was content with its sphere. It still ruled the home, and found in that rule all of "right" that it desired. It was content to send to the polls, as to the battle, its male representatives and to guide them by its influence into the paths which seemed best. It did not "lift up its voice and contend in the streets"; it was quietly strong.
The close of the Civil War, then, found the outer conditions of the American woman, speaking of them in general and not as affected by the material results of that war, just as they had been at the beginning of the strife. Society had indeed been rent into fragments; but the components of that society which had flourished four years before were unchanged in their status. Socially speaking, there had come no change to the women of America during the period of the Civil War; yet by that war and its results there had been created conditions that were to bear fruit in after days.
CHAPTER XIII
FEMININE RECONSTRUCTION
During the era which is generally known in the political history of our country as the "Reconstruction Period," there came about many and significant changes in the status and thought of the women of our land, particularly in the Southern portion thereof. It was a period of honest error on the part of those who guided the destinies of the nation, and the errors made by them, largely founded on the old base of misunderstanding of actual conditions, reacted upon the womanhood of the South and prolonged the sectional animosity which still held its place of prejudice and bitterness in our midst. Justice of judgment, as far as applied to national issues and affairs, was unknown; hence, amelioration of existent conditions, always the work of wise and tolerant public opinion, was impossible. During that period the South, and with it its women, passed through greater stress and suffering than even the days of the Civil War had brought upon it.
In the North there were no such hampering conditions to development, therefore there was progress in all social matters. Society, as generally termed, became re-formed and settled down to its old pursuits and ambitions; but there had come a great difference in its conditions. The era of centralization which had dawned with the close of the Revolution had again passed away. Never again, as far as we can see and foresee, was Washington to be the social centre of the country. The traditions of the White House had been overthrown, and the leadership of the social world was not to be looked for from that quarter as of old. For the future, the mistress of the White House might be in theory "the first lady of the land," but she was no longer to be at the head of a court or even a coterie. The social glory of Washington had departed. Society resumed its ways all over our country; but when American women were spoken of there was no longer in the mind of speaker or listener the inevitable suggestion of the social world as generally recognized. The term had emerged from its narrowness of meaning and had resumed all its old inclusiveness; North and South, East and West, it was recognized that American womanhood includes society, and not society American womanhood. And this recognition of a great truth helped the coming of a new era which was hard at hand.
Meanwhile, America was two countries, joined in a force-born alliance but with no true union, far less unity. And of all the manifestations of this deplorable fact, none was so convincing as the bearing of our womankind in their attitude toward those of the opposite section. The women of the South steadfastly refused to be "reconstructed." The same feeling was prevalent among the men of that section; but it was at its height among the women, who utterly refused to pretend to any feeling of loyalty to the Union, and, worse yet, did not affect to conceal their hatred of all things Northern. Among the evils which Reconstruction had brought in its train was the advent in the South of a type of Northern woman, entirely honest in her enthusiasm in the cause of the negro and entirely ignorant of the true methods to further that cause. She came armed with a thousand ill-founded prejudices, and she calmly proceeded to work upon the lines suggested by those prejudices, with utter disregard of the real conditions which she desired to ameliorate and with dense ignorance of the true tendencies and nature of the people, white and black, among whom she worked. Lacking the long line of racial traditions and experiences which alone could give grasp of the situation, she took council of her preconceived ideas only, and from her darkness of ignorance and prejudice believed that she could shed light into benighted souls. She was honest to a fault; but her honesty was based in the supreme folly which believes that it can better see into the nature of things than they to whom those things have been life-long conditions. Seeing her, the Southern woman naturally believed that she was a type of the womanhood of the North,--which she was not. Hearing her reports, written from a standpoint utterly fatal to their truth or even fairness, of the existent culture in the conquered country, the Northern woman believed that her accounts gave a true picture of the conditions of civilization and thought prevailing in the South,--which they did not. So increased the poison of misunderstanding in the veins of both sections.
The Southern woman was rebellious; the Northern woman was intolerant. Were the women alone to be consulted, there was small hope of ever fusing into one the severed elements which theoretically composed the nation. And yet, because of conditions arising from the deplorable state of things which then existed, the women were to become, though only gradually and not of set purpose, the dominating constituents in such fusion. The mills of the gods were grinding and the grist was to prove of sustenance to the country in unlooked-for ways. Before following to its end the movement which began in want and need, however, it may be well to cast a glance at the conditions which gave to that movement its rise and direction.
Not only had the South become deeply impoverished as a result of the long struggle and of the loss of its slaves, but it was suffering from many of the evils which the cooler heads among statesmen, North and South, had foreseen as the result of the sudden emancipation of the negroes. Moreover, there had been imported into the Southland a most undesirable element in the persons and families of those who were contemptuously termed "carpet-baggers," and these were, unhappily, in the ascendant in matters political and wished to become so in matters social. It was a time of the rule of the demos in its worst form--the demos which has broken loose from restraint and has turned upon its former masters as its natural prey. As a consequence of all these things, society as once known did not exist in the South. The social element was of course present and recognized; but it was unable to find expression in its wonted manner. The man who once had lived upon the labors of his dependents was now forced to earn his own bread, generally in scanty quantity, by his own work, manual or mental; and his wife, who had once glittered resplendent in the social circle and had found her every desire as well as need supplied almost as quickly as formed, was now compelled to assume even more than the normal duties of the typical housewife and to bend all her energies toward eking out the small subsistence which her husband was able to provide. Naturally, under such uncongenial circumstances, there was little thought of social gathering or function, except in a very few of the larger towns, which refused to abandon their ways because of poverty. Such a town was New Orleans, with its brilliant circles of Creoles. In general, however, there was no attempt to emulate the gaiety of the capital of Louisiana; the women of the South faced with courage the conditions which were imposed upon them, but they could not make merry in their sadly altered circumstances.