Part 13

“MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just found your card of Christmas and New Year’s greeting of 1898 and 1899--among _autograph letters_--a huge pile of them--that I have undertaken to demolish this beautiful July Sunday morning. How your card found its way into the pile is past my knowledge, for I am sure the rest of the envelopes are not farther back than six weeks. It seems but a very short time since I made a general clearing up and out of a similar pile.

“Do you remember how Henry Ward Beecher used to say he enjoyed writing his name for the boys and girls? Well, how few there are left of the pioneers in either anti-slavery or woman’s rights. I feel almost like a _Spared Monument_ of both crusades.

“I hope you are well and that all is well with you.

“Very sincerely yours, “SUSAN B. ANTHONY, “July 22, 1900. “Rochester, N. Y.”

* * * * *

Julia Ward Howe comes from a long line of Puritan ancestry. She was an ardent worker in the anti-slavery cause. In 1856-57 she and her husband, Dr. Howe, edited an anti-slavery paper, _The Boston Commonwealth_, and were leaders with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson, and Theodore Parker. It was Dr. and Mrs. Howe who brought about meetings in Boston for the discussion of the problems of the Abolitionists on one side and pro-slavery advocates on the other. Robert Toombs of Georgia, who boasted that he would hold his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument, and Colonel Sam Houston of Texas, took part. “I remember,” said Mrs. Howe, “we had lively times.”

All through the Kansas Free State struggle and the startling raid at Harper’s Ferry, in which the Doctor’s name was closely connected with that of “Old John Brown,” Mrs. Howe was the unflinching helpmate of the brave philanthropist and scholar with whose name her own is interwoven.

In 1861 Mrs. Howe wrote the “Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” She gave me the manuscript, which I have yet, and she told me how she came to write it.

“Late in the autumn of 1861, I visited the capital with a party of friends, among whom were Governor and Mrs. Andrew, Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Whipple, and my pastor, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. One day we drove out to a review of troops some distance from the city. The day was fine and everything passed off well; but a _sudden surprise_ on the part of _the enemy_ interrupted the proceedings before they were well begun. A small body of our men had been surrounded and cut off from their companions; reinforcements were sent to their assistance, and the expected pageant was necessarily given up. We turned our horses’ heads homeward. For a long distance the foot soldiers filled the road. They were before us and behind us, and we were obliged to drive very slowly. We presently began to sing some of the well-known songs of the war, and among them, ‘John Brown’s Body Lies a-Mouldering in the Grave.’ This seemed to please the soldiers, who cried, ‘Good for you!’ and they themselves took up the strain. Mr. Clarke said to me, ‘You ought to write some new words to that tune.’

“I replied that I had often wished to do so.

“In spite of the excitement of the day, I went to bed and slept as usual, but awoke next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and, to my astonishment, found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I hastily rose, saying to myself, ‘I shall lose this if I don’t write it down.’ Immediately I searched for a sheet of paper and an old stump of a pen that I had had the night before, and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking. Having completed that, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not without feeling that something of importance had happened to me.”

The poem was written at Willard’s Hotel, and, set to music, was sung by every soldier in our army.

She has spoken to French scholars and wits in their own tongue and chief city. In Florence and Rome she has spoken to Italian audiences, having in Rome, during her last visit, also read two sermons to liberal congregations. She is a person of great wit, as well as learning, being as a speaker essentially and intellectually womanly; but she can startle her audience even now by some unexpected and spirited outburst of opinion that justifies her high reputation as a poet and her noble record as a brave, clear thinker. Her intellectual activity is unremittent. She could always have more engagements than she desires, and, as a marked favorite, is still in request.

Mrs. Howe is the aunt of Marion F. Crawford, the sister of a famous banker, wit, and bon vivant; the mother, too, of a brilliant daughter who has also made her own place before the public.

She is past eighty years of age, and yet, if I said to her, “Mrs. Howe, I have an engagement for you to speak in Omaha next Monday night,” she would be there.

She is a great traveller and a great woman, and still available for the lyceum.

Mrs. Howe has devoted her life untiringly to everything that elevates humanity. For thirty years she has been lecturing in all parts of the United States, and has always shown, herself the elegant, well-bred, highly educated woman.

At the tenth annual reunion of the Medal of Honor Legion of the United States, held in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Tuesday evening, September 11, 1900, Mrs. Howe was present and received such a welcome as she will probably never forget. Despite the fact that the temperature ranged away up into the nineties the great auditorium was crowded. Over every available space in the entire building were draped American flags whose folds across the front of the boxes and across the proscenium were held in place by golden eagles with outstretched wings. On the speaker’s desk was an immense bouquet of lilies, which was presented to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe after the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had been sung.

The members of the Legion, numbering over two hundred, occupied seats on the front of the stage to the right and to the left of the speaker’s desk. Seated back of them and rising tier upon tier clear back to the wall were four hundred bright-faced young ladies, all in dainty gowns of white, who led the inspiring singing as Mrs. Howe was conducted on the arm of Col. Willis L. Ogden to the speaker’s stand from the box on the right of the stage. While the band played her hymn the great audience arose and greeted her with cheers and storms of applause that were long continued.

After the singing of the hymn and after Mrs. Howe had taken her seat at the front of the stage, Mr. James McKean, in a few eloquent words, presented her the massive bouquet of lilies. He said:

“Mr. Chairman, after the inspiring words of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ any words from, me must, indeed, seem trivial and inopportune; but the committee in charge of this reception request me in their behalf, and on behalf of this great audience, and on behalf of our distinguished guests on this occasion, to express the infinite pleasure given us that we have here present that lady who was inspired to write this noble hymn to the tune of which the armies of the Republic have marched in the past and will march forever to victory and success.

“Some of us can recall the first appearance of this magnificent hymn and have participated in that discussion of the line, ‘In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea.’ There was a contention on the one side that reference was had to the Mayflower, which carried the spirit of Christianity across the ocean and planted on our shores the institutions of liberty and glory. I suppose the true interpretation was the great hymnology of Bethlehem, the meaning of the place where ‘Christ was born across the sea.’ Whether it have one meaning or the other, we feel thankful that you have woven into that beautiful hymn that reference to lilies. Perhaps that line has suggested to the committee that they ask you to receive to-night, as a very slight token of their appreciation, this bouquet of lilies. Their beauty is temporal, their fragrance is ephemeral, but be sure, in presenting them to you, it is a token of our everlasting gratitude for what you have done and an appreciation that you are able to be here to-night.”

Mrs. Howe, in a voice that was heard distinctly in every part of the great Academy of Music, replied as follows:

“My dear sir and you defenders of the country--my country--I am happy to be here to-night and in the presence of this great multitude thank you for your reception to me. When you were fighting in the field I was one of the women who at home was praying for you. We were anxious every time you entered a contest, but that dear old flag has never been dishonored. I remember going to Washington just after the war broke out and I thought, ‘What can I do?’ I had children and I was obliged to look out for my soldiers at home, but I still wondered what I could do. It was at this time that the hymn which you have sung came to me, and if it has cheered and made you happy I thank God for it. I am glad there are so many of you left and I am glad that I am here to see you.

“Some of you I know. I am now only an aged matron, but I thank God that your courage and patriotism is to be handed down to the future, and we are certain that the flag will go nowhere except on honorable errands, and when once gone it shall never be recalled. God bless you all.” (Great applause.)

Mrs. Howe was born in New York, May 27, 1819. She is therefore now in her eighty-second year.

Julia Ward Howe will be long remembered for her work for women, for literature, and in the anti-slavery cause; but she will be most loved and longest remembered for her inspiring “Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

REFRAIN.--Glory, glory, hallelujah, Glory, glory, hallelujah, Glory, glory, hallelujah, His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on.--REFRAIN.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: “As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.”--REFRAIN.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: O be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.--REFRAIN.

In the beauties of the lilies Christ was born across the sea With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.--REFRAIN.

Anna E. Dickinson, from her first appearance until she retired from the lecture field, was without question the “Queen of the Lyceum.” She made her début as a speaker early in the war. Attending a Quaker secular meeting, or a woman’s rights meeting held under Quaker auspices, when she was hardly out of short clothes, she heard a man make a bitter, sarcastic speech in opposition to granting women equal political rights.

“I got madder and madder,” said Anna, in telling the story, “and just as soon as he sat down I jumped up like a Jack-in-a-box and began to reply to his tirade. As I spoke I left the pew and walked down the aisle to where he sat, and shook my fist in his face as I continued to answer him. I had no idea of speaking at all, and was as much astonished as anybody at what I did.”

That settled it. There was no escaping her destiny after that. The speech astonished every one who heard it by its splendid rhetoric and logical force. She was invited everywhere after that. When Fort Sumter was fired on, she found her true vocation, for no one loved the Union more passionately than this young Quaker girl, and an assault upon it fired her soul with the intensest fervor. She took the stump for the Republicans in New England, and created a cyclone of patriotic enthusiasm wherever she went. The Democrats gave her the credit of changing Vermont from a Democratic to a Republican State.

She went from there to Connecticut, and was equally successful in arousing political patriotism and in urging men to volunteer. East and West, wherever she appeared in the Northern States, the same story was told. Everywhere she was recognized as an oratorical Joan of Arc.

During and after the war she lectured in regular courses, and became so popular that only Gough and Beecher rivalled her as a lyceum favorite; but it was on war topics that she was heard at her best. Then, in pleading for the Union, she spoke and looked like one inspired, and never failed to thrill and enthrall her audiences. In vituperation and denunciation she had no rival among living orators. In politics she had a “level head.” The power of her arguments was surpassed only by the force of her anathemas.

This great woman had a passion for the stage, and after having established a just claim to be regarded as one of the greatest actors in a true sense in her country’s history, she yearned to win the reputation of a great player on the mimic stage. Of course she failed. The stern and stalwart personality, the imperious individuality that made her a great factor in the history of her day, disqualified her for excellency on the stage, and not even her most devoted friends could conceal or deny the fact that she was a dead failure. “With all her skill as an orator, and with all her ability as a writer, Anna Dickinson broke down utterly when she attempted to win Thespian laurels.

Mrs. Livermore, still a favorite in her seventy-ninth year, is the most successful woman on the platform I have known. Interested actively in her husband’s pastoral and editorial work as a leading Universalist minister, Mrs. Livermore was one of the first American women to fill a pulpit or occupy an editorial position. She had given her public “testimony” against chattel slavery before her marriage, upon her return home from Virginia, where, in the early forties, she had been occupied as a governess. Her career as a lecturer, however, fairly began with the closing years of the Kansas strife and the first election of Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, I first saw Mary A. Livermore among the reporters in the Wigwam in Chicago in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was first nominated for President.

At that time she was the busiest woman in the Northwest, editing her husband’s paper, carrying on a regular correspondence for other journals, writing books and magazine articles, managing hospitals and homes, while advancing an extended temperance agitation. Withal her home was always attended to. The civil war found the largest of place for this great-brained woman. At the request of President Henry W. Bellows of the United States Sanitary Commission, she, with her friend, Miss Jane O. Hoge of Chicago, became associates in the Northwest and co-operated in all the vast labors of both sanitary and Christian commissions.

Soon after being placed in charge of the Northwestern branch of the United States Sanitary and Christian Commission, she, with a few other women, went to Washington to talk with President Lincoln.

“Can no woman go to the front?” Mrs Livermore asked.

“No civilian, either man or woman, is permitted by _law_,” said Mr. Lincoln. But the great heart of the greatest man in America was superior to the law, and he placed not a straw in their way.

Mrs. Livermore’s first broad experience of the war was after the battle of Fort Donelson. There were no hospitals for the men, and the wounded were hauled to the steamers in rough Tennessee wagons, most of them dying before they reached St. Louis. Some poor fellows were chopped out of the frozen mud where they had been lying from Saturday morning until Sunday evening.

She asked a blue-eyed lad of nineteen, with both legs and arms shattered:

“How did it happen that you were left so long?”

“Why, you see they could not stop to bother with us. _They had to take the fort._”

The Sanitary and Christian Commission expended about $50,000,000 during the war. Of this the women raised the greater portion, and Mrs. Livermore was one of the most efficient helpers in raising the money. She went among the people and solicited funds and supplies of every kind.

One night it was arranged that she should speak in Dubuque, Iowa, that the people in that State might hear direct from their soldiers at the front. When she arrived, instead of finding a few women, she found a large church packed with men and women eager to listen. The governor of the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken to a mixed assembly. It was arranged that a prominent statesman present should jot down a few facts from her lips, and then, as best he could, tell the audience the experiences of the woman who had been on the battlefields amid the wounded and dying. As they were about going on the platform, the gentleman said:

“Mrs. Livermore, I have heard you say at the front that you would give your all for the soldiers--a foot, a hand, or a voice. Now is the time to give your voice.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I will try.”

When she rose to speak, the great crowd before her seemed blurred and dark. She could not even hear her own voice, but, as she went on, the needs of the soldiers crowded upon her. She forgot all fear, and for two hours held her audience spell-bound. Men and women wept, and patriotism was rampant.

At eleven o’clock $8,000 was pledged, and then, at the suggestion of the presiding officer, they remained until one o’clock to perfect plans for a fair, from which they cleared $60,000. After this, Mrs. Livermore spoke in all the cities, helping to organize many of the more than 12,500 aid societies formed during eighteen months.

As money was more and more needed, Mrs. Livermore decided to try a Sanitary Commission Fair in Chicago, then her home. The women said, “We will raise $25,000,” but the men laughed at this as an impossibility. The farmers were visited and solicited to give vegetables and grain. Fourteen of Chicago’s largest halls were hired. The women had gone into debt $10,000, and the men of the city began to think and declare them crazy. The Board of Trade called on them and advised that the Fair be given up; the debts should be paid and the men would give the $25,000 when, in their judgment, it was needed.

The women thanked them courteously, but pushed forward in their work.

It had been arranged that the farmers should come on the opening day, in a procession, with their gifts of vegetables. Of this plan the newspapers made great sport, calling it the “potato procession.”

The day came: The school children had a holiday, the bells were rung; one hundred guns were fired, and the whole city gathered to see the “potato procession.”

Finally it arrived--great loads of cabbage and onions, and over four thousand bushels of potatoes. The wagons each bore a motto draped in black, with the words:

“WE BURIED A SON AT DONELSON,”

“OUR FATHER LIES AT STONE RIVER,”

and other similar inscriptions. The flags on the horses’ heads were bound with black. The women, who rode beside a husband or son, were dressed in deep mourning. When the procession stopped at Mrs. Livermore’s house, the jeers were over, and the dense crowd wept like children.

Six public halls were filled with things for sale, while eight were closed so that no other attraction might compete with the Fair.

Instead of $25,000, the women cleared over $100,000! Then Cincinnati followed with a Fair, making $225,000; Boston, $380,000; New York, $1,000,000; Philadelphia, $200,000 more than New York.

Mrs. Livermore had resigned all positions save the one on her husband’s paper, secured a governess for her children, and subordinated all demands upon her time to those of the Commission’s work. She organized soldiers’ aid societies; delivered public addresses to stimulate gifts of money and supplies in the principal towns and cities of the Northwest; wrote letters by hundreds personally and by amanuenses, and answered all that she received; wrote circulars, bulletins, and monthly reports; made trips to the front with sanitary stores, to the distribution of which she gave personal attention; brought back large numbers of invalid soldiers, who were discharged that they might die at home, and whom she accompanied in person or directed by proxy to their several destinations; detailed, by order of Secretary Stanton, women nurses for army hospitals, and accompanied them to their posts. In short, the story of her own and other women’s work during the war has never been told, and can never be understood save by those connected with it. Mrs. Livermore has published her reminiscences of those crucial days in a large volume, entitled “My Story of the War” (Hartford, Conn., 1888), which reached a sale of over fifty thousand copies.

Then Mrs. Livermore entered as a speaker and writer on woman’s suffrage, blazing, as she did in the Sanitary army work, a wide road and a broad place for herself, until early in the seventies she devoted herself entirely to the lecture platform.

For twenty-five years Mrs. Livermore has been the most conspicuous of women orators on the lecture platform. Hers was the first woman’s name on the list of the Redpath Bureau. She has the widest range of topics of any woman lecturer--biographical, historical, political, religious, and reformatory. She has lectured on an average of one hundred times a year in the lyceums, besides over one thousand times on temperance and a thousand times on woman’s suffrage, for she has always advocated the enfranchisement of her sex, with her other work. She has travelled more miles than any woman living. She can preach as well as lecture. I have known her to travel and lecture six nights a week, and when she returned from a long lecturing tour she would tell us of having preached twice on nearly every Sunday during her absence, besides morning addresses before schools and societies of women.

Mrs. Livermore has written a score of useful books, and edited half a dozen papers, been active politically, foremost in the social life of her home locality, taken an interest in all public affairs, political and economic, and yet has always been an ideal wife and mother. Around her are happy homes with devoted grandchildren while over fifty years of married life have knit closer the bonds of personal and spiritual life. She is an ideal American woman in all the active ways of its engrossing life.

While in Boston, January, 1900, in charge of the exhibition of Tissot’s paintings, “The Life of Christ,” and also a course of lectures by the Dean of Ely, I sent invitations to Mrs. Livermore, expressing surprise at not seeing her at either place. She wrote me:

* * * * *

“MELROSE, MASS., January 7, 1900.

“DEAR MR. POND: