He died soon after, and Mrs. Gage was at once excluded from its columns, by the succeeding editors, refused payment for past labors, or a return of her manuscripts.
The Missouri Democrat soon after hoisted the flag of Emancipation under the leadership of Frank Blair. She became one of its correspondents, and for several years continued to supply its columns with an article once or twice a week. Appearing in 1858 upon the platform of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society, she was at once excluded as dangerous to the interests of the party which the paper represented.
During all the years of her life in Missouri Mrs. Gage frequently received letters threatening her with personal violence, or the destruction of her husband's property. Slaves came to her for aid, and were sent to entrap her, but she succeeded in evading all positive difficulty and trial.
During the Kansas war she labored diligently with pen, tongue, and hands, for those who so valiantly fought the oppressor in that hour of trial. She expected to be waylaid and to be made to suffer for her temerity, and perhaps she did; for about the close of that perilous year three disastrous fires, supposed to be the work of incendiaries, greatly reduced the family resources.
This portion of the life of Mrs. Gage has been dwelt upon at considerable length, because she regards the struggle then made against the wickedness, prejudice, and bigotry of mankind, as the main bravery of her life, and that if there has been heroism in any part of it, it was then displayed. "If as a woman," she says, "to take the platform amidst hissing, and scorn, and newspaper vituperations, to maintain the right of woman to the legitimate use of all the talents God invests her with; to maintain the rights of the slave in the very ears of the masters; to hurl anathemas at intemperance in the very camps of the dram-sellers; if to continue for forty years, in spite of all opposing forces, to press the triune cause persistently, consistently, and unflinchingly, entitles me to a humble place among those noble ones who have gone about doing good, you can put me in that place as it suits you."
At the breaking out of the war, by reason of her husband's failure in business at St. Louis, and his ill-health, Mrs. Gage found herself filling the post of Editor of the Home Department of an Agricultural paper in Columbus, Ohio. The call for help for the soldiers, was responded to by all loyal women. Mrs. Gage did what she could with her hands, but found them tied by unavoidable labors. She offered tongue and pen, and found them much more efficient agents. The war destroyed the circulation of the paper, and she was set free.
The cry of suffering from the Freedmen reached her, and God seemed to speak to her heart, telling her that there was her mission.
In the autumn of 1862, without appointment, or salary, with only faith in God that she should be sustained, and with a firm reliance on the invincible principles of Truth and Justice, in the hope of doing good, she left Ohio, and proceeded directly to Port Royal.
She remained among the freedmen of Beaufort, Paris, Fernandina, and other points, thirteen months; administering also to the soldiers, as often as circumstances gave opportunity. Her own four boys were in the Union army, and this, if no more, would have given every "boy in blue," a claim upon her sympathy and kindness.
In the fall of 1863, Mrs. Gage returned North, and with head and heart filled to overflowing with the claims of the great mission upon which she had entered, she commenced a lecturing tour, speaking to the people of her "experiences among the Freedmen." To show them as they were, to give a truthful portrayal of Slavery, its barbarity and heinousness, its demoralization of master and man, its incompatibility with all things beautiful or good, its defiance of God and his truth; and to show the intensely human character of the slave, who, through this fearful ordeal of two hundred years, had preserved so much goodness, patient hope, unwavering trust in Jesus, faith in God, such desire for knowledge and capability of self-support—such she felt to be her mission, and as such she performed it! She believed that by removing prejudice, and inspiring confidence in the Emancipation Proclamation, and by striving to unite the people on this great issue, she could do more than in any other way toward ending the war, and relieving the soldier—such was the aim of her lectures, while she never omitted to move the hearts of the audience toward those so nobly defending the Union and the Government.