Volume II Part 10 (1/2)
[30] The impeachment trial of President Johnson
[31] _Forney's Press_, in reporting a meeting at Kennett Square, said: ”Miss Anna E. d.i.c.kinson, of Philadelphia, aged seventeen years, handsome, of an expressive countenance, plainly dressed, and eloquent beyond her years, made the speech of the occasion. After the listless, monotonous harangues of the day, the distinct, earnest tones of this juvenile Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her discourse, which was frequently interrupted, Miss d.i.c.kinson maintained her presence of mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with augmented resolution and plainness. Those who did not sympathize with her remarks, provocative as they were of numerous unmanly interruptions, were softened by her simplicity and solemnity. 'We are told,' said she, 'to maintain const.i.tutions because they are const.i.tutions, and compromises because they are compromises. But what are compromises, and what is laid down in those const.i.tutions? Eminent lawyers have said that certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and that all laws of man's making which trample on these ideas, are null and void--wrong to obey; right to disobey.
The Const.i.tution of the United States recognizes human slavery, and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.'”
[32] She has always said that that was the best service the Government could have rendered her, as it forced her to the decision to labor no longer with her hands for bread, but open some new path for herself.
[33] The highest compliment that the Union men of this city could pay Miss Anna E. d.i.c.kinson, was to invite her to make the closing and most important speech in this campaign. They were willing to rest their case upon her efforts. She may go far and speak much; she will have no more flattering proof of the popular confidence in her eloquence, tact, and power, than this. Her business being to obtain votes for the right side, she addressed herself to that end with singular adaptation. But when we add to this lawyerlike comprehension of the necessities of the case, her earnestness, enthusiasm, and personal magnetism, we account for the effect she produced on that vast audience Sat.u.r.day night.
Allyn Hall was packed as it never was before. Every seat was crowded.
The aisles were full of men who stood patiently for more than three hours; the window-sills had their occupants, every foot of standing room was taken, and in the rear of the galleries men seemed to hang in swarms like bees. Such was the view from the stage. The stage itself and the boxes were filled with ladies, giving the speaker an audience of hundreds who could not see her face. Hardly a listener left the hall during her speech. Her power over that audience was marvellous.
She seemed to have that absolute mastery of it which Joan of Arc is reported to have had of the French troops. They followed her with that deep attention which is unwilling to lose a word, greeting her ever and anon with bursts of applause. The speech in itself and its effect was magnificent. The work of the campaign is done, and it only remains in the name of all loyal men in this district to express to Miss d.i.c.kinson most heartfelt thanks for her inspiring aid. She has aroused everywhere respect, enthusiasm, and devotion, not to herself alone, but to our country also. While such women are possible in the United States, there is not a spot big enough for her to stand on, that will not be fought for so long as there is a man left.--_Hartford Courant._
[34] Her profits on this occasion were about a thousand dollars.
[35] CORRESPONDENCE.
TO MISS ANNA E. d.i.c.kINSON, _Philadelphia, Pa._:
MISS d.i.c.kINSON:--Heartily appreciating the value of your services in the campaigns in New Hamps.h.i.+re, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, and the qualities that have combined to give you the deservedly high reputation you enjoy; and desiring as well to testify that appreciation, as to secure to ourselves the pleasure of hearing you, we unite in cordially inviting you to deliver an address at the capital this winter, at some time suited to your own convenience.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., _Dec. 16, 1863_.
Hannibal Hamlin, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Benjamin F. Wade, John Sherman, James Dixon, H. B. Anthony, Ira Harris, and sixteen other Senators.
Schuyler Colfax, Thaddeus Stephens, William D. Kelley, Robert C. Schenck, James A. Garfield, Henry C. Deming, R. B. Van Valkenburg, A. C. Wilder, and seventy other Representatives.
GENTLEMEN:--I thank you sincerely for the great and most unexpected honor which you have conferred upon me by your kind invitation to speak in Was.h.i.+ngton. Accepting it, I would suggest the 16th of January as the time, desiring the proceeds to be devoted to the help of the suffering freedmen.
Truly yours, ANNA E. d.i.c.kINSON.
1710 LOCUST ST., Phila., _June 7, 1864_.
[36] The _New York Evening Post_ in describing the occasion said: ”Miss d.i.c.kinson's lecture in the Hall of the House of Representatives last night was a gratifying success, and a splendid personal triumph.
She can hardly fail to regard it the most flattering ovation--for such it was--of her life. At precisely half-past seven Miss d.i.c.kinson came in, escorted by Vice-President Hamlin and Speaker Colfax. A platform had been built directly over the desk of the official reporters and in front of the clerk's desk, from which she spoke. She was greeted with loud cheers as she entered. Mr. Hamlin introduced her in a neat speech, in which he happily compared her to the Maid of Orleans. The scene was one to test severely the powers of a most accomplished orator, for the audience was not composed of the enthusiastic ma.s.ses of the people, but rather of loungers, office-holders, orators, critics, and men of the fas.h.i.+onable world. At eight o'clock Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln entered, and not even the utterance of a fervid pa.s.sage in the lecture could repress the enthusiasm of the audience. Just as the President entered the hall Miss d.i.c.kinson was criticising with some sharpness his Amnesty Proclamation and the Supreme Court; and the audience, as if feeling it to be their duty to applaud a just sentiment, even at the expense of courtesy, sustained the criticism with a round of deafening cheers. Mr. Lincoln sat meekly through it, not in the least displeased. Perhaps he knew there were sweets to come, and they did come, for Miss d.i.c.kinson soon alluded to him and his course as President, and nominated him as his own successor in 1865. The popularity of the President in Was.h.i.+ngton was duly attested by volleys of cheers. The proceeds of the lecture--over a thousand dollars--were appropriated at Miss d.i.c.kinson's request to the National Freedman's Relief Society.”
[37] James Redpath.
[38] See Appendix.
[39] When our leading journals, orators, and brave men from the battle-field, complain that Northern women feel no enthusiasm in the war, the time has come for us to pledge ourselves loyal to freedom and our country. Thus far, there has been no united expression from the women of the North as to the policy of the war. Here and there one has spoken and written n.o.bly. Many have vied with each other in acts of generosity and self-sacrifice for the sick and wounded in camp and hospital. But we have, as yet, no means of judging where the majority of Northern women stand.
If it be true that at this hour the women of the South are more devoted to their cause than we are to ours, the fact lies here. They see and feel the horrors of the war; the foe is at their firesides; while we, in peace and plenty, live as heretofore. There is an inspiration, too, in a definite purpose, be it good or bad. The women of the South know what their sons are fighting for. The women of the North do not. They appreciate the blessings of slavery; we not the blessings of liberty. We have never yet realized the glory of those inst.i.tutions in whose defence it is the privilege of our sons to bleed and die. They are aristocrats, with a lower cla.s.s, servile and obsequious, intrenched in feudal homes. We are aristocrats under protest, who must go abroad to indulge our tastes, and enjoy in foreign despotisms the customs which the genius of a Republic condemns.
But, from the beginning of the Government, there have been women among us who, with the mother of the immortal John Quincy Adams, have lamented the inconsistencies of our theory and practice, and demanded for ALL the people the exercise of those rights that belong to every citizen of a republic. The women of a nation mold its morals, religion, and politics. The Northern treason, now threatening to betray us to our foes, is hatched at our own firesides, where traitor sn.o.bs, returned from Europe and the South, out of time and tune with independence and equality, infuse into their sons the love of caste and cla.s.s, of fame and family, of wealth and ease, and baptize it all in the name of Republicanism and Christianity. Let every woman understand that this war involves the same principles that have convulsed the nations of the earth from Pharaoh to Lincoln--liberty or slavery--democracy or aristocracy--equality or caste--and choose, this day, whether our republican inst.i.tutions shall be placed on an enduring basis, and an eternal peace secured to our children, or whether we shall leap back through generations of light and experience, and meekly bow again to chains and slavery.
Shall Northern freemen yet stand silent lookers-on when through Topeka, St. Paul, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and New York, men and women, little boys and girls, chained in gangs, shall march to their own sad music, beneath a tyrant's lash? On our sacred soil shall we behold the auction-block--babies sold by the pound, and beautiful women for the vilest purposes of l.u.s.t; where parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, shall be torn from each other, and sent East and West, North and South? Shall our free presses and free schools, our palace homes, colleges, churches, and stately capitols all be leveled to the dust? Our household G.o.ds be desecrated, and our proud lips, ever taught to sing peans to liberty, made to swear allegiance to the G.o.d of slavery? Such degradation shall yet be ours, if we gird not up our giant freemen now to crush this rebellion, and root out forever the hateful principle of caste and cla.s.s. Men who, in the light of the nineteenth century, believed that G.o.d made one race all booted and spurred, and another to be ridden; who would build up a government with slavery for its corner-stone, can not live on the same continent with a pure democracy. To counsel grim-visaged war seems hard to come from women's lips; but better far that the bones of our sires and sons whiten every Southern plain, that we do their rough work at home, than that liberty, struck dumb in the capital of our Republic, should plead no more for man. Every woman who appreciates the grand problem of national life must say war, pestilence, famine, anything but an ign.o.ble peace.
We are but co-workers now with the true ones of every age. The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. All men, born slaves to ignorance and fear, crept through centuries of discord--now one race dominant, then another--but in this ceaseless warring, ever wearing off the chains of their gross material surroundings of a mere animal existence, until at last the sun of a higher civilization dawned on the soul of man, and the precious seed of the ages, garnered up in the _Mayflower_, was carried in the hollow of G.o.d's hand across the mighty waters, and planted deep beneath the snow and ice of Plymouth Rock with prayers and thanksgivings. And what grew there? Men and women who loved liberty better than life. Men and women who believed that not only in person, but in speech should they be free, and wors.h.i.+p the G.o.d who had brought them thus far according to the dictates of their own conscience. Men and women who, like Daniel of old, defied the royal lion in his den. Men and women who repudiated the creeds and codes of despots and tyrants, and declared to a waiting world that all men are created equal. And for rights like these, the Fathers fought for seven long years, and we have no record that the women of that Revolution ever once cried, ”hold, enough,” till the invading foe was conquered, and our independence recognized by the nations of the earth.
And here we are, the grandest nation on the globe. By right no privileged caste or cla.s.s. Education free to all. The humblest digger in the ditch has all the civil, social, and religious rights with the highest in the land. The poorest woman at the wash-tub may be the mother of a future President. Here all are heirs-apparent to the throne. The genius of our inst.i.tutions bids every man to rise, and use all the powers that G.o.d has given him. It can not be, that for blessings such as these, the women of the North do not stand ready for any sacrifice.