Theodosia Burr, for thus, rather than as Theodosia Alston, will she always be known, and Dorothy Madison stand out prominently as divergent types of the highest development of the women of their day; and we can hold them to have been fairly, if somewhat exaggeratedly representative of American womanhood at that period. The close of the War of 1812, like that of the Revolution, marked an era in the history of the women of America, even though the line of demarcation was not drawn with sufficient sharpness of definition to be clear to the sight. From 1785 to 1812 American society, using the word in its broadest sense, was in a condition of formation; at the end of that period it began to take on coherence and individuality in certain directions, at the same time that it became less individual in others. The close of that era found American womanhood ready for onward march. It had tried its strength in various ways, and now it knew its powers. While in its inherent qualities it was much the same as it had been twenty years before, there had arisen new conditions, mostly of internal origin, to which it must adapt itself. This was less the fact with the rural woman-life than with the urban; but it is the latter which stands out most prominently when we look back upon the past and which must be accepted as generally representative. The women of Kentucky, aiding their stalwart husbands in reclaiming the ground from the wilderness and in holding it against Indian attack, the farmer's wife, taking upon herself more than the moiety of the daily toil and rearing her children in the simple ways and faith of her fathers, even the undermost strata of the cities, that unconsidered but potent element in social history,--all these were almost unaffected by the things which made for evolution among their sisters of higher station and easier lives. It is to these latter that we must cling in our search for the true history of the women of our land in times of peace, though when strife filled the country with need for strength their praise was shared by their humbler compeers.
Into American society had been introduced an element which had for a time disappeared, but only to reappear in altered but not less effective form, the element of aristocracy. The old order had indeed faded; but a new one had leaped into its place, and it was one that was quite as powerful for good and evil as was its predecessor. A country without an aristocracy, acknowledged or merely accepted, is an impossibility, however dear to republican ideas; and the birth of the new aristocracy in America was as sure as if there had been but a change of kings when allegiance to George III. was cast off. Not the true republicanism of Washington--not the affected democracy of Jefferson--could avert its coming; it was inevitable. It remained to be seen if it would be accepted in best manner and made an influence for good rather than for evil; and this, though they did not recognize the fact, was the gravest problem that confronted American women, in their social aspect, when they once more took up the pursuits of peace.
"It is odd enough," wrote Daniel Webster about 1830, "that the consequences of this dispute in the social and fashionable world are producing great political effects and may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present Chief Magistrate." These were ominous words; and they show, as nothing could better show, the power into which had come that which is generically termed "Society." So strong had grown its influence, so firm its hold upon the nationalzeitgeist, that it could, at least by mediate means, even dictate the nomination and consequent election of a specific candidate for the highest honor within the gift of the nation. Powerful indeed had grown the once feeble hands of the American woman.
The dispute to which Webster referred was so famous in its day and productive of such notable results upon the general history of our country that, while its heroine hardly comes within the scope of this work as being a representative American woman, it merits place here. When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated President of the United States he appointed to a seat in his cabinet, with the dignities of Secretary of War, General Eaton, a life-long friend. Unfortunately, General Eaton had married a beautiful and attractive but lowborn woman, Margaret O'Neill by maiden name and the widow of one Timberlake.
Her father had been a tavern-keeper, and it was thought that his daughter had imbibed too liberal notions during her residence under the paternal roof. So, those days being more particular in such matters than others which have succeeded them, Peggy O'Neill, as she was called endearingly or contemptuously, as the speaker happened to be friend or foe, was distinctlypersona non gratato the society of the capital. It declined to recognize her as one of its members; Mrs. Calhoun, wife of the vice-president, openly refused to associate with Mrs. Eaton, and Calhoun, on being appealed to, declared himself powerless to interfere, as "the quarrels of women, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, admitted of neither inquiry or explanation." Certain bachelors among the diplomatic corps, on the other hand, were delighted to honor the fair Peggy, and the affair soon developed from a skirmish into a war. The climax was reached when Mrs. Huygens, wife of the minister from Holland, on finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton at dinner, turned and swept from the room on the arm of her husband.
President Jackson, always combative, entered into the affair with his usual zest. He was within an ace of demanding Huygens's recall for the affront put upon Mrs. Eaton; and, though he did not carry his enthusiasm quite thus far, he espoused the cause of the lady with most militant zeal. The contest continued to rage; the cabinet was styled the "Petticoat Cabinet," and Mrs. Eaton was far-famed as Bellona, the Goddess of War. There was no surrender on either side; and at last came the state of affairs which Webster had prophetically foretold. For Mr. Van Buren, always a staunch supporter of Jackson in all ways, had warmly adopted the cause of Mrs. Eaton as his own. This lost him the position of minister to England, since Congress, with Calhoun as chairman casting the deciding vote, refused to ratify the nomination; but it gained him the presidency,--which was the fulfilment of Webster's prophecy,--as Jackson practically had the power to appoint his successor, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Van Buren's countenance and aid in the social war influenced him in his choice quite as much as, and probably far more than, the recollection of his secretary's political services to him during his campaign and term of office. So that the forces of the fair Peggy triumphed at last, though she herself gained no victory. Mr. Van Buren appointed General Eaton as Governor of Florida and, later, Minister to the Court of Madrid, and Washington society knew its apple of discord no more.
There may have been instances before this time, there certainly have been many since, when the decision of our chief legislature was influenced by the charms of a woman; but the case of Peggy O'Neill and Martin Van Buren stands as the unique instance of the selection of the president of the United States resulting from a purely feminine cause. Not only is the incident thus singular, but it is equally suggestive; it speaks trumpet-tongued of the power which had by that time been won by the social element at the national court and it illustrates the changes which had come into American society as exemplified in its highest and most typical circles.
Chronology has been neglected in order to give prominence to an instance so illustrative of the development of the power of society during the period which is now under consideration; but let us return to find the causal influences which led to such result. When the War of 1812 came to its unsatisfactory and indecisive end the city of Washington resumed its sway among social circles, and this time held its sceptre with firmer grasp. Thither flocked most of the aspirants for social fame. Not that in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other growing cities there were not women whose repute was equal to that of most of the individual leaders of Washington society, but that the latter was invested in its mass with a dignity which was wanting in unofficial circles. It was the court society of the country and thus held as representative. It was composed of concentric circles, centring in the White House and thence extending, through the wives and daughters of cabinet officials and foreign ministers, to those who hung upon the outer border and peered wistfully through the crowd for a glimpse of the sacred inner precincts. The war, though marking a period in the history of womanhood in our country, had been but an interlude in the chronicle of society, and the latter had but gathered strength and zest during its period of enforced rest.
In 1825, Mrs. Jackson, the wife of the hero of New Orleans, whose own place in Washington society was at first a little precarious because of some irregularity in her marriage, till the noble character of the woman silenced her detractors,--thus wrote to Mrs. Kingsley of Nashville, giving her first impressions of the capital:
"To tell you of this city, I would not do justice to the subject. The extravagance is in dressing, and running to parties; but I must say they regard the Sabbath, and attend preaching, for there are churches of every denomination and able ministers of the Gospel.... Oh, my dear friend, how shall I get through this bustle? There are not less than from fifty to one hundred persons calling in a day.... Don't be afraid of my giving way to those vain things. The Apostle says, I can do all things in Christ, who strengthened me. The play-actors sent me a letter requesting my countenance to them. No. A ticket to balls and parties. No, not one. Two dinings; several times to drink tea. Indeed, Mr. Jackson encourages me in my course."
It does not seem to have occurred to the simple piety of the writer that attendance at church may have been as much the result of fashion as of religion; but the more charitable view may be the correct one, as those were days of greater devoutness than the present, and even society maintained some of the rigid rules of old Puritan times, The little picture drawn by Mrs. Jackson is suggestive both of the social whirl of the capital and the simple ways of her who but for her untimely death might later have ruled as titular queen of the social circle. Mrs. Jackson was indeed one who might stand as a representative of much that is best in American womanhood of that day or any day. She was domestic and retiring, but by no means illiterate, as she was falsely said to be when the political fight raged high, and she was a woman, as her letters show, of the most exemplary piety and resolution in the right. Had she inhabited the White House as its mistress she might have injected anew into Washington society a tone which was beginning to be less and less dominant as time went on.
It was about the beginning of the period chosen for the subject of this chapter, the period reaching from the close of the War of 1812 to 1850, that American society, as represented in the upper classes of the womanhood of America, began to be conventional according to European standards. There were still, and continued to be, many individuals of note; but there was very little individuality in the mass. In dress, in manners, in customs, and even in thought, there was little to distinguish the American woman of the higher rank from her European sister. The birth of a national aristocracy had done its invariable work, and importation of foreign ideals and ideas had completed that work and given it direction. Certain traits, racial and national, were visible in most of the daughters of America and differentiated them from their European compeers; but they were traits which did not affect society in the mass and which were therefore individual and not social. Domesticity still held sway in the majority of American circles; the American woman was still preeminently the home goddess and the home ruler, and refused to abdicate her crown even at the call of fashion; but it must be acknowledged that she wore that crown less easily and comfortably than in earlier days. There was fast dawning the day of artificiality in the things of existence, the day when the shadow should seem greater than the substance, when the queen of the home should degenerate into the queen of the revel. There was needed some cataclysm to rescue American womanhood from the peril which she was approaching; and it was well for her that that cataclysm came at need, however terrible it may have been in the coming.
Yet even in those days the social world did not represent all that was best in American womanhood or even all that was most noteworthy. Therein alone, it is true, were to be found those whose individuality became famous; but in other fields there labored many American women who were unknown to all but those of their immediate environment, and yet whose work was of national importance. Steadily, even while the butterflies of society danced at rout and revel in the East, the western frontiers were being pushed further and further toward the great ocean that had crept round the feet of Balboa, first of white men to stand upon its shores. Kentucky was no longer "the West"; it had sent a president in Jackson, a great senator in Clay, and it was recognized as a sister state even by the proudest of its eastern fellows. But beyond the Mississippi still stretched a country which was practically aterra incognita, and which still awaited reclamation from the rule of the savage and the wild beast. Into this waiting region strode many a determined explorer with axe and rifle, bent on winning a home from the grasp of the wilderness; and with him went his wife to give grace to the home when it should be won and "make the wilderness blossom like a rose." They were survivals, these women, of the primitive type of American womanhood: strong, grave of countenance and bearing, caring little for pleasure or recreation, putting duty before all things in their lives as in their esteem, almost masculine in determination and courage. To their hands the rifle was more familiar than the distaff, for upon them often depended the safety of home and children when their husbands were afield or slain; yet they were feminine in many ways of the best and fitted to become the mothers of a sturdy race of warriors and tillers of the soil.
There is no record of any individual heroines among these women of the pioneers of western civilization, unless it be of purely local limit, nor do we even know much of the story of these women in the mass. We hear no little of the sufferings, privations, and perils of the men who beat back the Indian from his hunting grounds, chased the grizzly bear to his lair in the Rocky Mountains, and turned barren prairie into fruitful field; but of their wives and daughters, who bore the larger share of those privations and suffered more terror in those perils, we are given no record save in the most general terms. Perhaps the chroniclers who tell in terms of admiration of the endurance and courage of the pioneers and forget to mention those of their wives unconsciously pay the latter, and womanhood through them, the greatest of homage, in taking such qualities for granted in women and, hence, too natural to call for record. However this may be, we know, from acquaintance with the general facts, that with the ever-encroaching frontier of our country's western limit of habitation there always advanced the foot of woman, braving all perils in her love for her husband, her children, and her home.
It was the presence of this gallant band, as well as their courage and endurance, which assures us of one of the most predominant traits of the most distinctive American womanhood in those days. That trait is the love of home. It was to seek a home, a habitation and spot of ground that should be their very own, that the pioneer and his wife dared the perils of the wilderness; and in this search the wife was at least as instrumental as the husband. To have a home was the ambition of every American woman of those times; and, if she could not compass this by ordinary methods, she had recourse to extraordinary ones. If she could not find a home among the habitations of her fellows, if her good man could not give to her this one desire of her heart, then she urged her husband forth into the barren fields of the unknown West, where danger and death might await them, but where at least there was promise of the home,--the Mecca of her every wish.
Toward the end of the period included in this chapter there occurred another westward movement which happily is not entirely relative to the story of American womanhood, and yet must receive mention here. The credulous followers of John Smith, the Mormon, as they are conveniently though incorrectly styled in general terminology, driven from their abodes among the more civilized of their race, sought asylum on the shores of the Great Salt Lake and there built a city to be their abiding place for ever. Somewhat later the Mormon creed boldly avowed its adherence to the theory of polygamy, in practice only at first and then in precept as well, and thus revived, even though within narrow limits, one of the oldest and furthest removed conditions that had ever environed womanhood. That such a theory should prove attractive to any woman seems to most of us a thing in itself wonderful, that it did thus prove attractive to many is a matter of history. It is true that the majority of recruits to the harems--the word is as correct as convenient--of the Mormons came from the older countries of the eastern shores of the Atlantic: Sweden sent many women to Salt Lake City, and even England furnished her quota, while the Latin countries, probably because of the prevalence of the Catholic faith in their borders, the influence of that faith being in all ways antagonistic to Mormon theories and arguments, lost but few of their daughters to the Mormon Minotaur. With these accessions to the seraglios of the Utah settlement we are less concerned; but many an American woman, by birth and rearing a child of our own land, turned from her ancient traditions to become the "wife" of a Mormon elder. Those who look upon the Mormon practice of polygamy as immoral are narrow and prejudiced, for morality is always a thing of convention and agreement; but that it was a blot upon our civilization may be admitted without cavil. At one time it became even an actual threat to the best interests of our social structure; it promised to engulf in its Charybdis some of the elements of our society which we could ill spare and to make itself felt as an influence in places where it dared not openly raise its head. Legislation--whether justifiable by the spirit of our commonwealth, or otherwise, is legitimate matter of dispute--at length intervened to banish all fear of Mormon influence and to abolish the practices which were most reprobated, and now Mormonism is shorn of its most distinctive feature and that which lent itself most readily to the cause of proselytism.
However we may condemn the tenets and practices of Mormonism, it must be admitted that the most representative women of the Mormons, in the heyday of Mormon power, were thrifty, industrious, economical, and notable workers. Moreover, though it is generally thought that among the disciples of Joseph Smith--to whose door, however, the practice of polygamy cannot be laid, for that was an addendum to the faith made by Brigham Young--women were held in slight esteem, an idea generally correct as to the mass, there were many instances of Mormon women of influence and power in the councils of the men. The adoption of polygamy as part of the creed was largely the work, if not the inspiration, of a woman who was "sealed" to Brigham Young; and the practice would never have grown to any strength, as it had many opponents among the men, had it not received the approbation and welcome of the women. Its adoption caused more than one schism in the Church of the Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons pompously style themselves, but the schismatics never received the support of more than a few of the women of the "peculiar people," and it may be broadly stated that the revival of polygamy among a civilized people was at least as much the work of women as of men.
Mormonism is doomed as a faith; but its existence will always be felt in national results. Even so limited a movement as this, when it touches matters of descent, must ever leave its traces, and the very breaking-up of such a community will have its effect of disseminating impure sources among the fountains of our nation. In this instance, woman, who has done so much for America, has brought harm to her.
As the eighteenth century approached its middle age, society in America grew more and more distinguished and less and less distinctive. It had long since lost all traces of provincialism; it was a power in itself with its glamor of aristocracy, and it even had its traditions of rank, which were not unrecognized by foreign social powers. In the earliest days of the century, on Christmas Eve, 1803, Elizabeth Patterson, of Baltimore, had been married to Jerome Bonaparte; and, though the marriage was unrecognized by the all powerful Emperor Napoleon and was thus made practically invalid, it was perfectly legitimate and noteworthy. Though Napoleon, because of the exigencies of his peculiar position, forced Jerome to renounce his young bride and marry as became his station, he himself treated Miss Patterson with consideration and even generosity, his liberality to her in the matter of a pension enabling her to make the famous retort, when Jerôme offered to provide for her after his marriage, that she "preferred being sheltered under the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a goose." She never bore any rancor to Napoleon for his actions toward her, though she strove with all her might to win her rights.
Some fifteen years later the same city of Baltimore, or, more correctly, a place contiguous to that city, now known, from its once residents, as Catonsville, gave to society the four Caton sisters, celebrated at home and abroad by the name, conferred by English admirers, of the "American Graces." They were the granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and daughters of Richard Caton, and three of them respectively married, in two cases after prior matrimonial alliances, the Marquis of Wellesley, eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington and himself a distinguished Governor-general of India and, later, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; the Marquis of Carmarthen, eldest son and finally successor of the Duke of Leeds; and Baron Stafford. These were "great matches" for the daughters of a provincial town; and it is a little singular that Louisa Caton, who became the sister-in-law of Elizabeth Bonaparte by her first marriage to William Patterson, should afterward become allied to the family of the man, in the Duke of Wellington, who was most instrumental in overthrowing the fortunes of the family to which Miss Patterson had allied herself by her marriage, and Baltimore be thus connected in its traditions with the respective leaders in the most decisive battle the modern world has ever known.
Though America was spared the adoption of the notable extravagances of European fashions, yet everywhere, in every aspect, were to be seen European conditions of society. Even the type of American woman, preserved till now in certain peculiarities of mental attitude, began to fail. There remained many individual representatives of that type, and these among our most aristocratic society; but in the mass it was not observable. To do away with such type, to lose all distinctiveness of racial attitude, was fast becoming the aim of the American society woman. This was well enough when it had to do with graces of bearing and amenities of intercourse; but it lent itself to affectations and follies as well. The wife and the mother were no longer the representative American women; the homely and the home-giving chrysalis had been cast aside, and the lustrous but useless butterfly was spreading its wings for flight. Still a country of homes in its more widely spread conditions, this was not the aspect assumed by America when it was gazed upon by foreign eyes, for these saw first the most prominent rather than the deeper facts. The capital was fast becoming more of social than of political importance, and the wives and daughters of the senators and representatives in Congress assembled at least thought of themselves, even if they were not generally considered, as being of as much importance in the march of the nation as were their husbands and fathers. The vision of the mothers of the republic, as they looked forward upon the path which they hoped to see their daughters tread as following in their own footsteps, had not been brought to pass. Not that there was failure of the best among American womanhood; taking it in the mass, it was pure and high and true. But it was wrongly directed to bring forth its best potencies, at least in its most representative, though fortunately not most characteristic, expressions; it had taken the wrong turning.
This was so only of the expression, not of the nature. American womanhood still stood for all the best of its kind. Removed from the chief temptations offered by Old World conditions, it knew no taint, felt no canker at its heart. Its head was often in the wrong, but its heart never. The importation of European customs and manners, as well as of European fashions, had worked its will upon the outward bearing of the American woman; but European morals, then at a low ebb in all the Latin countries and not too high in England herself, had not yet succeeded in gaining foothold among our women. Moreover, except among the extreme devotees of the fashionable world, domesticity was still the keynote of the life of the American woman. Here is the testimony to this effect born by Fenimore Cooper, a writer whose eyes were never closed to the follies and foibles of his nation and whose pen was rather given to blame than praise:
"Foreigners are apt to say that we children of this western world do not submit to the tender emotions with the same self-abandonment as those who are born nearer to the rising sun; that our hearts are as cold and selfish as our manners; and that we live more for the lower and grovelling passions than for sentiment and the affections. Most sincerely do we wish that every charge which European jealousy and European superciliousness have brought against the American character was as false as this. That the people of this country are more restrained in the exhibition of all their emotions than those across the great waters we believe; but that the last feel the most we shall be very unwilling to allow. Most of all shall we deny that the female form contains hearts more true to all its affections, spirits more devoted to the interests of its earthly head, or an identity of existence more perfect than those with which the American wife clings to her husband. She is literally 'bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.' It is seldom that her wishes cross the limits of the domestic circle, which to her is earth itself and all that it contains which is most desirable. Her husband and children compose her little world, and beyond them and their sympathies it is rare indeed that her truant affections ever wish to stray. A part of this concentration of the American wife's existence in these domestic interests is doubtless owing to the simplicity of American life and the absence of temptation. Still, so devoted is the female heart, so true to its impulses, and so little apt to wander from house-feelings and home-duties, that the imputation to which there is allusion is just that of all others to which the wives of the Republic ought not to be subject."
This is the testimony of a man who knew his people and his time in some ways better than any other American novelist and who did not hesitate to use the cautery when he thought its application desirable. Therefore it is to be regarded as just and accurate, the more so that it contains admission of interior facts concerning which "European jealousy and European superciliousness" could find ground for blame that could not be termed carping. It was of that which is now openly and then secretly termed "the middle class" that Cooper was chiefly speaking, however, though most of his words were applicable to all classes of American society. One may doubt the actuality of the "simplicity of American life" in its more prominent expressions at that time, and the "absence of temptation," in the sense in which our author means the phrase, does not appear, since the conditions which made for such temptation in European society were to be found in that of America; but morals were then under the care of the most efficient guardian which they can know,--public opinion. Indeed, in such matters it was rather the day of prudery in America. The American woman was justly proud of her virtue, was indeed something of a catharist; and she would not tolerate the smallest departure from the rigid code which she set as the unimpeachable law in these matters. If she was extreme in this wise, at least the extremity was carried in the right direction; and American society, whatever its follies, was pure.
Nor were there wanting many of those in high places to fulfil the statements of Cooper concerning the domesticity of the American wife. In 1824, Mrs. Seaton wrote of Mrs. John C. Calhoun: "You could not fail to love and appreciate, as I do, her charming qualities: a devoted mother, a tender wife, industrious, cheerful, intelligent, with the most perfectly equable temper." Mrs. Crawford, wife of the secretary of war during Monroe's administration, openly regretted that her husband had entered public life, since the duties of the position would make inroads upon the domesticity which she valued as the dearest thing in her existence. On the other hand, these simpler tastes among so many of the higher ladies of the land did not produce lack of culture. John Randolph was no lover of women, and no believer in their entrance into the domain of politics. When on one occasion they crowded the floor as well as the gallery of the Senate to hear him pour forth the rich flood of his eloquence, and he was annoyed by some whisper, he suddenly paused in his speech, pointed his long index finger at the gallery, and demanded: "Mr. Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their knitting!" Yet even John Randolph, misogynist as he was, thus wrote in 1833 t Edward Livingstone concerning the latter's acceptance of the position of minister to France: "In Mrs. Livingstone, to whom present my warmest respects, you have a most able coadjutor.Dowdies, dowdies won't do for European courts, Paris especially. There and at London the character of the minister's wife is almost as important as his own. It is the very place for her. There she would dazzle and charm, and surely the salons of Paris must have far greater attractions for her than the yahoos of Washington."
The last words show Randolph's estimate of Washington society in the mass; but never was there a more prejudiced or bitterer man than he of Roanoke, and his general verdict must not be implicitly accepted.
In 1836 there occurred at the capital an event which was in itself of note, as being contrary to the theories of the day, and which is yet more noteworthy as the first instance in America of a practice which in our day has become common,--the entrance of a woman into journalism. Mrs. Anne Royall founded a paper in the capital, giving it the somewhat suggestive name of theHuntress, and dedicated it chiefly to the promulgation of fashionable news. Thus Mrs. Royall not only became the mother of American women journalists, but absolutely the pioneer of that long line of society reporters who were to become in later days such an accepted and welcomed feature of the social world. The office of theHuntresswas on Capitol Hill, and the paper was published every Saturday; it was eagerly welcomed by society, which up to that time had found its doings sadly neglected in the columns of the journals. Finding the innovation received with a warmth which left no doubt of its popularity, it was adopted by Nathaniel Parker Willis in his letters to the New YorkMirror, and by James Gordon Bennett in his correspondence to theCourier; but Mrs. Royall had the honor, if honor it be, of leading the new movement in journalism. Sooth to say, Mrs. Royall was more progressive than talented in such matters; her pen pictures of the chief components of Washington society showed a distressing sameness, the women whom she favored being always described as of great beauty, having faces of the classic oval, their hair raven or golden in hue, and forms that rivalled that of Venus, while the men were "giants of intellect, with penetrating eyes and expansive brows." Nor was she more restrained in her reprobation than in her admiration, or truer to fact; and John Quincy Adams, when he described her as "the virago-errant in enchanted armor," dealt with her to the full as gently as she deserved.
Her paper ran a longer course than might have been expected under the circumstances; and, in 1847, it contained an announcement which is significant both of the pride of sex in the writer and the growth of prominence among American women in certain lines, when in February of that year it announced: "Washington City has been honored with the presence of three of America's most talented authoresses: Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Mrs. A. L. Phelps, and Mrs. Ann S. Stephens." The fame of the last named of this trio has not survived; but the names of the other two are still known, even if their works are neglected.
The administration of President Harrison brought little addition to the normal gaiety of Washington; but that of President Tyler was in some respects the most brilliant from a social standpoint that the capital had known. Mrs. Tyler's health prevented her from taking the lead in social functions; but her two daughters, Mrs. Lightfoot Jones and Mrs. Semple, admirably filled her place, aided by Mrs. Robert Tyler, the young wife of the president's son. Even a fancy-dress ball was included among the White House entertainments of that time, one being given in honor of the president's little granddaughter, Mary Fairlie Tyler, who appeared thereat as a fairy, with gossamer wings, a diamond star on her brow, and a silver wand in her hand. The ball given at the White House in 1841, in honor of the young Prince de Joinville, was another notable event in the social world. Perhaps a more truly noteworthy function there, however, was the official reception attended by Charles Dickens, who was received by President Tyler and Mrs. Semple, and who afterward spoke in warm terms of the order which was preserved by the concourse of over three thousand people who had been attracted by his fame.
Though there was now no talk of "republican simplicity," there were still some old-fashioned people who were repelled by the ever-increasing dominance of society and social interests at the capital of the nation, and who reprobated the state with which the chief executive and his family held their court. Mrs. Fremont tells us that the second Mrs. Tyler was made the object of much animadversion because "she drove four horses (finer than those of the Russian minister) and because she received seated, her armchair on a slightly raised platform, in a velvet gown with three feathers in her hair;" and certainly, though the number of feathers would seem to have no bearing upon the matter of republicanism, that raised platform is unpleasantly suggestive of the dais of a throne. The first wife of Mr. Tyler died after a residence in the presidential mansion of little more than a year, and her successor in the heart of the president and to the dignities of "the first lady of the land," Miss Julia Gardner, of New York, enjoyed but eight months of official leadership. She was greatly admired for the ease and dignity with which she wore her high honors; but that raised platform suggests that it may not have been ill for some of the still cherished institutions of our country, even in its social aspects, that she was mistress of the White House and its customs no longer than was actually the case.
The last administration during the first half century of the nineteenth of our era, that of President Taylor, was not remarkable for social innovations; but it is noteworthy for the fact that one of the prominent members of the society of the capital was the second Mrs. Jefferson Davis, who, little less than a decade later, was to abandon the sphere of her peaceful influence at Washington to share in the responsibilities of her husband as leader of a cause wholly antagonistic to the interests represented by the capital. The death of President Taylor in July, 1850, cast a gloom over the society of Washington and brings us to another era in the history of American womanhood. Greater gloom was to fall, not only upon Washington, but the whole country; and once more the leaders of society were to be forgotten in the heroines, noted or unnoted, of strife.
Once more it becomes necessary to recognize the division of our country into sections, as in the days before the Revolution welded it into one nation. The time was fast coming when there should be division in good earnest, when there should be even overt separation; and to understand the effects and tendencies of this time among the women of America it is needful that we take into fuller consideration than we have yet done the differences of custom and thought that existed between the women of the South and the women of the North. For though these met upon common ground and blended in a society which saw but little variation in the types presented to it, there had been constantly growing, since the time of the first amalgamation of the colonies into one nation, differences between the Northern and the Southern cultures that were little less than radical in their ultimate nature and expressions.
The distinctiveness of type had come about gradually; but it had always existed as a possibility, even in the youngest days of the republic. The conditions of civilization North and South were in themselves divergent, and they were sure to produce an ever-increasing effect. The North was the land of affairs; the South was the home of luxury. The North worked for itself and won its sustenance by the labor of its own hands or brain; the South watched its wealth accumulate by the toil of its slaves, and thus had time and to spare for the cultivation of the graces which come of leisure. Up to the inception of the Civil War it cannot be denied that the South was preeminently the fountain of American society. Even as Virginia was the Mother of Presidents, so was the whole South the parent of the most charming, the most refined, the most cultured of the dames and damsels who held society aloft upon their lovely shoulders. The superiority was not of kind, for in this the North steadily held its own, as was but natural; it was of numbers. For every recognized ornament to society sent by the North to grace the circles of Washington, the South sent two.
When the century passed its meridian and turned to the descending road there had come about a practical division of the country into two sections once more. Not only in feeling,--which, however, was subdued and hardly expressed save by the more bitter partisans, at least among the women,--but in nature. While the higher ideals of the woman of the North and her of the South were the same, they differed in nearly everything that made for progress toward the goal they sought. The tendency toward aristocratic ideas had taken unwonted shape toward the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. According to the false ideal which had come to take the place of the higher one of earlier days, the Southern woman was parexcellencethe aristocrat of America. She was lapped in luxury; she was surrounded by every refinement; she was waited upon by hosts of servants; she was the representative in many ways of the feudal chatelaine of olden times in England, with added refinements of culture and luxury. But all this was bought, though she did not then see the truth, at a terrible price. The Southern conditions, brought about by the institution of slavery, bore most heavily in effect upon the men of that section; but the women also were in danger of forgetting the strength of their womanhood in the idleness of untroubled days and in the lack of power that results from the transfer of all burdens to the shoulders of others.
A SOUTHERN WEDDINGAfter the painting by E. L. Henry
Nor with all the social distinction of the southern household was there a sacrifice of a single charm of home life. Every important domestic event was attended with becoming ceremony. The arrival of the newborn, the home gatherings of later years, and the wedding,--these were occasions to be celebrated by all; occasions when the tenderest family sentiment was manifested.
The life of the typical Virginia lady of those luxurious days was an unending round of social pleasures, and this life in its turn was typical of that of the Southern woman of refinement in all sections, though presenting that life in its most enlarged and broadened aspects. She had her responsibilities, and she recognized them; she was the queen of a vast estate, on which many souls looked to her for comfort and help, and, as a rule, she responded to their call with all alacrity. To her slaves, at least as far as the house servants were concerned, she was friend rather than mistress, acknowledging them as part of her family and caring for them almost as for her own children. But the trouble was that she generally did these things vicariously; she delegated her powers, seeing to it, indeed, that they were administered as she would have them, but herself doing little. She was given over, for her own part, to the demands of society and to the requirements of hospitality; and Southern hospitality is proverbial, and the courtly welcome and gracious attentions of the hostess of the plantation mansion in the ante-bellum days were among the most agreeable and vivid impressions of her guests. Nor with all the social distinction of the southern household was there a sacrifice of a single charm of home life. Every important domestic event was attended with becoming ceremony. The arrival of the newborn, the home gatherings of later years, and the wedding,--these were occasions to be celebrated by all; occasions when the tenderest family sentiment was manifested. At such times, it may be remarked, the system of domestic slavery appealed rather as a virtue than as a stain, for the household slaves were interested sharers in the joys of the family. In this connection, one is reminded of the Georgia negress who, on being asked if she were the slave of a certain person, replied: "Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me."
In her home the typical Virginia lady did little with her own hands; she directed, but she would have thought it shame to labor even in such a cause. Her hands were too delicate to work, her feet too dainty to press the ground; she never walked where she could ride, and carriages were always at her command. Her winters, if she lived on her plantation, were passed in a round of pleasures, of balls and minor social functions; her summers she spent at the famous "Springs," whither she drove in her cumbrous but comfortable carriage,--in which way, indeed, some of the more enthusiastic lovers of those "Springs" came even from the southernmost bournes of the land. A friend of the writer, for instance, once told him how she had often travelled in this manner from New Orleans to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs in those halcyon days "before the war."
The Northern dame, she of New York or Boston or of those dwelling in the rural districts, knew little of such luxuries as these. Between the Southern lady and the Northern there was one radical point of difference in those days which was more effective to separate their ideas and ideals than might be thought: the former was a dweller in the country, the latter in cities. Type is here spoken of. The typical Southern lady was found on the plantation, the typical Northern lady in the heart of the city. This condition was imposed upon the wealthiest and most cultured of each section by the variant conditions under which they lived; it was in her own home that the Southern woman found the most power for her wealth, in the city that the Northern woman alone found avenues for her money to buy for her the best things of culture, material or mental. And this severance made for certain results. The Southern woman held to isolation of rule as the best that she knew; the Northern woman believed that in segregation and community of interests alone came hope of the best. These theories were unrecognized; but they were inherent and dominant.
Moreover, there still existed in the North, especially in the further removed sections, a strong leaven of the old Puritan spirit; and this could neither understand nor tolerate the spirit of luxury that reigned in the South. Each section misunderstood and unjustly contemned the other. To the Northern woman, she of the South was a pampered aristocrat of the most ignoble kind, caring for nothing but the gratification of her luxurious tastes, battening on the sufferings of a humanity which she bought and sold as cattle, an Augusta in her luxuries and love of self; to the Southern woman, she of the North was cold, hard, uncultured, unrefined, plebeian in tastes and existence, and generally on a lower plane than the daughter of the Cavaliers. The Southern woman despised her sister of the North; the Northern woman hated her sister of the South. Where there was meeting and blending on the contiguous limits of the sections there was more of understanding and therefore of toleration for the points of severance of ideas; but even here there was cause of strife in the heated politics which had for some time been appealing to the passions of our statesmen. With the quick enthusiasm in such matters that is an attribute of their sex and which blinds women even more than men to the calmer suggestions of reason, the women of the country became divided into two bitterly hostile camps because of the matters which their husbands and brothers discussed in the councils of the nation. It is true that in this case the main question at issue had unwonted appeal to the women themselves; for she of the South saw her wealth and luxury threatened by the Abolitionists, while she of the North made herself a part of the cause of ill-treated humanity, as she deemed it. Had the men been able to restrain the passions which at this time stirred them almost to frenzy, the women would not have permitted the glowing embers to become extinguished without being fanned into red flame.
That the women of our country were largely instrumental in bringing about the fratricidal strife which shook that country to its centre cannot be denied. Even such firebrands as Phillips and Garrison did not incite so bitter a spirit as did the many women who espoused their cause. It was a time of fanaticism in the North and fury in the South; and both these feelings reached their culmination in the women of the sections. One of the most powerful influences for the making of discord was from the hand of a woman, when Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wroteUncle Tom's Cabinand thereby led much of the thought and prejudices of both sections into utterly false channels. The South, and especially its women, saw in the book a vile libel upon its culture, a base slander of its most representative institutions; the North, especially its women, accepted the book as literal fact and looked upon their brothers and sisters of the South as slave-drivers and cruel task-mistresses, building the structure of their wealth and luxury upon the crushed bodies of their weaker and more degraded fellows and careless of the bitter moans of the oppressed. The acceptance by the North of the book as fact embittered the South, conscious of the injustice of the thing, to the last degree, while the North upon that utterly inadequate authority reviled the South for the imaginary crimes which were rife in its midst.
The question of the limitation of slavery had been long before the country and had produced much bitterness of feeling on both sides; but the idea of the sudden abolishment of the institution, "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must," was of new growth in the decade preceding the war, at least in any coherent and prominent form. In the South were many women as well as men who, while they accepted and tried to make the best of the institution which had been handed down to them by their ancestors, were at heart as eager Abolitionists as any of the North; but they knew that such a radical change must be brought about by gradual steps or it would open the way to yet greater evils, of which the sudden impoverishment of the section was not the greatest. In the North were men and women who held themselves aloof from the rabid fanaticism of their day, and while they heartily desired the eradication of the taint of slavery from the country which boasted of its freedom, yet were willing to trust to time and the growth of principle for the result which they desired. But on both sides these conservatives were unfortunately in the minority and their influence was of no avail; on both sides they were looked upon as traitors to the cause which they loved best and most wisely of all.
There might have been hope of compromise; the fanatics were still in the minority among the men who governed the destinies of the nation, and while there was bitterness and even hatred rife among these men, there was yet stronger dread of open separation, so that there might have been reached some conclusion which would have been productive of results satisfactory in the main to both sides, though not in full measure; but the women would not have it so. They flung themselves into politics with a fervor that was fatal to all the interests of peace; for those of the North could not understand any toleration of "the accursed thing," while they of the South demanded that their husbands and lovers should resent the insult which had been imposed upon Southern womanhood in the vile slanders which were freely circulated in Abolitionist circles. That these slanders were the voice of fanaticism and not of mere hatred was not understood; that they were reprobated by the better elements of the North was not believed.
In both sections an appeal to arms was talked of if secession were adopted and resisted. At first this was but idle menace; but it gradually grew to the proportions of stern determination at least in one of the sections, and by none was it so eagerly welcomed and fanned as by the women. "The peace of them that make peace" was not for the American woman of that time; all the natural militancy of the feminine nature was aroused to its highest pitch, and it was more at the instigation of hatred than as an appeal to justice that the thought of war was dear to the women of our riven country. Riven it was already in spirit, though not as yet in fact; the shadow of coming strife lay heavy on the land long before it took substance. There were still those, chiefly among the men, who believed that from all this lurid smoke there would result nothing worse than smouldering embers, which would eventually perish unharmful; that thus it could not be was owing in greatest part to the influence of those who in the bitter days to come were to bear the brunt of the suffering and agony of war, the women of America.
It is grateful to turn for a moment to look upon the last days of Washington society under the old regime. Buchanan was the last of the old-time presidents, and under his administration Washington society went its normal way of gaiety, though disturbed in its enjoyment by the thickening cloud that hung over the land and gathered most darkly at the capital. President Buchanan was a bachelor; but his mansion did not lack female rule, for his niece, Harriet Lane, took upon herself the onerous duties of mistress of the White House, and never were they more gracefully fulfilled. Young as she was, she had few rivals and no superiors in knowledge of the requirements of her position and ability to meet those requirements; never was the White House ruled in more dignified and gracious manner than by this young woman. She had had excellent training for her dignities; when her uncle, in 1852, was sent as Minister to the Court of Saint James, she accompanied him thither, and her beauty and accomplishments won instantaneous recognition and admiration from the most prejudiced of English critics in these matters. Her character was as admirable and admired as was her beauty, and she was in all ways fitted to grace a court, hether that court were royal or republican.
During the four years of her uncle's stormy administration she ruled the social world of Washington as of right and title, and her rule was on all sides acknowledged to be worthy of allegiance. It was the last day of old-time American society, and it died in splendor. No more courteous and cultured gentleman than James Buchanan ever occupied the White House as its master, even though as a statesman he was sadly lacking in the qualities which were demanded by the circumstances of his times; no more gracious lady than Harriet Lane ever presided over the social destinies of the presidential mansion, and with her there is no need of limiting statement in modification of the praise bestowed.
When the time came for Buchanan to surrender into the hands of a stronger man the reins of government, Miss Lane retired with him to Wheatland, his country seat, where the pair spent together the stormy years of the Civil War. In 1866, Miss Lane married Henry Elliott Johnston, of Baltimore, who died in 1884, his two sons, all that were born of the marriage, having preceded him to the grave. Thus Mrs. Johnston was left alone; and thus she still lives on, the sole remaining link between the White House of the days before the Civil War and the present time. She alone, of all who ruled as social queen of the country in the time when this meant far more than now, is left to us; and she lives in the same quiet dignity with which she once placed the stamp of her individuality upon the social functions of the presidential mansion and made them truly noteworthy. Upon the accession of Edward VII. of England, that king, who had been elaborately entertained by Miss Lane and her uncle at the White House during his visit to this country in 1860, sent to Mrs. Johnston a personal invitation to be present at his approaching coronation; and his cordial letter showed in what high esteem he held the gracious lady whose kindness to him in his youth had dwelt so long in his memory. It was a deserved recognition of the charm that had made notable the last lady ruler of the White House in its days of social eminence, and the act was as graceful as deserved.
So, in Harriet Lane Johnston, we find the last surviving memory of the court society of the elder days of our country. With her exit from the White House went also the traditions of the social past, and with her exit from life will go also the last of a line of acknowledged rulers, little less than regal in their dignities, of the social world of America.
It is now necessary to turn again to the subject of the war between the sections. Darker and darker grew the threatening cloud, until it was rent by a bolt which fell with fatal effect and set the whole land in a blaze. This was the famous insurrection of John Brown, which knew its inception and inglorious end at Harper's Ferry. It is not easy for us at this time to appreciate the aspects of "John Brown's raid," as it presented itself to the North and the South, and the aspect which it especially bore to the women of the latter section has never been given its full importance at the hands of chroniclers. Brown's acknowledged and boasted purpose to set free the slaves and arm them against their masters in insurrection was looked upon by every Southern woman as a direct threat--of which the carrying out was averted only by the hand of an over-ruling Providence--against that which her womanhood most prized. She knew what would have been the effect of the loosing upon the community of a horde of semi-savages, mad with the lust of blood and rapine, drunk with the liberty which they would look upon as unbridled license; for such, as she well knew, would the majority of the slaves become under conditions which would appeal to their worst side and would in their novelty lead to all excess. The narrow view which sees in the burning anger of the South toward this attempt only dread of loss of property is utterly false; it was the personal aspect of the matter which appealed to every Southern woman, and, because of this, to every Southern man. Even the partial success of such an attempt would have meant ruined and dishonored homes throughout the Southern land; the honor of its women, that most precious of all possessions, was in peril in such enterprise, and it was the threat against this that set the Southland aflame with rage against the would-be perpetrators of such an atrocity. It was not the menace to property or even to life; it was