Half a Century

Those soft pink circles which fell upon my face and hands, caught in my hair, danced around my feet, and frolicked over the billowy waves of bright, green grass--did I know they...

My parents were members of the Covenanter Congregation, of which Dr. John Black was pastor for forty-five years. He was a man of power, a profound logician, with great facility...

In the city we went regularly to meeting, and Dr. Black seemed always to talk to _me_, and I had no more difficulty in understanding his sermons, than in mastering the details o...

During my childhood there were no public schools in Pennsylvania. The State was pretty well supplied with colleges for boys, while girls were permitted to go to subscription sch...

Measured by the calendar, my boarding-school life was six weeks; but measured by its pleasant memories, it was as many years. Mother wrote for me to come home; and in going I sa...

In the year 1800, the Covenanter church of this country said in her synod: "Slavery and Christianity are incompatible," and never relaxed her discipline which forbade fellowship...

Quiltings furnished the principal amusement, and at these I was in requisition, both for my expertness with the needle, and my skill in laying out work; but as I had no brother...

During all my girlhood I saw no pictures, no art gallery, no studio, but had learned to feel great contempt for my own efforts at picture-making. A traveling artist stopped in W...

On the 6th of June, 1838, the white frost lay on the west side of Pittsburg roofs as we steamed away from her wharf, bound for Louisville, where my husband proposed going into a...

To a white woman in Louisville, work was a dire disgrace, and one Sabbath four of us sat suffering from thirst, with the pump across the street, when I learned that for me to go...

During the late spring and early summer, my letters from home spoke often of mother's failing health, and in July one came from her saying her disease had been pronounced cancer...

Mother was suffering when I reached her, as I had not dreamed of. After a consultation, Drs. Gazzam and Fahnestock thought she could not live more than four weeks; but Spear sai...

Mother's will left everything to trustees, for the use of Elizabeth and myself. She had wished my husband to join her in a suit for the recovery of father's city property, and h...

In April, 1842, my husband took possession of the old home in the valley, and we went there to live. There were large possibilities in the old house, and we soon had a pleasant...

Pennsylvania customs made it unmanly for a man or boy to aid any woman, even mother or wife, in any hard work with which farms abounded at that time. Dairy work, candle and saus...

The plans for my conversion seemed to be aided by our coming to the farm, as I fitted up the "prophet's chamber" to entertain my husband's friends in his house. There were two p...

It was the third morning after my return, that my head would not leave the pillow. Dr. Carothers came and blistered me from head to feet, and for three weeks I saw no one but my...

James G. Birney was the presidential candidate of the "Liberty Party" in 1844, as he had been in '40. During the campaign I wrote under my initials for _The Spirit of Liberty_,...

Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus, as a part of his training for that "good fight" with principalities and powers and iniquity in high places, and I think that Tom and the bear...

After mother's death, I prosecuted to a successful issue a suit for the recovery of the house in which I was born. It stood on Water street, near Market, and our lawyer, Walter...

After the war, abolitionists began to gather their scattered forces and wanted a Liberty Party organ. To meet this want, Charles P. Shiras started the _Albatross_ in the fall of...

While preparing matter for the first number of the _Visiter_, I had time to think that so far as any organization was concerned, I stood alone. I could not work with Garrison on...

In the autumn of 1847, Dr. Robert Mitchell, of Indiana, Pa., was tried in Pittsburg, in the United States Court, before Judge Grier, for the crime of harboring fugitive slaves....

While the bench and bar were thus demanding the attention of the _Visiter_, the pulpit was examining its morals with a microscope, and defending the sum of all villainies as a B...

The Free Soil or Barnburner party was organized in '48, and nominated Martin Van Buren for President. The _Visiter_ dropped its Birney flag and raised the Van Buren standard. In...

When slavery thought to reap the fruits of the war into which she had plunged the nation with Mexico, lo! there was a lion in her path, and not a Bunyan lion either, for this ki...

Darkest of the dark omens for the slave, in that dark day, was the defalcation of Daniel Webster. He whose eloquence had secured in name the great Northwest to freedom, and who...

When it became certain that the Fugitive Slave Bill could pass Congress, but could not command a two-thirds vote to carry it over the assured veto of President Taylor, he ate a...

The appearance of _The Visiter_ was the signal for an outbreak, for which I was wholly unprepared, and one which proved the existence of an eating cancer of discontent in the bo...

The period of the _Visiter_ was one of great mental activity--a period of hobbies--and it, having assumed the reform roll, was expected to assume all the reforms. Turkish trowse...

When the _Visiter_ entered life, it was still doubtful which side of the slavery question the Roman church would take. O'Connell was in the zenith of his power and popularity, w...

When the Pittsburg National Convention, which formed the Free Democratic party, had finished its labors, a committee waited on the _Visiter_, to bespeak that support which had a...

The Republican party was organized in Pittsburg, and when it became national through the Philadelphia convention in the summer of '56, and nominated Fremont, it seemed that it m...

The _Pittsburg Saturday Visiter_ began life with two subscribers, and in the second year reached six thousand, but was always a heavy drain on my income. My domestic duties made...

It was midnight before we reached East St. Cloud, and the ferry-boat had stopped running, so that it was a bright morning the 7th of June when I found myself in half a dozen pai...

Every day, from my arrival in St. Cloud, evidence had been accumulating of the truth of that stage-whisper about Gen. Lowrie, who lived in a semi-barbaric splendor, in an imposi...

George Brott was proprietor of lower St. Cloud and had started a paper, _The Advertiser_, to invite immigration. There were two practical printers in town, both property-owners,...

"Let her alone, for God's sake! Let her alone, or she will kill you. I know her, and you do not. She has killed every man she ever touched. Let her alone!"

At length the time had come when I could no longer skulk behind a printing press. That bulwark had been torn down, and now I must literally open my mouth for the dumb, or be one...

The day after the Stearns House meeting, I was thought to be dying. All that medical skill and loving hands could do was done to draw me from the dark valley into which I seemed...

When _The St. Cloud Democrat_ began its career as the organ of the Republican party in Northern Minnesota, the central and southern portions of the State were fairly supplied wi...

The _St. Cloud Democrat_ found in orthodoxy a foe almost as powerful and persistent as slavery itself. In a local controversy about dancing, I recommended that amusement as the...

The culture which the pale faces introduced into that land of the Dakotas was sometimes curious. The first sermon I heard there was preached in Rockville--a town-site on the Sau...

The printer's case used to be one of the highways to editorial and congressional honors; but the little fellows of the craft invented a machine which goes over it like a "header...

When, after Mr. Lincoln's election, the South made the North understand that her threats of disunion meant something more than "tin kettle thunder," there was little spirit of c...

My first public speech was the revelation of a talent hidden in a napkin, and I set about putting it to usury. I wrote a lecture--"Women and Politics"--as a reason for my anomal...

In my first lecturing winter I spoke in the Hall of Representatives, St. Paul, to a large audience, and succeeded past all my hopes. I spoke there again in the winter of '61 and...

Before going to Minnesota, I had the common Cooper idea of the dignity and glory of the noble red man of the forest; and was especially impressed by his unexampled faithfulness...

The Indians had been ugly from the first outbreak of the Rebellion, and Commissioner Dole, with Senator Wilkinson, had come out to pacify them. The party passed through St. Clou...

Soon after the people had returned to such homes as were left them, I received a letter from General Lowrie, who was then in an insane asylum in Cincinnati. I caught his humor a...

I had not thought, even after deciding to remain in Washington, of doing any hospital work--knew nothing about it; and in strength was more like a patient than a nurse; but whil...

That morning I wrote to the New York _Tribune,_ relating the incident of the man asking for cooling drinks, and saying that if people furnished the material, I would devote my t...

About nine o'clock I returned to the man I had come to help, and found that he still slept. I hoped he might rouse and have some further message for his wife, before death had f...

Rules required me to leave Campbell at five o'clock, but the sun was going down, and I lay on a cot, in the bad ward, feeling that going home, or anywhere else, was impossible,...

Nothing was more needed in the bad ward, than an antidote for homesickness, and, to furnish this, I used my talking talent to the utmost, but no subject was so interesting as my...

The second or third day of my hospital work, Mrs. Gaylord, the Chaplain's wife, came and inquired to what order I belonged, saying that the officers of the hospital were anxious...

In that sad ward one superior, intelligent young man, who was thought to be doing well, suddenly burst an artery, and ropes were put up to warn visitors and others not to come i...

In the wilderness of work I must choose, and began to select men who had been given up by the surgeons, and whom I thought might be saved by special care. Surgeon Kelly soon ent...

The other ward in which I was not welcome, adjoined that one in which my room was situated, and to reach it I must go out of doors or pass through one-half the length of that wa...

In making molds and rests for mangled limbs, I had large demands for little cushions, and without economy could not get enough. When one just fitted a place I wanted to keep it,...

About ten days after I went to Campbell, I was called at midnight to a death-bed. It was a case of flesh-wound in the thigh, and the whole limb was swollen almost to bursting, s...

I had searched for Minnesota men in Campbell, found none, and had been there a week, when Mrs. Kelsey told me there was one in ward ten, credited to a Wisconsin regiment; and fr...

James Bride, who drew me to Campbell, by asking for "something to quench thirst," was one of the thousands who died of flesh-wounds, for want of surgical trap doors, through whi...

Looking down the long vista of memory, to the many faces turned to me from beds of pain, I find few to which I can attach a name, and one I seem never to have looked upon but on...

When released from the hospital, I had neither money nor clothes, and this is all the account I can render to the generous people who sent me hospital stores. I could not answer...

For several days the air had shuddered with accounts of the terrible suffering of our men, wounded in the battle of the Wilderness; and a pall of uncertainty and gloom hung over...

This building was on Princess Ann street. The basement floor was level with the sidewalk, but the ground sloped upward at the back; so that the yard was higher than the floor. A...

On Monday morning I sent for Dr. Porter, and stated the trouble about nurses shirking. He had them all summoned in the front end of the large room, and in presence of the patien...

The second morning of my work in the old theater, Miss Hancock came to see how I got along. She was thoroughly practical, and a most efficient laborer in the hospital field, and...

In Washington, I had done nothing for any wounded officer, except a captain who was brought to our ward when all the others were taken away, and in Fredericksburg I began on tha...

The Sanitary Commission soon got a supply of clothing, and sent two men to wash and dress my patients. These, with the one sweeping floors with branches, were an incalculable he...

One day at noon, the air thrilled with martial music and the earth shook under the tramp of men as seven thousand splendid troops marched up Princess Ann street on their way to...

The next evening, after hearing of the battle of Spottsylvania, and while waiting to know if it had been renewed, I sat after sundown on the door-step of our quarters, when an o...

I do not know how long I was in charge of the old theater, but remember talking to some one of having been there ten days, and things looking as usual. It was after the change o...

Next morning a new surgeon took charge, and ordered that hay to be removed. The men clung to their beds and sent for me; I plead a respite, in hopes of getting muslin to make ti...

I cannot remember if our boat lay at the Fredericksburg wharf one day or two; but she might start any moment, and those who went ashore took the risk of being left, as this was...

After two days in bed at home, I was so much better, that when Mrs. Ingersol came with a plan for organizing a society to furnish the army with female nurses, I went to see Mrs....

To show the capabilities of some of the women who thought they had a mission for saving the country by acting as hospital nurses, I give the history of one.

"Oh, no! but the last time you saw me, you cut off my beard with your scissors and fed me with a teaspoon. When you left me you did not think you would ever see me again."

When Early appeared before Washington, we all knew there was nothing to prevent his coming in and taking possession. The forts were stripped. There were no soldiers either in or...