Part 10 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXII.

RECEPTION OF THE VISITER.

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 the ground that the Const.i.tution was pro-slavery, for I had abandoned that in 1832, when our church split on it and I went with the New School, who held that it was then anti-slavery. The Covenanters, before it was adopted, denounced it as a ”Covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l.” I had long ago become familiar with the arguments on that side, and I concluded they were fallacious, and could not go back to them even for a welcome into the abolition ranks.

The political action wing of the anti-slavery party had given formal notice that no woman need apply for a place among them. True, there was a large minority who dissented from this action, but there was division enough, without my furnis.h.i.+ng a cause for contention. So I took pains to make it understood that I belonged to no party. I was fighting slavery on the frontier plan of Indian warfare, where every man is Captain-lieutenants, all the corporals and privates of his company. I was like the Israelites in the days when there was no king, and ”every man did that which, was right in his own eyes.”

It seemed good unto me to support James G. Birney, for President, and to promulgate the principles of the platform on which he stood in the last election. This I would do, and no man had the right or power to stop me. My paper was a six column weekly, with a small Roman letter head, my motto, ”Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward,” the names of my candidates at the head of the editorial column and the platform inserted as standing matter.

It was quite an insignificant looking sheet, but no sooner did the American eagle catch sight of it, than he swooned and fell off his perch. Democratic roosters straightened out their necks and ran screaming with terror. Whig c.o.o.ns scampered up trees and barked furiously. The world was falling and every one had ”heard it, saw it, and felt it.”

It appeared that on some inauspicious morning each one of three-fourths of the secular editors from Maine to Georgia had gone to his office suspecting nothing, when from some corner of his exchange list there sprang upon him such a horror as he had little thought to see.

A woman had started a political paper! A woman! Could he believe his eyes? A woman! Instantly he sprang to his feet and clutched his pantaloons, shouted to the a.s.sistant editor, when he, too, read and grasped frantically at his ca.s.simeres, called to the reporters and pressmen and typos and devils, who all rushed in, heard the news, seized their nether garments and joined the general chorus, ”My breeches! oh, my breeches!” Here was a woman resolved to steal their pantaloons, their trousers, and when these were gone they might cry ”Ye have taken away my G.o.ds, and what have I more?” The imminence of the peril called for prompt action, and with one accord they shouted, ”On to the breach, in defense of our breeches! Repel the invader or fill the trenches with our n.o.ble dead.”

”That woman shall not have _my_ pantaloons,” cried the editor of the big city daily; ”nor my pantaloons” said the editor of the dignified weekly; ”nor my pantaloons,” said he who issued manifestos but once a month; ”nor mine,” ”nor mine,” ”nor mine,” chimed in the small fry of the country towns.

Even the religious press could not get past the tailor shop, and ”pantaloons” was the watchword all along the line. George D. Prentiss took up the cry, and gave the world a two-third column leader on it, stating explicitly, ”She is a man all but the pantaloons.” I wrote to him asking a copy of the article, but received no answer, when I replied in rhyme to suit his case:

Perhaps you have been busy Horsewhipping Sal or Lizzie, Stealing some poor man's baby, Selling its mother, may-be.

You say--and you are witty-- That I--and, tis a pity-- Of manhood lack but dress; But you lack manliness, A body clean and new, A soul within it, too.

Nature must change her plan Ere you can be a man.

This turned the tide of battle. One editor said, ”Brother George, beware of sister Jane.” Another, ”Prentiss has found his match.” He made no reply, and it was not long until I thought the pantaloon argument was dropped forever.

There was, however, a bright side to the reception of the _Visiter_.

Horace Greeley gave it respectful recognition, so did N.P. Willis and Gen. Morris in the _Home Journal_. Henry Peterson's _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, G.o.dey's Lady's Book_, Graham's and Sargeant's magazines, and the anti-slavery papers, one and all, gave it pleasant greeting, while there were other editors who did not, in view of this innovation, forget that they were American gentlemen.

There were some saucy notices from ”John Smith,” editor of _The Great West_, a large literary sheet published in Cincinnati. After John and I had pelted each other with paragraphs, a private letter told me that she, who had then won a large reputation as John Smith, was Celia, who afterwards became my very dear friend until the end of her lovely life, and who died the widow of another dear friend, Wm. H. Burleigh.

In the second number of the _Visiter_, James H. McClelland, as secretary of the county convention, published its report and contributed an able article, thus recognizing it as the much needed county organ of the Liberty Party.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MY CROOKED TELESCOPE.

In the autumn of 1847, Dr. Robert Mitch.e.l.l, of Indiana, Pa., was tried in Pittsburg, in the United States Court, before Judge Grier, for the crime of harboring fugitive slaves. In an old cabin ten miles from Indiana, on one of the doctor's farms, some colored men had taken refuge and worked as harvest hands in the neighborhood. To it came the sheriff at midnight with a posse, and after as desperate a resistance as unarmed men could make, two were captured. On one of these was found a note:

”Kill a sheep and give Jerry the half.

ROB'T MITCh.e.l.l.”

The name of the man who had the note was Jerry. It was addressed to a farmer who kept sheep for the doctor, so it was conclusive evidence of the act charged, and the only defense possible was want of knowledge.