It was eleven o’clock before Vine had finished the work of decorating her parlors. She felt weary from the unusual exertion, but remembering her duties to her expected guests, she ran to the window overlooking the kitchen and called, “Becky, Becky, you know who are to be here; now do have everything all right for dinner; and, Becky, please keep the children quiet, for I should like to take a nap before I dress.”
“Y’as’m,” said the woman, while a shade of care came into her honest face, as she regarded the two children playing in the corner of the kitchen. “I ’clar to Gawd, dat’s jes’ like Miss Vine, she’s done got in de bed dis minit and lef’ me wid bofe dese chillun on my han’s, en she knows, mitey well, dat um got a heap to tend ter, dis day. She tole me dat she wus gwine to he’p me, she did, en it’s de Gawd’s trufe dat she ain’t done er spec of er blessed thing ceppin gether dem bushes and flowers, en Captain Prince he hope her at dat. Now, ef she had put her han’ to de vegables, dat would er ben sumpin. Flowers will do for purty and niceness, but you cayent eat ’em, en you cayent drink ’em. Dey’re des here to-day and gone all to pieces to-morrow; whut good is dey anyhow? a whole kyart load of um don’t mount ter er hill er beans. Well,” she continued, “I jes’ won’t blame de young creetur, but Gawd ermitey only knows when all dem white folks will set down ter dat ar dinner Miss Vine done ’vited ’em ter come here en eat! Here, Beth,” said she kindly to the little girl,“clam up on dis stool, honey, by dis table; um gwine ter fix yo a nice roas’ tater in a minit. Yo, Dan,” she called out sharply to the boy, “yo jes’ stop mashin’ dat cat’s tail wid dat cheer ’fo’ he scratch yo to deff! Min’, I tell yer! It jes’ looks like Miss Vine wouldn’t keer ef I bust my brains er wukin’; but I ain’t er gwine to do dat fer nobody. Well, not ferstrangewhite folks, anyhow.”
Here Beth with a mouthful of sweet potato asked for water. Becky promptly dipped a gourd full and held it to her lips grumbling all the while, “Lamb O’ Gawd, how in de name er goodness is I gwine ter wait on dese chillun, wash up dese dishes, put on dinner, en fetch all de wood from de wood pile?” As she stood contemplating her manifold duties, she heard the clock in the house striking the hour. “Lord, Gawd,” said she, “ef it ain’t twelve o’clock er ’ready, en shore nuff here comes all dem white folks jes’ a gallopin’ up de big road. Eh—eh—eh—well, dey’ll wait twell em ready fur ’em, dat’s all. But I does wish Miss Vine was mo’ like her mar. Ole Mis’ wouldn’t never dremped ’bout ’viten a whole pasel er folks here, widout havin’ pigs, and po’try, pies and cakes, en sich, all ready, de day befo’. She had plenty on all sides an’ plenty ter do de work too. Now here’s Miss Vine she’s after havin’ her own fun. Well, she’s right, you hear me, niggahs!”
“You ain’t talkin’ to me, Aunt Becky,” said Beth; “I ain’t no nigger.” The woman laughed, dropped her dishcloth on the unswept floor, grasped the child and tossed her up several times over her head. “Gawdbless dis smart chile! no, dat yo ain’t! yo is a sweet, little, white angel outen heaben, you is dat, you purty little white pig!”
In the height of this performance Monroe came to the door and thrust in an enormous turkey just killed. Seeing what was going on he exclaimed: “Why, Aunt Becky, yo better stop playing wid dat white chile en pick dis turkey ’fo’ Miss Eliza happen ’long here en ketch yer.”
“Shet yo mouf, en git out o’ dis kitchen, boy; you cayent skeer me; I can give you as good es you can sen’ any day. De white folks knows I ain’t got but two han’s and can’t do a hundred things in a minit.” She put the child down, however, and resumed her dish washing.
The girls in the meantime had retouched their disheveled curls and joined the young men in the parlor, where for a time music, songs and dances made the hours fly. Let us play “Straw,” said Nelly Jones.
“No, let Captain Prince lead and choose the game,” said Arabella.
So the captain seated the company in line. “Now,” said he, “not one of you must crack a smile on pain of forfeit, and when I say prepare to pucker, you must all do so,”—drawing out as he spoke the extraordinary aperture in his own good-natured face, extending his lips into an automatic, gigantic, wooden smirk reaching almost from ear to ear. Everybody giggled of course, but he went on: “I shall call out ‘Pucker,’ and you must instantly face about with your mouths fixed this way”—and he drew up his wonderful featuresmall enough to dine with the stork out of a jar. The company shouted, but the game was never played, for reproof and entreaty, joined to the captain’s word of command, failed to get them beyond a preparatory attempt which ended always in screams of laughter.
The sun was getting low in the west when another want began to appeal to the inner consciousness of these young persons. Some of them had ridden for miles in the morning air; since then they had sung and danced and laughed in unlimited fashion. Now they began to think of some other refreshment. Arabella ventured to request that Captain Prince be sent to the kitchen to reconnoiter and bring in a report from the commissary department. The captain responded amiably, and said she was a sensible young lady. “Vine, ain’t you hungry?” asked Arabella. “Oh, I took some luncheon before you came,” replied she; “if you will go up-stairs and look in the basket under my dressing table, you will find some sandwiches, but not enough for all.” The girl flew up-stairs.
When Captain Prince returned the girls rushed forward and overpowered him with questions. He threw up his hands deprecatingly and waved off his noisy assailants. “Stop, stop, young ladies, I will make my report. I went round to the kitchen and found Aunt Becky behind the chimney ripping off the feathers of a turkey so big” (holding his hands nearly a yard apart). “I got a coal o’ fire to light my pipe, then I made a memorandum.” Here he pulled out an old empty pocketbook and pretended to read—“Item1st, ‘Fowl picking at three o’clock,’ that means dinner at six. Can you wait that long?”
“Never!” cried the girls.
“Well, we must then go into an election for a new housekeeper who will go in person or send a strong committee who will whoop up the cook and expedite the meal which is to refresh these fair ladies and brave men,”—and he began to count them.
“Don’t number me in your impolite crowd,” said Arabella, “for I am content to wait until dinner is ready.” Vine gave her a meaning smile and went up pleadingly to the captain, rolling her fine eyes in the innocent, sweet way characteristic of some of the most fascinating of her sex, and begging him to continue to be the life and soul of her party, as he always was everywhere he went: she said if he would “start something diverting,” she would go and stir Becky up and have dinner right off—she would, “honest Indian.”
These girls were not sufficiently polite to keep up a pleased appearance when bored. Such little artificialities of society belonged to the days of peace. They flatly refused to dance, saying they were tired. One avowed that she was sorry she had persuaded her mother to let her come to such a poky affair, and another declared that she had never been anywhere in her whole lifetime before where there was not cake, fruit, candy, popcorn, pindars, or something handed round when dinner was as late as this. “Oh,” said Nelly Jones, “I wish I had a good stalk of sugar-cane.” In fact a cloud seemed to settle down in the parlors like smoke in murky weather.
Captain Prince stroked his blond goatee affectionately and looked serious, but brightening up in a moment he crossed the wide hall and entered the library where Major Bee was writing. He captured the major, brought him and introduced him to the ladies, and then seated him in a capacious arm-chair, while he held a whispering conference with Nelly Jones. Nelly’s wardrobe was the envy and admiration of all the girls on the river. Being the daughter of a cotton speculator, she wore that rare article, a new dress. Unlike Arabella, whose jacket was cut from the best part of an old piano cover, she was arrayed in fine purple cashmere trimmed with velvet and gold buttons, and was otherwise ornamented with a heavy gold chain and a little watch set with diamonds. Nelly took the captain’s arm and made a low bow to Major Bee, and the girls were once more on thequi vivewhen they heard the captain say in slow and measured tones, “I have come with the free and full consent of this young lady to ask you to join us for life in the bonds of matrimony.” The amiable old major seemed ready to take part in this dangerous pastime, for gentle dulness ever loves a joke. “Bring me a prayer book,” said he, “if you please.”
“I lent my mother’s prayer book,” said Vine, “to old Mrs. Simpson two years ago, and she never returned it—the mean old thing!”
The major next asked for a broom which he held down before the couple saying, “Jump over.”
“Hold it lower,” said Nelly, and they stepped over in a business-like manner.
“Now,” said Major Bee, “I solemnly pronounce youhusband and wife, and I hope and trust that you will dwell together lovingly and peacefully until you die. I have at your request tied this matrimonial knot as tight as I possibly could, under the circumstances, and I hope you will neither of you ever cause me to regret that I have had the pleasure of taking part in this highly dignified and honorable ceremony.”
Then the old major kissed the bride, whom he had always petted from childhood, and shook hands with Captain Prince, whom Nelly refused the privilege accorded the major, for said she, “there was no kissing in the bargain.” The company crowded around with noisy congratulations; a sofa was drawn forward, and the mock bridal couple sat in state and entertained their guests.
“My dear,” remarked the bride, “I expected to make a tour when I was married.”
“Yes, miss,”—he corrected himself quickly,—“yes, madam, I think as there are no steamboats that we may take a little journey up the river on a raft.”
“What kind of a raft, Captain?” asked Nelly.
“My love, I mean a steam raft. I will take the steam along in a jug.”
Nelly made a terrible grimace of disgust and was silent for a moment, her mind still dwelling on the bridal tour. “Captain, you know we must have money for traveling expenses,” said she.
“Yes, darling, it takes that very thing, so I will spout your fine watch and chain, and then we can find ourselves on wheels.”
Nelly drew down the corners of her pretty mouth,pouted her lips and looked more disgusted than ever. To them it was all very funny.
“My dearest, I fear when your mother hears the news she will say ‘Poor Nelly, she has thrown herself away!’” and the captain actually blushed at this vision of Mrs. Jones’s disapprobation.
“Keep the ball rolling, Captain,” said Billy Morris, “this sport is splendid.”
The captain fixed his keen eye on Billy’s large, standing collar and asked, “Did you ever see a small dog trotting along in high oats? Well,”—surveying his person—“I have.”
“Come now, Captain,” replied Billy, “I’ll allow you some privileges, being just married, but you must pass your wit around. I’ve had enough. Don’t compare your single unmarried friend to a dog.”
Dinner was then announced and the party were soon seated at table. That king of edible birds, the turkey savory and brown, was placed at one end, and a fresh stuffed ham stood at the other, while the vegetables filled up the intervening space. A large bunch of zinnias and amaranthus set in a broken pitcher formed a gay center-piece. The dessert was egg-nogg, and Confederate pound-cake made from bolted cornmeal. The dinner was concluded with a cup of genuine coffee. Notwithstanding the late meal, never had there been a merrier day at old Beechwood. Healths to the absent ones were drunk from the single silver goblet of egg-nogg allowed for each guest. The girls did not relish this mixture made of crude and fiery Louisiana rum, but the soldiers were not so fastidious; they said theyoften had occasion to repeat the remark of the Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of South Carolina that “it was a long time between drinks.”
Monroe removed the dishes and retired to the kitchen while the guests lingered over the dessert. The cook sat and looked down the river. The window commanded a view for two miles. Her work was done and she manifested her relief by breaking into singing these words:
“John saw, J-o-h-n saw,John saw de holy numberSettin’ roun de golden altar.Golden chariot come fer me, come fer me,Golden chariot come fer me,Childun didn’t he rise?”
She had commenced the second verse, “John saw,” when suddenly her jaws fell, and springing up she exclaimed: “Jesus marster! what’s dat? Look! Everybody! Here comes er gunboat, en Riley’s house is er fire. Don’t yer see it bu’nin! Run, boy, run, en call Miss Vine! Tell Mis Lizer! Go dis minit an’ let ’em all know, I tell yer!” “Set right down, set down, Aunt Becky! ’tain’t none er my business to tell nuthin’. Set right down, ’oman, en let dem white folks ’lone,” and the man seized her and pushed her with all his force towards the chair.
The woman turned fiercely upon him and planted a blow on the side of his head which sent him headlong on the floor. “Look er-heah, boy, who is you foolin’ wid, anyhow? You think yerself a man, does yer whenyous er born fool! I let you know it tuck de tightest overseer ole marster ever had on dis plantashun to rule me. No nigger like you better try ter tackle Becky. I’ll double you up an fling you outer dis winder in no time. You neenter tell nuthin. I’ll go tell ’em—I’ll go ef Gawd spars me to git dar. I nussed Miss Vine; dat gal used to suck dese yere”—and Becky eloquently placed her hands on her round ebony bosom, as she broke into a full run from the kitchen door. She entered the dining-room crying out in breathless, agitated tones, “Look heah, people, thar’s a big gunboat er comin’ up de river en Riley’s house is er-fire!”
In an instant confusion and utter consternation reigned. “Good God!” exclaimed Vine, “and here’s all mother’s silver! Like a fool I dug it up out of the garden this morning. Here, Aunt Becky, help me gather it up.” The woman soon rattled a pile of spoons and forks into a dishpan. “No, no,” screamed Vine, “don’t wash them, let me hide them, quick, somewhere!”
The officers and soldiers had disappeared, and in ten minutes the only male creatures to be seen on the place were Monroe and the baby. The man was in fine spirits while engaged in assisting the young ladies to mount their horses. “Take kere, Miss Em’ly, dis is a skittish little creole pony, and you rides wid too loose a rein.” To another he said, “’Fore Gawd, Miss Jinnie, I hates to see a white lady like you a-riden’ uv er mule, I does dat, en er man’s saddle too! Eh, eh!” “You never mind,” the girl replied; “my pony and both our side-saddles were carried off by the last raid fromMorganza, and I had no choice but to use my brother’s saddle and this mule or stay at home. Cut me a good stick, Monroe, and I shall get along.” “Well, you’ll need a stick,” said Monroe, “wid dat lazy ole mule, ef you ’spects to see home dis night.”
One of the horses jerked away every time he was led up to the steps, but the man was patient with him, only remarking, “Dis hoss been brutalized ’bout de head by somebody ’twel he’s a plum fool. Jump quick, Miss Nelly, while um er holdin’ him fer ye.” The girl sprang to her saddle, adjusted her dress, and directed the man to spread a folded shawl for her sister to ride behind. “Well, well,” said he, “dis beats de bugs, to see white ladies what’s used to rollin’ ’long in der carriages a-ridin’ double like dis!” “We don’t care,” said they, as the party started off gaily down the road.
After the last departure Monroe went to talk over the eventful day with Becky. No allusion was made to such a small matter as a passing blow, and the man sat down by the fire grinning with real enjoyment.
“Didn’t dem white folks scatter quick? I tell yer, Aunt Becky, it done me good all over to see ’em so flustrated,” and he burst into a loud guffaw. “When sumpin don’ go to suit de Templetons, dey’ll paw dirt, dey’ll do it, every time, frum ole marster down to de baby one. Whut did Miss Vine say about it?”
“Well,” said Becky, “lemme tell yer ’bout Miss Vine; de fust thing she done arter I bounced in en tole de news—she gathered up de spoons en forks, en dem silver tumblers, en sich, belonging to ole Mis’, en denshe look ’roun’ en seed de men wus all gone; den she clinched her teeth, en des doubled up her fis’, she did, en shuck it t’wards dat big ole boat es she come puffin’ en blowin’ up de river, wid de great big cannons a-sticken outen her sides, en des a-swarmin’ all over wid de blue-coats, en says she: ‘Dern you infernal black souls! I wish to Gawd every one of you was drownded in de bottom of de river.’”
“Lord!” said Monroe, catching his breath, “now didn’t she cuss?”
“Yes, sirree! she did dat; en so would you, en me,” said Becky.
“But she’s white,” said the man. “I don’t keer ef she is; ain’t white folks got feelin’s same as we is?” asked Becky. “No,” said Monroe, “dey ain’t; some of um is mighty mean, yes, a heap of ’em.”
“Yo cayn’t set down here and ’buse Miss Vine,” said Becky, “we’re ’bleeged to gib her de praise. Ef its ’fo’ her face or ’hine her back, um boun’ to say it; she’s de feelin’est creetur, de free-heartedest, de most corndescendin’est young white ’oman, I ever seed in all my life,—fer a fac’. But when she doneso”—here Becky shook her fist in imitation of Vine’s passionate outbreak, en said dat I done tole yer, Miss Eliza put in en spoke up she did, en says she, ‘Laviney, yo must certinly forgit yo is er lady!’ Whew! Miss Vine never heerd her. ’Twan’t no use fer nobody to say nuthin’. I tell you dat white gal rared en pitched untwel she bust into be bitteres’ cry yo ever heerd in yo life. She said dem devils warn’t satisfied wid killin’ her Paul, en makin’ her a lonesome widder, but here deycomes agin, jes’ as she were joyin’ herse’f, jes’ es she were takin’ a little plesyure, here dey comes a knockin’ uv it all in de haid, en spillin’ de fat in de fire.
“I was sorry for de chile, fer it was de Gawd’s trufe she spoke, so I comes back in heah, I did, en got some of dat strong coffee I dun saved for yo en me, en I het a cupful an brung it to her. ‘Here, honey,’ says I, ‘drink dis fer yo Becky, en d-o-n’t cry no mo’, dat’s my good baby!’ She wipe up her eyes, en stop cryin’, she did, en drunk de coffee. Dar I was, down on my knees, jes’ facin’ of her, and she handed back de cup. ’Twas one er ole Mis’ fine chaney cups. ‘Dat’s yo, honey,’ says I, ‘you musn’t grieve!’ en I was er pattin’ of her on de lap, when she tuck a sudden freak, en I let yo know she ups wid dem little foots wid de silver shoes on, en she kicked me spang over, broadcast, on de flo’.
“Den ole Miss Lizer, she wall her eyes at Miss Vine, en say, ‘Laviney, um ’stonished to see yo ax so.’ She mout as well er hilt her mouf—fer it didn’t do dat much good,” said Becky, snapping her fingers. “Den arter er while, Miss Vine seed me layin’ dar on de floor en she jumped up she did, en gin me her two han’s to pull me up. I des knowed I was too heavy for her to lif, but I tuck a holt of her, en drug her down in my lap en hugged her in my arms, pore young thing! Den I jes’ put her down e-a-s-y on de hath-rug, ’fo’ de fire, en kiver her up wid a shawl. Den I run up-sta’rs en fotch a piller, en right dar on de foot of de bed she had done laid out dat spangly tawlton dress, en I des knowed she wus gwine to put it on, en dance deHighlan’ fling dis very ebenin’. Can’t she out-dance de whole river anyhow?” said Becky.
“Oh!” said Monroe, “I don’t ’spute dat. I love to see her in her brother Frank’s close a-jumpin’ up to my fiddle! den she bangs a circus—dat she do!”
Becky continued her narration: “I comes back en lif’s her head on de piller, en pushed up the chunks to men’ de fire, en lef’ her dar sobbin’ herself down quiet.” Becky sighed and went on: “I tell yo, man, when dat little creetur dar in de house takes a good start—yo cayn’t hole her, nobody nee’n’ to try; you cayn’t phase her I tell you. En dar’s Beth, she’s gwine be jes’ sich er nother—I loves dat chile too! She don’t feature her mar neither, ’ceppen her curly head.
“But dis won’t do me. Less go up frum here, Monroe. Yo make up a light, en less go to de hen-house en ketch a pasel of dem young chickens, en put ’em in de coop. I wants to brile one soon in de mawnin’ en take it to Miss Vine wid some hot co’n cakes. She’s used to eatin’ when she fust wakes up, en um gwine to have sumpen ready fer her, fer I give you my word, dey ain’t de fust Gawd’s bit er nuthin ’tall lef’ frum dat ar’ dinner party.”
OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER.
The bewilderment of the negroes in the great social upheaval that came with peace was outdone by that of the white people. The conditions of the war times had been peaceable and simple compared with the perplexities of existence now precipitated upon us. The Confederacy’s 175,000 surrendered soldiers—and these included the last fifteen-year-old boy—were scattered through the South, thousands of them disabled for work by wounds, and thousands more by ill-health and ignorance of any other profession than that of arms. The Federal soldiers garrisoned all important places. A travesty of justice was meted out by a semi-civil military authority. Every community maintained an active skirmish-line against the daily aggressions of the freedmen and the oppressions of the military arm. Large sums were paid by citizens to recover property held by the enemy; and, for a time, the people paid a per cent. out of every dollar to the revenue office for a permit to spend that dollar at stores opened by Yankees—our only source of supply.
Few persons had property readily convertible into greenbacks, and Confederate money was being burned or used by the bale to paper rooms in the home of itspossessor. No man knew how to invest money that had escaped the absorption of war, and when he did invest it he usually lost it. For the next ten years what the sword had not devoured the “canker worm” (cotton worm, with us) ate up.
The people were in favor of reorganizing the States in accord with the Union. But the iniquities of carpet-bag governments and the diabolisms of “black and tan” conventions for a long time kept respectable men out of politics. It was indeed too “filthy a pool” to be entered. At a longer perspective this seems to have been a mistake. If the best men of the country had gone into the people’s service—as did General Longstreet with most patriotic but futile purpose—they might have arrested incessant lootings of the people’s hard-wrested tax-money and the nefarious legislation that enriched the despised carpet-bagger and scalawag—present, like the vultures, only for the prey after the battle. So many men, however, had been disfranchised by reason of Confederate service that it is doubtful if enough respectability was eligible for office, to have had any purifying effect on public affairs.
In this crisis our Northern friends advised us after the following fashion. Major A. L. Brewer, Mr. Merrick’s uncle, who had belonged to Sherman’s army, sent me, in 1865, a letter from New Lisbon, Ohio:
“My dear Carrie,—Your devotion to Edwin makes you very dear to me. You know my attachment to him and that I regard him as a son. He was alwaysmy favorite nephew. Since the war is over I trust that he will now take the oath of allegiance, and should he need any aid I can render it. The Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, Senators Nolle and Sherman of Ohio, and many others, are my staunch friends.“As far as suffering is concerned you have had your share; but I would gladly have endured it for you if I could have saved my dear boy Charlie, who fell in battle. He was noble and brave, and my heart is chilled with grief for his loss.“This was a foolish, unnatural war, and after four years of bloodshed and destruction I rejoice that it is over, and that discord will never again disturb the peace in our country. But the authors of the rebellion have paid dearly for their folly and wickedness. When I reflect upon the misery brought about by a few arch villains, I find it hard to control my feelings;—I should feel differently had they been the only sufferers. When I look upon the distress which has fallen upon the masses in the South, I have no sympathy for the instigators of the war.“But, my dear, you have fared better than many who came within my observation; as I followed Sherman, I have seen whole plantations utterly destroyed, houses burnt and women and children driven into the woods without warning. The torch was applied to everything. Sometimes the women would save a few things, but in most cases they went forth bareheaded to make the ground their bed and the sky their roof. The next day when the hungry children came prowling around our camps in search of something to eat, theFederal soldiers who left wives and children at home, and who had the hearts of men, were sorry for them. But such is the cruelty of war and military discipline.”
“My dear Carrie,—Your devotion to Edwin makes you very dear to me. You know my attachment to him and that I regard him as a son. He was alwaysmy favorite nephew. Since the war is over I trust that he will now take the oath of allegiance, and should he need any aid I can render it. The Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, Senators Nolle and Sherman of Ohio, and many others, are my staunch friends.
“As far as suffering is concerned you have had your share; but I would gladly have endured it for you if I could have saved my dear boy Charlie, who fell in battle. He was noble and brave, and my heart is chilled with grief for his loss.
“This was a foolish, unnatural war, and after four years of bloodshed and destruction I rejoice that it is over, and that discord will never again disturb the peace in our country. But the authors of the rebellion have paid dearly for their folly and wickedness. When I reflect upon the misery brought about by a few arch villains, I find it hard to control my feelings;—I should feel differently had they been the only sufferers. When I look upon the distress which has fallen upon the masses in the South, I have no sympathy for the instigators of the war.
“But, my dear, you have fared better than many who came within my observation; as I followed Sherman, I have seen whole plantations utterly destroyed, houses burnt and women and children driven into the woods without warning. The torch was applied to everything. Sometimes the women would save a few things, but in most cases they went forth bareheaded to make the ground their bed and the sky their roof. The next day when the hungry children came prowling around our camps in search of something to eat, theFederal soldiers who left wives and children at home, and who had the hearts of men, were sorry for them. But such is the cruelty of war and military discipline.”
Captain Charles B. White, a West Point officer in the United States service in New Orleans, wrote my daughter Clara, after his return to New York, in this manner: “I find your experiences in the kitchen very amusing. Our Northern ladies have an idea that you of the South know nothing practically of housekeeping. Quite erroneous is it not? I have been for some time in Boston and find the girls here prettier as a class, than those of any other city I have visited, not excepting Baltimore. They are so sensible and self-assisting. You see that army people look at the practical side of life. As our salaries are not large it is essential that our domestic establishments should be as good as possible with the least outlay of cash. We are therefore compelled to think of our future life companions in the light of these considerations.
“It is very agreeable to be here with those in full accord on social and political subjects,—not that I am a politician; but since we are the victors, I hold that we cannot ignore the principles for which we fought. I think that it behooves Wade Hampton, Toombs, Cobb and Robert Ould to hold their tongues, and to be thankful that they are not punished for their evil deeds, rather than be so blatant of their own shame. I am sorry to find you in favor of Mr. Seymour. He is from my own State, but he is a blot upon it; personally he is a gentleman,—as far as a dough-face and acopper-head can be one. A few Northern politicians may, for self-interest, humble themselves and praise traitors, but the masses are as much disposed as ever to make treason odious. The South ought not again to fall into the error of 1860, and estrange their real friends, and irritate the Northern masses. We have undisguised admiration for General Longstreet and his class who became reconstructed and attend to business.
“I do not admire Mr. S. W. Conway nor other adventurers in Louisiana, but their opponents are still more unreasonable and unprincipled. It will take me some time to become convinced that plantation negroes will make good legislators. I have not been in favor of negro suffrage, but now it seems the only expedient left us for the reconstruction of the turbulent South. All sorts of lies are trumped up by the Democrats about Grant and Colfax. I always object to personal abuse in a political controversy.
“I see my services will be no longer required in Louisiana, and my leave expires next month. I see with equal clearness that beyond my immediate circle of friends I shall scarcely be missed. How humbling to a conceited man, who thinks himself essential, to return and find the household going on just as well without him!”
With such amenities of intercourse between the conquered and the conquerors it may not seem to some observers extraordinary that reconstruction progressed so slowly. Mr. Richard Grant White said in theNorth American Reviewrespecting the great struggle of the Sections: “The South had fought to maintain aninequality of personal rights and an aristocratic form of society. The North had fought, not in a crusade for equality and against aristocracy, but formoney—after the first flush of enthusiasm caused by ‘firing on the flag’ had subsided. The Federal Government was victorious simply because it had the most men and the most money. The Confederate cause failed simply because its men and its money were exhausted; for no other reason. Inequality came to an end in the South; equality was established throughout the Union; but the real victors were the money-makers, merchants, bankers, manufacturers, railwaymen, monopolists and speculators. It was their cause that had triumphed under the banners of freedom.”
Words cannot give so strong a confirmation of the above as the fact of the South’s pitiful 175,000 men against the 1,000,000 men of the North mustered out of service after the surrender. But it is not my purpose to enter upon the history of the civil war farther than it touched my own life.
“Write our story as you may,————————but even you,With your pen, could never writeHalf the story of our land—————————“Warrior words—but even theyFail as failed our men in gray;——Fail to tell the story grandOf our cause and of our land.”
A pretty young creature said to her aged relative: “Why, money can never make people happy!”
“No, my child,” replied the old lady, “but it can make them very comfortable.” The South learned in the direst way—through the want of it—the comfort of money. It has learned also through the aggressions of trusts and monopolies how comfortable and dangerous a thing money may prove to be to the liberties of a people. It was during the war and soon after it that vast fortunes were made at the North.
The South has long ago accepted its destiny as an integral element of the United States and the great American people. It has set its face resolutely forward with historic purpose. It clings to its past only as its traditions and practices safe-guarded constitutional rights and the integrity of a true republic. Its simpler social structure has enabled it to keep a clearer vision of the purposes of our forefathers in government than the North, with its tremendous infiltration of foreigners ingrained with monarchical antecedents, and with the complex interests of many classes. Never, perhaps, so much as now has a “solid South” been needed to help to keep alive the principles of true democracy. But “old, sore cankering wounds that pierced and stung,—throb no longer.”
Money is comfort, but love is happiness. The love of one God and a common country “has welded fast the links which war had broken.”
The negro question of the South has become the problem of the nation. This is retributive justice; for the North introduced slavery into the colonial provinces, and sold the slaves to the South when they had ceased to be profitable in Massachusetts. The South foundthem renumerative and kept them. This branch of the subject may be dismissed with the reflection that it is a disposition common to humanity to use any sort of sophistry to excuse or palliate bias of feeling and departures in conduct from the right way. Everybody—North and South—is equally glad that slavery is now abolished, notwithstanding differences of opinion as to the methods by which it was accomplished.
Judge Tourgee, in his “Fool’s Errand,” said: “The negroes were brought here against their will. They have learned in two hundred years the rudiments of civilization, the alphabet of religion, law, mechanic arts, husbandry. Freed without any great exertion upon their part, enfranchised without any intelligent or independent cooperation—no wonder they deem themselves the special pets of Providence.” Seven years ago when cotton was selling for four cents a pound and starvation was staring in the face alike the planter and the negro tenant, the owner of a large plantation said to one of her old slaves: “Oh, these are dreadful times, Maria! How are we to live through them! I’m distressed for the people on the place. I fear they will suffer this winter!” “Lor, Miss Annie,” Maria replied, “I ain’t ’sturbin’ my mine ’bout it. White folks dun tuk keer me all my life an’ I spec’s they gwine ter keep on ter the eend!” The negro Providence is “white folks.” If they seem a bit slow in doling out to their desire they know how to help themselves, and it is well they do.
The sudden freedom of the black man as a war measure and his enfranchisement as a political necessityof the Republican party was a social earthquake for the South and a sort of moral cataclysm for the North. The one was too stunned by the shock, the other too delirious with success to be able to grasp the portent of such an event in the national life. The North approached it with abolition, fanaticism, and expected the liberated slave to be an ally of freedom of which he had no true conception. The South was an instinctive and hereditary ruler, and the freedman was overrunning its daily life and traditions. It is not wonderful that the negro has suffered in this conflict of antagonistic ideas.
The enfranchisement of the old slave has set back the development of the South for a generation, because it has been compelled to gauge all its movements on the race line. It has hindered the North for an equal time because the political value of the colored brother to the Republican party has seemed to overshadow every other phase of his development. But schooling and training can remodel even the prejudices of intelligent minds and sincere natures. Thirty-five years of mistakes have convinced both North and South that the negro has been long enough sacrificed to political interests.
Those only who have long lived where the negro equals or outnumbers the white population can understand his character, and the grave problem now confronting this nation.
The danger of enfranchising a large class uninstructed in the duties of citizenship and totally ignorant of any principles of government, will prove anexperiment not in vain if it enforces on the people of the United States the necessity to restrict suffrage to those who are trained in the knowledge and spirit of American institutions. It should serve to emphasize the unwisdom and injustice of denying the ballot because of sex to one half of its American born citizens who, by education and patriotism, are qualified for the highest citizenship. Our government will never become truly democratic until it lives up to its own principles, “No taxation without representation, no government without the consent of the governed.” Suffrage should be the privilege of those only who have acquired a right to it by educating themselves for its responsibilities. A proper educational qualification for the ballot, without sex or color lines, would actualize our vision of “a government for the people, of the people and by the people,” and would eliminate the ignorant foreigner of all nationalities and colors, as well as the white American who is too indolent or unintelligent to fit himself for the duties of citizenship.
Happily the true friend of the Afro-Americans, North and South, begins to distinguish between their accidental and their permanent well-being. The negro himself is coming to realize that he must make the people with whom he lives his best friends; that the conditions which are for the good of the whites of his community are good for him; that his development must be economic instead of political; that only as he learns to cope with the Anglo-Saxon as a breadwinner will he become truly a freed man.
The African in the South is better off than anylaboring class on earth. His industrial conditions have less stress in them. He is seldom out of work unless by his own choice or inefficiency. The climate is in his favor. In the agricultural districts land is cheap for purchase or rent. Gardens, stock, poultry and fruit are easily at his command. For little effort he is well clothed and well fed. Fuel costs him only the gathering. The soil responds freely to his careless cultivation. In the trades no distinctions are made between the white and the colored mechanic as to wages or opportunity. There is no economic prejudice against him; he is freely employed by the whites even as a contractor. But the Southern white will “ride alone”—even in a hearse—rather than ride with the negro socially outside the electric cars. Otherwise his old master is the negro’s best friend. A study of the State Report of Education will convince the most skeptical that the public school fund is divided proportionally with the colored schools, though the whites pay nearly the whole tax. Besides, while Ohio, and perhaps other Northern States, prohibit negro teachers in the public schools, the South, with a view to rewarding as well as stimulating the ambition of the student, gives the preference to colored teachers for their own schools.
Removed from the arena of politics the black man has no real enemy but himself. It will not do to judge the masses by the few who have been able to lift themselves above their fellows. Their religion is emotional, often without moral standards. Some of them are indolent, improvident and shiftless to a degree that largely affects white prosperity. But though they havefaults which do not even “lean to virtue’s side,” they are good-natured, teachable, forgiving, loving and lovable.
Becky Coleman
The nation should look with encouragement and gratitude to Booker T. Washington as the real Moses who, by industrial education, proposes to lead his people out of their real bondage. Only by making themselves worthy will they be able to exist on kindly terms with the white race. The same slow process of the ages which has wrought out Anglo Saxon civilization will elevate this race. Nature’s law of growth for them, as for white people, is struggle. The fittest will survive.
LAURA’S DEATH IN THE EPIDEMIC OF ’78.
The war fully ended and our city home recovered, we removed to New Orleans. I devoted myself wholly to my family and to domestic affairs. Friends gathered about us and some delightful people made our neighborhood very pleasant. It was in my present home that my daughter Laura was married to Louis J. Bright, and soon after, Clara was united to James B. Guthrie; both young men were settled in New Orleans, so that I was spared the pain of total separation. My son David established himself on his own plantation in Point Coupe, and soon after married Miss Lula Dowdell of Alabama. Our summers were spent alternately in Myrtle Grove and the North, or the Virginia Springs.
Mothers are usually held responsible for the shortcomings of their children. Sometimes this is just, but children often cruelly misrepresent good parents. It should never be forgotten that mothers and children are very human, and that the vocation upon which young people enter with least training is parenthood. Children and parents get their training together. It takes love and wisdom and proper environment to bring both to their best; but sometimes evil hereditary and vicious social institutions prove stronger than all of thesecombined forces of the home. The nation can never know the power and beauty of the mother until it evolves a true protective tenderness for the child, and encompasses it with safest conditions for its development. It is a growing wonder that women have borne so long in silence the existence of establishments which the State fosters to the debasement of their sons. Only the habit of subjection—the legacy of the ages—could have produced this pathetic stoicism. If a horse knew his strength, no man could control him. When women realize their God-given power, the community in which their children are born will not tempt them to their death by the open saloon, the gambling den and the haunt of shame. Until that happy time the inexhaustible supply of love and sympathy which goes out from the mother-heart is the child’s chiefest shelter. Obedience is what parents should exact from infants if they expect it from grown children. The slaves of the severer masters stayed with them during the war, when those of indulgent ones ran away. It is the petted, spoiled darlings whose ultimate “ingratitude is sharper than the serpent’s tooth.”
When friends were won by my daughters it was gratifying to me, for it proved that the womanly accomplishment of making themselves beloved was a lesson they had laid to heart—and they had learned it by their own fireside where love ruled and reigned. I was glad in all my children, and a devoted mother is sure of her ultimate reward. I was very proud when Clara replied to a friend who expressed surprise that she should visit me on my reception day: “I should behappy to claim a half-hour of my mother’s society if she were not related to me.” I was very content with my two daughters happily married and settled near me—doubly mine by the tie of congenial tastes and pursuits.
In 1878 my household had gone North for the summer. On September 1st a telegram reached me at Wilbraham, Mass., saying, “Laura died at 12 o’clock, M.” I had plead with her to leave New Orleans with me, but in her self-sacrificing devotion to her husband, who was never willing that she should be absent from him, she remained at home and fell a victim in the great yellow fever epidemic.
Previous to her marriage she had spent all her summers in the country or in travel, and was wholly unacclimated. Clara wrote thus to Captain S. M. Thomas from Sewanee, Tenn., in September of that dreadful year: “The pity of it, Uncle Milton! You will understand how it is with us at this time. Mother is broken-hearted. You have ever been a large figure in Laura’s and my girlhood recollections, and mother asks me to write to you. Laura Ellen’s death was just as painful as it could be. Father and mother were in Wilbraham, and every one of us gone but dear, good cousin Louise Brewer, and Louis—her husband. Oh! he made a terrible mistake in remaining in that doomed city. I have an added pang that I shall carry with me till I too go away—that I was not with her in her supreme hour.
“The dear girl wrote daily to mother, David, and me, until death snatched away her pen. ‘Fear not forme, dearest mother,’ was on her last postal card. ‘My trust is in God.’ It were enough to make an angel weep if the true history of this awful summer could be written. Our grief is without any alleviation—unless in sister’s beautiful character and Christian life. If I had been there I should have tried with superhuman efforts to hold her back from death. It was Sunday—and Dr. Walker dismissed his congregation at Felicity church to go, at her request, to her deathbed. He has told us of her great faith, her willingness to go, the perfect clearness of her mind, and the calm fortitude she manifested even when she kissed her children good-by. Breathing softly she went to sleep and closed her sweet blue eyes on this world—forever.
“Cousin Louise says Louis was nearly frantic. It is a terrible blow, and he has the added pain of knowing it might have been different but for the fatal mistake of judgment which brought such awful results. I have to school myself, and fight every day a new battle for calmness and resignation. I shall never grow accustomed to the hard fact that her bright and heavenly presence must be forever wanting in her own home, and shall never again grace mine. She died saying, ‘Jesus is with me!’ Well He might be, for she died, as He, sacrificing herself for others.”
There was no one too old or too poor, or too uninteresting to receive Laura’s attention. Sometimes this disposition annoyed me; but though I did not always recognize it, she was always living out the divine altruism of Christ. She was ever active in charities and a useful director of St. Ann’s Asylum.
Among many others I gather the following expressions in letters from those who had known her intimately: “Nobody feared her, everybody loved her. She was an angel for forgiving. The brightness in her life came from the angelic cheerfulness of her own soul, which would not yield to outward conditions. She had an infinite capacity for getting joy out of barren places.”—“I do not hope to know again a nature so blended in sweetness and strength. It is no common chance that takes away a noble mind—so full of meekness yet with so much to justify self-assertion. There was an atmosphere of grace, mercy and peace floating about her, edifying and delighting all who came near.”
Coming from a long line of tender, gentle, saintly women—the Brewers on the Merrick side—she belonged to that type celebrated in story and embalmed in song, of which nearly every generation of Brewers has produced at least one representative human angel.
A more than full measure of days has convinced me that among our permanent joys are the friends who have drifted with our own life current. In addition to the pleasure of communion with lofty and sympathetic spirits such friendships have the “tendency to bring the character into finer life.” “A new friend,” says Emerson, “entering our house is an era in our true history.” Our friends illustrate the course of our conduct. It is the progress of our character that draws them about us. Among those friends whom the struggling years after the war brought to me was Mrs. Anita Waugh, a Boston woman; a sojourner in Europe while her father was U. S. Minister to Greece, a long-timeresident of Cuba, and, during the period in which I made her acquaintance, a teacher in New Orleans. In an old letter to one of my children I find: “Mrs. Waugh makes much of your mother. She is happier for having known me. I have been helped by her to some knowledge from the vast store-house which may never be taken account of—still I here make the acknowledgment.”
Frances Willard said of her, “She is rarely gifted, and I enjoy her thought—so different from my own practical life. She is a seer (see-er)!”
Her wide acquaintance with remarkable people invested her with rare interest. In one of her many letters to me, dated in 1873, she says with fine catholicity of spirit and exceptional insight: “I think the so-called religious world lays too much stress on the infidelity of such men as Tyndall and Huxley and Spencer. They have not reached the point in their spiritual growth where knowledge opens the domain of real, pure worship; they are in a transition period, are still groping about in a world of effects, living in a world of results of which they have not yet found the cause. Spencer has given the most masterly exposition of the nervous system which has yet been made. The next step would have been into the domain of the spiritual. Here he stopped, because his mind has not yet reached the degree of development in which the utterances of truth perceived becomes the highest duty. When he shall have rounded and brought up all of his studies to a point equally advanced with his Psychology then he will be obliged to say, ‘My God and my Lord!’ I hope he maysoon, as Longfellow said, ‘Touch God’s right hand in the darkness.’”
Science—and the Church—did not long have to wait for the Wallace and Henry Drummond of Mrs. Waugh’s intuition.
During repeated visits to the Yellow Sulphur Springs in Virginia, Mr. Merrick and I were seated at table with the famous Confederate Commanders, General Jubal Early and General G. T. Beauregard, who had become additionally conspicuous by their connection with the Louisiana lottery. General Beauregard called frequently upon us, and I met him also at Waukesha, in Wisconsin. He was very kind to me, and greatly enjoyed hearing some of my nonsensical dialect readings. At the latter place the women were much impressed by his handsome and distinguished appearance and manners. When he called at my hotel many of them were eager in their entreaties to be introduced; our gallant general would bow graciously, but they were not to be satisfied unless he would also take them by the hand.
On February 24, 1893, General Beauregard was lying in state on his bier in the City Hall of New Orleans, and I was holding a convention of the Louisiana W. C. T. U. I could not help alluding to the death of this beloved old soldier, and I asked the women to go and look upon his handsome face for the last time. He was a perfect type of his class—courtly, generous, chivalrous. He had been in the Mexican war, and was the only general of the old Confederacy who belonged in New Orleans. The hearts of the people were touched, and when themeeting adjourned many groups of W. C. T. U. women were added to the crowds who went to look their last upon the face of the dead. Miss Points was pleased to say in theNew Orleans Picayune: “It was a beautiful act on the part of our women; and it acquired a new significance and beauty in that it was the outgrowth of the strong friendship and appreciation of the wife of the distinguished man who was our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the days of the Confederacy.” This was a tribute which she reminded them to offer to one of the dead heroes of our late war between the states!
“The great effort of courage I have made in my life was going in a skiff in an overflow, with Stephen and Allen, two inexperienced negro rowers, to Red River Landing in order to reach a steamboat for New Orleans, where, at the close of the war, I wanted to get supplies for my family and for my neighbors, who were in extremities by reason of the crevasse. That was an act of bravery—hunger forced it—which astonished into exclamation the captain of a Federal gunboat, Capt. Edward P. Lull, who made me take the oath of allegiance before I could leave. You know how afraid I am of water and of anylittleboat; but give men or women a sufficiently powerful motive and they can do anything.”
A FIRST SPEECH AND SOME NOTED WOMEN.
In those broken-hearted days Clara said with a pathetic earnestness: “Now I must try to be two daughters to you. You have not lost all your children—only your best child.” We drew nearer and more mutually dependent as time passed, each trying to fill the awful void for the other. How could I dream that the insatiable archer was only waiting, with fatal dart in rest, to claim another victim? We made common joy as well as sorrow, and tried to lead each other out into the sunlit places, the simple pleasures of home and social life.
Early in the year 1897 a State Constitutional Convention was assembled in New Orleans. The legal inequality of woman in Louisiana had already challenged the notice of some women, and a recent incident was outraging the hearts of a few who had the vision of seers. The Board of Control of St. Ann’s Asylum—an institution in New Orleans for the relief of destitute women and children—was composed entirely of women. A German inmate on her deathbed revealed that she had $1,000 in bank, and by a will, witnessed by members of the Board, she bequeathed it to the institution whichhad sheltered her. On submission of the will to probate, the ladies were informed that it was invalid, because a woman was not a legal witness to a will. The bequest went to the State—and the women went to thinking and agitating.
Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon urged that we should appear before the Convention with our grievances. I did not feel equal to such an effort, but Mrs. Saxon said: “Instead of grieving yourself to death for your daughter who is gone, rise up out of the ashes and do something for the other women who are left!” My husband insisted that, having always wanted to do something for women, now was my opportunity. Mrs. Saxon and I drew up the following petition:
“To the Honorable President and Members of the Convention of the State of Louisiana, convened for the purpose of framing a new Constitution:
“Petition of the undersigned, citizens of the State of Louisiana, respectfully represents:
“That up to the present time, all women, of whatever age or capacity, have been debarred from the right of representation, notwithstanding the burdensome taxes which they have paid.
“They have been excluded from holding office save in cases of special tutorship in limited degree—or of administration only in specified cases.
“They have been debarred from being witnesses in wills or notarial acts, even when executed by their own sex.
“They look upon this condition of things as a grievanceproper to be brought before your honorable body for consideration and relief.
“As a question of civilization, we look upon the enfranchisement of women as an all important one. In Wyoming, where it has been tried for ten years, the Lawmakers and Clergy unite in declaring that this influx of women voters has done more to promote law, morality and order, than thousands of armed men could have accomplished.
“Should the entire franchise seem too extended a privilege, we most earnestly urge the adoption of a property qualification, and that women may also be allowed a vote on school and educational matters, involving as they do the interests of women and children in a great degree.
“So large a proportion of the taxes of Louisiana is paid by women, many of them without male representatives, that in granting consideration and relief for grievances herein complained of, the people will recognize Justice and Equity; that to woman as well as man ‘taxation without representation is tyranny,’ she being ‘a person, a citizen, a freeholder, a taxpayer,’ the same as man, only the government has never held out the same fostering, protecting hand to all alike, nor ever will, until women are directly represented.
“Wherefore, we, your petitioners, pray that some suitable provision remedying these evils be incorporated in the Constitution you are about to frame.”
Four hundred influential names were secured to the petition, Mrs. Saxon, almost unaided, having gained three hundred of them. It was sent to the Conventionand referred to the Committee on Suffrage, which on May 7 invited the ladies to a conference at the St. Charles Hotel. Mrs. Mollie Moore Davis, Colonel and Mrs. John M. Sandige, Mr. and Mrs. Saxon were present. Dr. Harriette C. Keating, a representative woman in professional life, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, already a well-known and fearless reformer, and Caroline E. Merrick, as the voice of home, were chosen to appear before the Convention on the evening of June 16, 1879. Eighty-six members of the Convention were present; a half hundred representatives of “lovely woman” were there. Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines, the celebrated litigant, with a few other notables, occupied the middle of the floor, and youth and beauty retired into a corner. Mr. Poche, chairman of the Suffrage Committee, and afterward a member of the Supreme Court of the State, asked me if I were afraid. “Afraid,” I said, “is not the word. I’m scared almost to death!” He tried to encourage me by recounting the terrors of many men similarly placed.
Mrs. Keating was first introduced, and, at the Secretary’s desk, in a clear voice, with dignified self-possession set forth the capabilities of women for mastering political science sufficiently to vote intelligently on questions of the day. Mrs. Saxon following, was greeted with an outburst of welcome. She reviewed the customs of various nations to which women were required to conform, and called attention to the fact that the party which favored woman suffrage would poll twelve million votes. She made clear that the fact of sex could not qualify or disqualify for an intelligent vote:she mentioned that numbers of women had told her they wanted to be present that night, but their husbands would not permit them to come.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon is a woman possessed of fine intellect and an uncommonly warm and generous nature. She was a pioneer in the Suffrage Cause in the South, and has ably represented its interests in National gatherings. She was sent as delegate from this State to the International Suffrage Association of the World’s Auxiliary Congress in 1893. All along the way she has given of her best with whole-hearted zeal to further the cause of women, and should claim the undying gratitude of those for whom she has helped to build the bridges of human equality.
Mr. Robertson, of St. Landry, then offered the resolution: “Resolved, That the Committee on elective franchise be directed to embody in the articles upon suffrage reported to this Convention, a provision giving the right of suffrage to women upon the same terms as to men.”
Under the rules this resolution had to lie over.
Fearing that I could not be heard, I had proposed that Mr. Jas. B. Guthrie, my son-in-law, should read my speech. But Mrs. Saxon said: “You do not wish a man to represent you at the polls; represent yourself now, if you only stand up and move your lips.” “I will,” I said. “You are right.” The following is my address in part:
“Mr. President and Delegates of the Convention:
“When we remember the persistent and aggressive efforts which our energetic sisters of the North haveexerted for so many years in their struggle before they could obtain a hearing from any legislative assembly, we find ourselves lost in a pleasing astonishment at the graciousness which beams upon us here from all quarters. Should we even now be remanded to our places, and our petition meet with an utter refusal, we should be grieved to the heart, we should be sorely disappointed, but we never could cherish the least feeling of rebellious spite toward this convention of men, who have shown themselves so respectful and considerate toward the women of Louisiana.
“Perhaps some of the gentlemen thought we did not possess the moral courage to venture even thus far from the retirement in which we have always preferred to dwell. Be assured that a resolute and conscientious woman can put aside her individual preferences at the call of duty, and act unselfishly for the good of others.
“The ladies who have already addressed you have given you unanswerable arguments, and in eloquent language have made their appeal, to which you could not have been insensible or indifferent. It only remains for me to give you some of my own individual views in the few words which are to conclude this interview.
“The laws on the statute books permit us to own property and enjoy its revenues, but do not permit us to say who shall collect the taxes. We are thus compelled to assist in the support of the State in an enforced way, when we ourselves would greatly prefer to do the same thing with our own intelligent, free consent.
“We know this Republic has been lauded in the oldtimes of the Fourth of July orations as the freest, best government the world ever saw. If women, the better half of humanity, were allowed a voice and influence in its councils, I believe it would be restored to its purity and ancient glory; and a nobler patriotism would be brought to life in the heart of this nation.
“It seems to me that there ought to be a time, to which we may look forward with satisfaction, when we shall cease to be minors, when the sympathy and assistance we are so capable of furnishing in the domestic relation, may in a smaller degree be available for the good and economical management of public affairs. It really appears strange to us, after we have brought up children and regulated our houses, where often we have the entire responsibility, with money and valuables placed in our charge, that a man can be found who would humiliate us by expressing an absolute fear to trust us with the ballot.
“In many nations there is an army of earnest, thoughtful, large-hearted women, working day and night to elevate their sex; for their higher education; to open new avenues for their industrious hands; trying to make women helpers to man, instead of millstones round his neck to sink him in his life struggle.
“Ah, if we could only infuse into your souls the courage which we, constitutionally timid as we are, now feel on this subject, you would not only dare but hasten to perform this act of justice and inaugurate the beginning of the end which all but the blind can see is surely and steadily approaching. We are willing to accept anything. We have always been in the position ofbeggars, as now, and cannot be choosers if we wished. We shall gladly accept the franchise on any terms, provided they be wholly and entirely honorable. If you should see proper to subject us to an educational test, even of a high order, we would try to attain it; if you require a considerable property qualification, we would not complain. We would be only too grateful for any amelioration of our legal disabilities. Allow me to ask, are we less prepared for the intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage than were the freedmen when it was suddenly conferred upon them?
“Perhaps you think only a few of us desire the ballot. Even if this were true, we think it would not be any sufficient reason for withholding it. In old times most of our slaves were happy and contented. Under the rule of good and humane masters, they gave themselves no trouble to grasp after the unattainable freedom which was beyond their reach. So it is with us to-day. We are happy and kindly treated (as witness our reception to-night), and in the enjoyment of the numerous privileges which our chivalrous gentlemen are so ready to accord; many of us who feel a wish for freedom do not venture even to whisper a single word about our rights. For the last twenty-five years I have occasionally expressed a wish to vote, and it was always received with surprise; but the sort of effect produced was as different as the characters of the individuals with whom I conversed. I cannot see how the simple act of voting can hurt or injure a true and noble woman any more than it degrades the brave and honorable man.
“Gentlemen of the Convention, we now leave ourcause in your hands, and commend it to your favorable consideration. We have pointed out to you the signs of the dawning of a better day for woman, which are so plain before our eyes, and implore you to reach out your hands and help us to establish that free and equal companionship which God ordained in the beginning in the Garden of Eden before the serpent came and curses fell.”
Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey was prevented by illness, which terminated fatally, from appearing personally, but sent a letter which was read before the Convention by Col. John M. Sandige. She advanced, among others, the following ideas: “Being left by the fiat of God entirely alone in the world, with no man to represent me; having large interests in the State, and no voice either in representation or taxation, while hundreds of my negro lessees vote and control my life and property, I feel that I ought to say one word that may aid many other women whom fate has left equally destitute. I ask representation for taxation—for my sisters and for the future race. We do not expect to do men’s work, we can never pass the limits which nature herself has set. But we ask for justice; we ask for the removal of unnatural restrictions that are contrary to the elemental spirit of the civil law; we do not ask for rights, but for permission to assume our natural responsibilities.”
Mrs. Dorsey was a native of Mississippi, and became widely conspicuous by reason of the bequest of her home, Beauvoir, and other personal property, to Mr. Jefferson Davis. She made this will because, as mentioned in the document, “I do not intend to share in the ingratitudeof my country toward the man who is, in my eyes, the highest and noblest in existence.” Mrs. Elisha Warfield, of Kentucky, was the aunt of Mrs. Dorsey, and the author of the novel “Beauvoir,” from which the plantation was named, and which estate Mrs. Dorsey devoted to the cultivation of oranges. She was a rarely gifted woman. Besides the usual accomplishments of women of her day, she possessed remarkable musical skill, and was a pupil of Bochsa, owning the harp which he had taught her to handle as a master. She was a writer of power and had studied law and book-keeping. A friend who was present in her last illness wrote me: “She appeared to greater advantage in her home than anywhere else. She was of those whom one comes to know soon and to love; and is one of the many who have passed on, with whom the meeting again is looked forward to with true delight.”
When the new Constitution was promulgated it contained but one little concession to women: “Art. 232.—Women twenty-one years of age and upwards shall be eligible to any office of control or management under the school laws of the State.”
The women of Louisiana have realized no advantage from this law. Their first demand was for a place on the school board of New Orleans, in 1885. The governor fills by appointment all school offices. Gov. McEnery ruled that Art. 232 of the Constitution was inoperative until there should be legislation to enforce it, the existing statutes of Louisiana barring a woman from acting independent of her husband, and would make the husband of a married woman a co-appointeeto any public office; that a repeal of thisin solidostatute was necessary before he could place a woman on the school board.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s seventieth birthday was on Nov. 12 of this year. In her honor a special reception was held by the Woman’s Club of New Orleans. I here reviewed the action of the governor in a paper which set forth the following points: First, that the Constitution is imperative; that legislation for its self-acting and absolute provisions would be to place the creature in control of the creator. Second, that the legislature had no jurisdiction over the eligibility of women to appointment on school boards, as the Constitution had explicitly declared that “women twenty-one and upwards shall be eligible.” Third, if the governor’s objection against married women were valid it had no force against unmarried women and widows.
Protest, however, proved futile. No succeeding governor appointed a woman, so no test case was ever made, and the Constitutional Convention of 1898 repealed this little shadow of justice to women, even in the face of the fact that at the time the small concession was made one-half of the 80,000 children in the public schools of New Orleans were girls, and 368 out of the 389 teachers were women.
In 1880 I met General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, at a private reception given at the home of Hon. Walker Fearn, in New Orleans. The General was a handsome, soldierly man. I told him that we had mutualfriends, and named Bishop Simpson, whom, with his wife, I had entertained, and liked because of his liberal views toward women. “That,” said General Grant, “is what I object to.” “Oh, General,” I answered, “I hope that you would not be unwilling that we should have the ballot?” “No, Mrs. Merrick, I should not be unwilling that you and Mrs. Grant should vote, but I should seriously object to confer that responsibility on Bridget, your cook.” I had always heard that General Grant could not talk, and was surprised to find him so genial and agreeable. Knowing me to be a Southern woman, he questioned me keenly and intelligently about the people of my section. I had a half-hour of delightful conversation with him, which he, equally with myself, seemed to enjoy.
During the year 1881 Miss Genevieve Ward was filling an engagement at the Grand Opera House in New Orleans. This winning actress was a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, the renowned Puritan preacher, and at that time was in her prime. At the request of her husband’s relatives in New York, my daughter entertained this famous lady at a lunch party, where I was present. We found her a dignified, modest woman, and, like Charlotte Cushman, above reproach. She was an intimate friend of the great Ristori. Among our twelve guests was Geo. W. Cable, already become famous. His last book, with all of our autographs in it, was given to Miss Ward as a souvenir of the occasion.