Reminiscences, 1819-1899

by Julia Ward Howe

In years that followed I gave what I could to the cause, but all that I gave was repaid to me a thousandfold. I had always had to do with women of character and intelligence, but I found in my new friends a clearness of insight, a strength and steadfastness of purpose, which enabled them to take a position of command, in view of the questions of the hour.

Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A. Livermore,—all these things combined to give to our platform a novel and sustained attraction. Noble men, aye, the noblest, stood with us in our endeavor,—some, like Senator Hoar and George S. Hale, to explain and illustrate the logical sequence which should lead to the recognition of our citizenship; others, like Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, and Henry Ward Beecher, able to overwhelm the crumbling defenses of the old order with the storm and flash of their eloquence.

We acted, one and all, under the powerful stimulus of hope. The object which we labored to accomplish was so legitimate and rational, so directly in the line of our religious belief, of our political institutions, that it appeared as if we had only to unfold our new banner, bright with the blazon of applied Christianity, and march on to victory. The black man had received the vote. Should the white woman be less considered than he?

During the recent war the women of our country had been as ministering angels to our armies, forsaking homes of ease and luxury to bring succor and comfort to the camp-hospital and battlefield. Those who tarried at home had labored incessantly to supply the needs of those at the front. Should they not be counted among the citizens of the great Republic? Moreover, we women had year after year worked to build, maintain, and fill the churches throughout the land with a patient industry akin to that of coral insects. Surely we should be invited to pass in with our brothers to the larger liberty now shown to be our just due.

We often spoke in country towns, where our morning meetings could be but poorly attended, for the reason that the women of the place were busy with the preparation of the noonday meal. Our evening sessions in such places were precious to school-teachers and factory hands.

Ministers opened to us their churches, and the women of their congregations worked together to provide for us places of refreshment and repose. We met the real people face to face and hand to hand. It was a period of awakened thought, of quickened and enlarged sympathy.

I recall with pleasure two campaigns which we made in Vermont, where the theme of woman suffrage was quite new to the public mind. I started on one of these journeys with Mr. Garrison, and enjoyed with him the great beauty of the winter landscape in that most lovely State. The evergreen forests through which we passed were hung with icicles, which glittered like diamonds in the bright winter sun. Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, and Mrs. Livermore had preceded us, and when we reached the place of destination we found everything in readiness for our meeting. At one town in Vermont some opposition to our coming had been manifested beforehand. We found, on arriving, that the chairman of our committee of arrangements had left town suddenly as if unwilling to befriend us. A vulgar and silly ballad had been printed and circulated, in which we three ladies were spoken of as three old crows. The prospect for the evening was not encouraging. We deliberated for a moment in the anteroom of our hall. I said, "Let me come first in the order of exercises, as I read from a manuscript, and shall not be disconcerted even if they throw chairs at us." As we entered some noise was heard from the gallery. Mr. Garrison came forward and asked whether we were to be given a hearing or not. Instantly a group of small boys were ejected from their seats by some one in authority. Mrs. Livermore now stepped to the front and looked the audience through and through. Silence prevailed, and she was heard as usual with repeated applause. I read my paper without interruption. The honors of the evening belonged to us.

I remember another journey, a nocturnal one, which I undertook alone, in order to join the friends mentioned above at a suffrage meeting somewhere in New England. As I emerged from the Pullman in the cold twilight of an early winter morning, carrying a heavy bag, and feeling friendless and forlorn, I met Mrs. Livermore, who had made the journey in another car. At sight of her I cried, "Oh, you dear big Livermore!" Moved by this appeal, she at once took me under her protection, ordered a hotel porter to relieve me of my bag, and saw me comfortably housed and provided for. It was fortunate for us that the time of our deliverance appeared to us so near, as fortunate perhaps as the misinterpretation which led the early Christians to look daily for the reappearing on earth of their Master.

Among my most valued recollections are those of the many legislative hearings in which I have had the privilege of taking part, and which cover a period of more than twenty years. Mr. Garrison, Lucy Stone, and Mr. Blackwell long continued to be our most prominent advocates, supported at times by Colonel Higginson, Wendell Phillips, and James Freeman Clarke. Mrs. Livermore was with us whenever her numerous lecture engagements allowed her to be present. Mrs. Cheney, Judge Sewall, and several lawyers of our own sex gave us valuable aid. These hearings were mostly held in the well-known Green Room of the Boston State House, but a gradual crescendo of interest sometimes led us to ask for the use of Representatives' Hall, which was often crowded with the friends and opponents of our cause. Among the remonstrants who spoke at these hearings occasionally appeared some illiterate woman, attracted by the opportunity of making a public appearance. I remember one of these who, after asking to be heard, began to read from an elaborate manuscript which had evidently been written for her. After repeatedly substituting the word "communionism" for "communism," she abandoned the text and began to abuse the suffragists in language with which she was more familiar. When she had finished her diatribe the chairman of the legislative committee said to our chairman, Mr. Blackwell, "A list of questions has been handed to me which the petitioners for woman suffrage are requested to answer. The first on the list is the following:—

"If the suffrage should be granted to women, would not the ignorant and degraded ones hasten to crowd the polls while those of the better sort would stay away from them?"