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.

In the North the effects of the war were of course less severely felt; but still there were effects detrimental to the interests of society as generally understood. Many a home had lost its chief worker and felt the sting of poverty as a consequence. The war had cost the North great treasure of money as well as blood, and the cost, while never thought of with a pang of regret, was often present to the consciousness of the people who bore its results. There was less impulse of gaiety among all classes; there was a graver trend of thought than ever before, and there was the recognition of past peril and present loss. These changes affected the women more than the men. The latter indeed felt but little of the detrimental consequences of the war, for the most part taking up their lives where they had temporarily put them aside to spend themselves in the service of their country. The women, however, where they felt the stress at all, felt it severely. Aside from their stricken hearts, there were problems of everyday life presented to them which clamored for solution, if that life were not to be made worse than a burden. In far better case than their sisters of the South, they yet had sufficient cause for gravity of thought and call of courage. Many were the fortunes that had been made during the war by Northern men who battened upon the needs of their country; but the more diffused loss of sustenance more than overbalanced even these fortunes and swayed the scale to the side of loss instead of gain in the totality of result.

Before considering the results which accrued from these conditions, North and South, it may be interesting to turn aside for a moment to make record of one of the most picturesque figures among American womanhood of that day, even though her fame was but local. About 1815 there was born in the city of Baltimore, of Irish parentage, an infant who was named Margaret Gaffney. She married young, and in 1836 went with her husband, whose name was Haughery, to New Orleans. Left a penniless widow in less than a year, she entered into the service of the city orphan asylum as a domestic, and when the second building was erected the Sisters, finding her faithful and intelligent, placed her in charge of the large dairy which was a part of the establishment. Soon she became associated with all the labors of the Sisters and by her efforts materially contributed to free the establishment from debt. When this had been done she opened a dairy on her own account, and in 1866 added a bakery to her business. She made money with a rapidity which was accountable only by the wide celebrity which she had gained by her labors in the cause of the orphans, for she was known far and wide as "Margaret, the Orphans' Friend." She retained the simplicity of her thought and life throughout, herself driving the cart by means of which her bread and milk were distributed, and all the money that she made was contributed to the cause of the forsaken children whom she loved. She died in 1882, and to her was erected the first monument to a woman ever reared in the United States. As the first woman to be thus honored she deserves to be remembered by more than local affection; and it speaks well for our country that the pioneer shaft raised to a woman did not commemorate the triumphs of intellect or even militant bravery, but the labors and unselfishness of one who could not so much as write her name, signing with a cross the will by which she made her last gift to the orphans--Protestant as well as Catholic, for her large soul knew of them nothing but that they were in need of care--of the city of New Orleans. Even yet, in these days of rush and bustle, New Orleans has not forgotten the woman whom it knew by the simple name of "Margaret," neglecting further identification of title; for to New Orleans there was but one Margaret, and the name carried unique meaning, even as would that of a reigning queen.

To return from this substitution of the individual for the general: Reconstruction, in a political sense, was happily of brief life in the South; but Feminine Reconstruction, which had its birth in the same time as the political, was destined to prove lasting in its work and effects. There was need of complete reconstruction, of thought as well as society, if woman were not to be a clog rather than an aid to the efforts of man; for the conditions which had enabled the latter, at least in the South, to look upon woman as the companion only for his leisure had disappeared, while in both sections there were left destitute thousands of women, with mouths which must be fed, both of themselves and of little ones. Moreover, in both sections the home was no longer the inevitable and perfect refuge which it had been. Either the father, the breadwinner, had been swept away by the destroying tide of war, together with the brothers upon whom the home might still have leaned, or he was so disabled in body or purse that he could not care for those who by nature were dependent upon him. These conditions did not press so heavily upon the Northern homes, since in that section there was plenty of work for willing hands and the men had little difficulty in obtaining a sufficient living for their households; but in the South those conditions were widespread. They were imperative in their instant demands; they must be satisfied; but how?

Only one answer met the necessities of the case; the women must work. For themselves, and often for their households, they must win support; the young girls, just verging upon womanhood, must go out from the homes where they had been so carefully and tenderly nurtured and face the battle for independence. It is difficult for us in these days of broader thought to understand the horror with which the women of the South contemplated this necessity. For a woman of the "upper classes"--and it must be remembered that, in the South, there was practically no middle class at that period--to labor for money was, in the eyes of the Southern lady, reared in all the prejudices and traditions of affluence, a real degradation. For herself she might have borne it uncomplainingly, as she had borne so many other hardships; but for her daughters it was terrible in her thought. To guard them from the rough touch of the world had been one of her first duties; now she must learn to fit them, if possible, for that contact, she must send them out to fight for their hands in the strife of existence. Elder as well as younger women were thus forced to fight; but it was for the latter, not for themselves, that the elders felt the stress. They had learned in hard schools to endure; but their daughters had been shielded as well as might be even in the nearest coming of hardship and peril, and they could not bear the thought of removing from those daughters their watchful and tender care.

The younger women themselves faced the situation with more courage; but that they were daunted by the prospect cannot be denied. They were eager to contribute to the support of those who had thus far cherished them; they grudged no pain of labor to effect this end; but they recoiled from the actual going out into the world, alone and unaided, to meet its coarseness and lack of sympathy. Yet, the need once acknowledged and proved, they met it firmly. They still retained some prejudices as to the limits within which it was possible for a lady to labor and retain her claim to the title she valued; they had not at a bound attained to the independence of thought and action which is a mark of womanhood in the days in which we of the present live; but they were ready to do all that within those limits fell to their hands, if so they might relieve their parents of part of the burden which weighed so heavily upon them.

Thus, in the pangs of bitter necessity, was born among women the era of the worker. It was an era which was to last to the present and to reach into the future as far as the eye of prophecy can penetrate; but, like all infants, it was feeble at birth and even its first steps were tottering and uncertain. The beginnings of the true Feminine Reconstruction were made under stress of circumstance and not of choice; but they were none the less admirable in result, though slower in attaining thereto. This was the fruit of the Civil War, its great gift to the womanhood of our land. That fruit first blossomed in the South, since here there was the greater need; and her daughters went out from their homes into the crowded marts of business and claimed a share in the work of men. Not at first; indeed, the more radical impulse in this wise came from the North, where also conditions had changed since the first half of the century. The Southern girl saw but little proper direction for her efforts beyond the profession of education; she went out as teacher or governess, and considered that thus she had reached the uttermost bourne of possibility in this wise. But the educational circle became so thronged that on its margin, vainly endeavoring to enter, stood a countless throng of girls and women who must work or be a burden upon those they loved, if even this shameful refuge was open to them. So perforce they turned away, battling with their prejudices, to seek other employment; and when they had found it they discovered to their relief and delight that they had gained rather than lost caste in the eyes of the world, even of their own circles.

Under varying conditions but to similar purpose, there was an equal movement among Northern womanhood. Timidly at first, for they too had their prejudices to conquer, the women of the North sought to enter into the great competition for the means of existence; and, having once tasted independence, they found it sweet. There was almost the same hesitancy and the same circumscription of womanly calling in the North as in the South; but the Northern woman, with her stronger sense of independence in right-doing, sooner shook herself free from the shackles of tradition. Had there been equal need in both sections, the North would doubtless have taken and maintained the lead in the emancipation of women from the servitude of the obligations of caste as in those days held; but because of the greater incentive among the women of the South these were in the van in the new movement until that movement became so general that there was no longer front or rear thereto. That time was not long in coming; revolutionary as were its theories, the country had long unconsciously been prepared for them, and when they were set up they were almost universally acknowledged as the proper standard. There still remained some whose prejudices in this respect were irrefragable, but they gradually found themselves in a constantly weakening minority. The worker in the hive of humanity found herself not only tolerated, as she had hoped as the best possible, but honored, even more than the queen bees; she found herself, though originally forced there by circumstances, in an environment which was in all ways congenial to the best of her nature. Not a little of this result, it must be proudly admitted, was owing to the chivalry of the American man. With all respect, as all courtesy, he welcomed to participation in his pursuits the woman whom he had looked upon as by training and even nature cut off from such participation, and he gladly embraced the opportunity to prove to the women of the land that his deference for their sex was not limited to the bounds of the drawing room, but was a thing which was unlimited in application. With their contact with the world of affairs thus made easy for them by those upon whose hitherto exclusive territory they were intruding, the women of America found their new life not only tolerable but pleasant.

That "the ages call and heroes come" has risen to the dignity of an apothegm; but if "inventions" were substituted for "heroes" in the saying it would be at least as true and perhaps of more practical value and meaning. It does not appear that the typewriter has ever been mentioned as one of the determining factors of our present feminine status, but that it deserves such credit does not admit of a doubt. That invention, whose use is now so nearly universal that it is difficult to remember that it has been with us but a scant twenty years, came at the psychological moment in the history of American womanhood. It opened, as nothing else, an avenue for the direction of feminine effort in the struggle for existence; and it displayed its possibilities just at the period when the supply of women workers began far to exceed the demand. There were still recognized limitations to female effort, far straiter than those now laid down, if indeed any limitations, other than those drawn by physical conditions can be said now to exist. As formerly in educational circles, so now in those of affairs there was overcrowding among the women who sought work; and just in time to relieve the stress there was opened a new field of labor, peculiarly adapted to the feminine nature and need, in the manipulation of the novel instrument of record. Quickly was the field seized and cultivated by the eager women; and it not only was itself rich in harvest, but it led into new and hitherto uncultivated fields of effort, and from the time of the acceptance of the typewriter as a necessity of business, the position of women in the world of affairs was assured and established.

Before the nineteenth century had passed the eighth mile-stone of its existence the foundation of Feminine Reconstruction had been laid in enduring material, and each succeeding lustrum saw the edifice arise in fairer and more definite proportions. So accustomed to the new status of women did we soon become that we failed to recognize how radical was the change which had taken place in the general conception of the sphere of womanhood. The very fact that there was no definite and determined movement looking to the desired end made for success. The woman worker did not come with demand for equality of recognition, with parades and conventions and speeches; she simply entered upon the field which she desired to possess, and made it her own by right. Therefore that right was instantaneously recognized, and there was tacit acceptance, which is the most significant and enduring of all.

Meanwhile, the "reformers" among women had not been idle. In many respects true reformation had taken place: legislation had from time to time assured women of equal rights in property--in some respects had even recoiled to the opposite extreme and had given to the married woman, whose property was once entirely under the control of her husband, immunity from just responsibilities and made her lot in this respect far more enviable and secure than that of the man whose rights she shared.

Though somewhat too radical in effect, the spirit of these things was admirable, and women had cause for self-gratulation upon the success of their efforts to be safeguarded and recognized in their just claims. Had the efforts of the "reformers" stopped here there could have been but praise for their work and its aims; but this was not the case. More and more insistent became the cry for equal footing with the men in matters which were not generally deemed within the sphere of femininity. The advocates of female suffrage in particular uplifted their voices and would not cease their clamor, though disowned by a majority of their own sex. Near the beginning of the tenth decade of the century a large number of the women of Massachusetts, to show their lack of sympathy with the radicals, even formed themselves into a "Ladies' Anti-Suffrage League." Yet even this open enmity to their cherished schemes among those who were most concerned did not deter the "reformers." In 1884, when political excitement reached its post-bellum height, Mrs. Belva Lockwood, a female practitioner of law in Washington, actually announced her candidacy for the presidential chair; and though she did not ultimately go to the poll, she took the stump in her own behalf and in all other respects emulated the male candidates for the chief magistracy. This was the climax of feminine effort in politics and doubtless had its deterrent effect in making disciples to the theory of female suffrage.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a type of her class. Born in 181 5, and living until 1902, nearly the whole of her long life was devoted to the promulgation and attempt to establish theories of feminine equality with men in all respects of "rights." She was one of those restless spirits which find in fanaticism of some kind their needful expression, and she was never weary of the notoriety and prominence that accrued from her efforts for the "emancipation" of women. Her share in the first "Woman's Rights" convention has already been mentioned. In 1854 she addressed the New York legislature on the subject of the rights of married women, and in 1860 she again appeared in the halls of law as an advocate for divorce on the grounds of drunkenness. In 1867 she canvassed Kansas, and in 1874 Michigan, when the question of female suffrage was submitted to the decision of the people of those States. In 1868 she was actually a candidate for a seat in Congress on the platform of female suffrage, and though she failed in gaining a place in the legislature of the nation she subsequently appeared many times before that legislature, or committees thereof, in behalf of her cherished theory. These efforts, together with her incumbency of numerous presidencies in societies and leagues in sympathy with her purposes, made up the sum of her existence. Personally she was a woman of many attractions of mind and bearing; but her fanaticism in the fancied cause of those who repudiated, in their vast majority, her theories and aims made her the type of the restless and radical "reformer."

Yet the efforts of the would-be female reformers, however, misdirected in their immediate aims, did good in rousing the women of America to a consideration of their place in the polity, at least in social matters, of the commonwealth. They might not care to go to the polls and struggle with the men in an endeavor openly to rule the destinies of the nation; but they awoke to a more intelligent interest than they had yet displayed in the theories of government and the social questions of the day. Many of the chief reforms in these matters which have come about during late years have been effected by the direct influence of the women of our land, either in leagues or through recognized and accredited representatives of some accepted theories. This feminine interest in the larger affairs of the nation, rightly directed to internal rather than to external policy, has been admirable in its results, and its rise and development may in large measure be attributed to the incitement of the reform spirit in other matters. That the concerted efforts of the women of our country are invariably wisely directed and governed it were folly to claim; but the spirit is always pure and high, and the masculine framers or advocates of legislation are not of such unimpeachable wisdom that they can afford to speak in scorn of the theories or work of the other sex in this wise, while at least the motives that direct feminine influence cannot be called into question. The tendency of the sex toward extremes, and its blindness, in its sense of the desirability of its end, to the unwisdom of the means which it sometimes proposes to use, are occasionally in evidence in matters of paternal legislation, but these are but minor flaws, and are not incorrigible.

So the era of Feminine Reconstruction resulted in the working woman and the thinking woman; and on these lies much of the hope of our country's future. Thus the Civil War at the last brought us a blessing instead of a curse, and in the halls of labor American womanhood once more joined hands in amity and became a unit in its aims and influence.