Chapter I: CANNOT remember when my father began his anti-slavery work, because at (1)

that time I was an infant. It was the kidnapping of a runaway negro in the streets of Boston that roused him to action. He called a meeting in Faneuil Hall over which John Quincy Adams presided. My father made the principal address. Colonel Higginson tells us that “Every sentence was a sword-thrust.” The result of the meeting was the formation of a Vigilance Committee of forty with my father as chairman. Its object was to prevent the returning of fugitives to the slavery from which they had escaped. To the descendants of the men who had fought in the Revolution for the cause of Liberty, the thought that “the port of Boston had been opened to the slave-trader” was intolerable.

The records of that Vigilance Committee have never been published. It is to be hoped that some day they will be, unless they have been destroyed. Thomas Wentworth Higginson has told us that my father’s part in the anti-slavery movement was almost unique and wholly characteristic of the man, who was a natural crusader or paladin.

The little Howes did not know of the existence of this committee. Neither did we know of our father’s strenuous labors in connection with the election to the Senate of his friend Charles Sumner. We were too young to be intrusted with state secrets. But from our early childhood my father taught us to love freedom and to hate slavery. He told us of the successive aggressions of the slave power and of the steps by which it had grown to threaten the whole land. We learned of the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott Decision, the Kansas and Nebraska Bill.

We knew these, not as dry political facts from the office of a lawyer, but as the successive invasions of a fire that was destined, ere many years had passed, to involve our beloved country in the terrible conflagration of the Civil War. To my father and his co-workers in the anti-slavery cause, these successive encroachments of slavery on the territory which the framers of our Federal Constitution had declared should remain eternally free, were a growing menace of evil. He strongly impressed upon our minds the sin of compromise of principle. Did he not see, in the bloody struggle in Kansas, the sinister results of those weak yieldings of the North?

The electric current of indignation that thrilled through our home we felt very strongly, as we did the stir of action. Lowell’s lines, splendid in themselves, gained a new force and intensity as my father repeated them to us.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Sometimes I would hear him and his friends talking together over the political situation with deep earnestness and indignation. Those were exciting days. As children, we knew nothing of the approaching storm, but we felt the stir in the air!

Brother Harry, a child of eleven, wrote an indignant letter, after the capture of John Brown, to Governor Wise of Virginia. As it was couched in abusive terms, I fear it was never mailed. Since few of our young mates agreed with us in opinion, we had many arguments. In the early days one of our friends at the Stevenson School laughingly called us “Little Free-dirters,” because we belonged to the Free Soil party. As events moved rapidly forward feeling grew more intense. We were very indignant at the deadly assault in the Senate Chamber upon our friend, Charles Sumner. As he sat pinioned down by his desk, and so unable to rise, blows with a loaded cane were showered upon his head. Some of the girls of our acquaintance sought to justify the attack. We countered with the testimony of Henry Wilson (later Vice-President of the United States), who had witnessed the scene where a colleague of Preston Brooks stood guard, a pistol in either hand, to prevent any interference in behalf of Sumner. For a long time, the victim’s life was in danger. His seat in the Senate remained “eloquently empty” for three years. Yet Charles Sumner lived to see slavery overthrown and the United States a free country. Within a year his young assailant died of membranous croup. It was thought that remorse for his brutal deed hastened his death.

We children heard of Sumner’s great sufferings, and of the cruel “Mochsa” treatment—the burning of his back.

In the Presidential election of 1856 we were greatly interested. I remember a political procession in which a dead deer was borne aloft with the device, “Old Buck Is Dead.” The result of the election was not certain for some time. We held on to hope as long as we could. From California no word could come for ten days! I asked my father whether the result there might not change the result. He said, “No. There is enough to settle the hash without California.” James Buchanan, the last President of the slavery era, had indeed been elected.

My father was deeply interested in the struggle for freedom in Kansas. When the colonists from the free states were almost overpowered by the border ruffians, he again called a Faneuil Hall meeting where money was raised and sent to help the settlers. He himself went out there, with great risk to his life.

In the spring of 1857 my mother and I accompanied him on one of his trips to Kansas, but, as I became ill at Louisville, he went on without us. Part of our journey was made on the large steamboats of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Great was the horror of the other women when my mother took out a pack of cards to amuse me. This was owing to the prevalence of gambling in that section of the country. Many years later, in traveling through the Middle West, I found this prejudice had not wholly died out.

There was little to do during the long spring days when the steamboats sailed along the great, quiet rivers. It seemed very strange that every one rushed so to get through the meals quickly. As the service was _table d’hôte_, it is possible that people hurried in order to get all that they could before the food was removed. My mother always made a practice of eating slowly; hence her excellent digestion.

On this trip our mother purchased a red toy balloon for brother Harry. It was then a novelty and cost something like a dollar. As it was affixed to the tail of one of our dogs, it did not long survive. We had supposed this fascinating object would be a lasting investment.

On our outward journey we stopped overnight at Harper’s Ferry. I remember climbing the hill and looking down upon the valley where the Judas tree was in blossom. Did it bloom in somber foreboding of the blood to be shed there, a little later, in the John Brown raid and in the Civil War?

I remember too vast engines with which we climbed the terrifying slopes of the Alleghanies. No sleeping-cars were then to be seen, but only cars with reclining chairs. Hence the advisability of traveling by water whenever possible.

At Cincinnati, then the principal city of that part of the country and much larger than Chicago, we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. William Greene, the former a cousin of Grandfather Ward. We visited the observatory and the Longworths’ wine-cellar, where I was discovered in a corner, a glass of champagne tilted up against my nose. At the age of eleven I saw no reason why I should _not_ partake of the wine, since they were kind enough to offer it to me.

My memories of Louisville, Kentucky, are sinister. Here we were shown the spot where several negroes had been lynched. We also went to court, where a man was on trial for the murder of his wife. From the appearance of his face, I fancy he must have committed the crime while drunk.

We stayed also at the house of my father’s great friend, Horace Mann, then president of Antioch College, a coeducational institution of Ohio. Mrs. Mann believed in using cream in cooking, rather than butter. If you had no cream, you thickened milk with flour! The Manns were “so glad to see us they almost ate us up”! Mrs. Mann was a woman of intellectual tastes and interested in good works. She was the sister of the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne and of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who first introduced the kindergarten in America.

Horace Mann himself had a pleasant, kindly face and beautiful snow-white hair parted in the middle. This had suddenly turned white (in a single night, it was said) through grief at the death of his first wife.

In this year, 1857, there was a terrible financial panic, of which I heard some echoes. Nickel cents were then first coined, replacing the large copper ones we had used previously.

During the winter of 1860–61 we heard rumors of war and secession. Some young friends, the sons of Admiral Winslow of _Kearsarge_ fame, had visited the South, and assured us that serious preparations were going on there. Still, we of the North hardly dreamed of the struggle to come. Meantime traitorous officials of the federal government were transferring supplies of arms to the Southern states, knowing well these would soon be used against the nation’s life. Officers trained at West Point and bound by oath to support the government to which they owed not only allegiance, but their education, were resigning from the regular army and going to the South. The North in 1861, like the English in 1914, was unprepared. Many attempts have been made to disguise the issue. Fifty years hence, when all the passions roused by the Civil War have died away, as I pray they may, the truth will stand out clearly. For the rest, it was clear enough in 1860–61. As soon as the Republican party came into power, on a platform declaring, as the framers of the Constitution had declared, that slavery should be extended no farther, the Southern states seceded.

My father was one of those who from the very beginning saw the issue clearly. When the news of the firing on Sumter was received he came, with his quick, active step and gallant bearing, into the nursery at “Green Peace,” crying out to us:

“Sumter has been fired upon! That’s the death-blow of slavery!”

He rejoiced that the irrepressible conflict had begun. Of course he did not foresee—who could?—that the struggle would be so long and so terrible. But he knew it must come. Throughout those four years he never lost faith that the right would triumph. On learning of the attack on Sumter, he wrote at once to Governor Andrew:

Since they will have it so—in the name of God, Amen! Now let all
the governors and chief men of the people see to it that war
shall not cease until emancipation is secure. If I can be of any
use, anywhere, in any capacity (save that of spy), command
me.[9]

Footnote 9:

from _Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe_. Dana, Estes & Co.

At the age of sixty, he was too old and too infirm in health to take the field as a soldier. But his early experiences in Greece enabled him to give valuable assistance in safeguarding the health of the army. Both Governor Andrew and Abraham Lincoln were glad to accept my father’s offer of his services. On the formation of the Sanitary Commission, he was appointed a member of the board. His letters and reports are expressed in his usual terse and vigorous style.

When Fort Sumter was fired upon a splendid wave of patriotism swept over the country. That shot, the attack upon the flag, consolidated the men of the North as nothing else could have done. “The Union, it must and shall be preserved,” was the shibboleth of the hour. Democrats and Whigs, as well as Republicans, rallied everywhere to the defense of the Union.

It was said that if the Confederates had kept to the old flag, instead of adopting a new one, they might have won. Yet we know that was impossible, because the corner-stone of the sovereignty they sought to establish was human slavery. The politicians and leaders of thought on both sides knew this perfectly well from the beginning. The rank and file at first felt it only dimly. But in the Northern army the men who were doing the actual fighting were not long in doubt as to the real issues of the conflict. They sang:

“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the ground,
His soul is marching on.”

Old John Brown, who had died on the gallows that men might be free! They had hanged him and buried him in the ground, but his spirit led the Northern troops to victory! The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was a nobler expression of the idea dimly outlined in the John Brown song.

Reading in later years the accounts written by Southern men and women, I have realized that the war was never brought home to us in New England in the same way as to the people of the South. It never came near us, nor did we expect it would. Some timid souls were anxious lest the Confederate rams should visit our Northern ports. But this was only a brief scare.

While we were spared the grim horrors of actual warfare in our midst, almost every aspect of life was affected by the four years’ conflict. In the spring of 1861, on my daily walk to Boston, I saw the posters calling for seventy-five thousand troops to serve for three months. We heard with deep indignation of the assault of the plug-uglies on the Massachusetts regiments as these passed through Baltimore. Several soldiers were killed—the sons of the Old Bay State being the first to shed their blood in defense of the Union.

During the stormy prelude to the Civil War my mother had written many verses expressing her indignation at the crime against Kansas, the attack on Charles Sumner, and the treatment of John Brown, as well as her hatred of slavery itself. While the war was in progress her pen continued active in the cause of human freedom and of patriotism. We of the younger generation were especially interested in the composition of “Our Country” because the music was written by our master, Otto Dresel. The song had power and dignity, with the swing important in music of this sort. A prize had been offered for a national song, but I do not think it was ever awarded. To my mother’s regret, Mr. Dresel afterward decided to use the tune as a setting for Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “Army Hymn.” She told him that the words and music belonged together and ought not to be divorced.

The hour was not yet ripe for the writing of a true national song. In these earlier poems we see how much my mother was moved by the tragic events of the day as the panorama of our national history unfolded itself before her eyes. The white heat of emotion was only reached when she saw the stern realities of war—the bivouacs, the camp-fires, the rows of burnished steel, the hosts of our country’s defenders. The soul of that army, the army of freedom, took possession of her after that wonderful day when her carriage was surrounded by the marching soldiers. That night the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written.

So she gave back to the soldiers of the Republic their half-expressed aspiration, clothed now in words of fire. In every hour of national crisis, whenever our country is in danger, those words flame up anew in the hearts of men.

Nor are they for our country only. In this present war they have been sung with wonderful effect under the great dome of old Saint Paul’s in London as well as at the battle-front. For the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” terrible as it is, is a Christian song. No one could have written it who was not familiar with the language and imagery of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New. It was the daughter of Samuel Ward, Puritan, who wrote, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” But it was the wife of the old Revolutionist, the man whose life had been one long battle in behalf of his fellow-men, who wrote, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.”

“The Flag” was written after the second battle of Bull Run. In ante-bellum days Newport had been a place of summer resort for Southerners, some of whom appeared there during the first year of the war. They behaved very badly toward the flag. Women would draw aside the full skirts, then universally worn, to prevent their touching the Stars and Stripes. It was said that in the Episcopal Church, when the prayer for the President of the United States was read, the “Secesh” would rise from their knees to mark their dissent, resuming their attitude of devotion at its conclusion. I have always fancied that the line, “Salute the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule,”, was inspired by the behavior of the “Secesh” toward “Old Glory.” General Dix’s famous saying, “If any man attempts to pull down the flag, shoot him on the spot,” was much quoted in those days.

The attitude of the Southerners was very irritating. They really supposed themselves to be the superiors of the Northern men. The former subserviency of the latter in political matters was one reason of this belief. Another was that constant association with an inferior race, the negroes, had given them an exaggerated idea of their own talents and capacity. We know now that this was, and still is, a great misfortune to them.

When the members of a certain family expatiated in our presence on the whipping the North was to receive at the hands of the South we were not pleased.

My mother decided to give them a lesson. At one of our Paradise picnics she asked Mrs. David Hall, the mother of my future husband, to personate America. There was a certain realism in the selection, for Mrs. Hall’s eldest son, Rowland Minturn Hall, was then fighting for our country in the Northern army. We crowned her with flowers as the queen of the occasion and saluted her with patriotic songs.

We did not feel very pleasantly toward Jefferson Davis, whose ambition had much to do with bringing on the war. A photograph of him, in the likeness of the Devil, was circulated, while the soldiers sang:

“We’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple-tree.”

By a strange caprice of fate a carriage intended for the President of the Southern Confederacy fell into the hands of a Northern abolitionist. Owing to the war, the vehicle could not be delivered to Mr. Davis, and my father bought it. It was a closed carriage, more strongly built than the Confederacy itself, and lasted for many years. If we wished to go to Newport on a rainy day, some one would say, “Oh, take the Jeff Davis, and you won’t get wet!”

For the first two years of the war we were disheartened by repeated defeats. In McClellan my father never believed, and we were glad when he was displaced.

After a long period of anxious waiting we were rejoiced by the taking of Vicksburg and the victory over Lee at Gettysburg, all on one glorious Fourth of July. The tide had turned at last!

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XII

WORK FOR THE SOLDIERS

_Knitting and Scraping Lint.—Sewing-circles.—Fairs for the Army and the
Navy.—“The Boatswain’s Whistle.”—Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis.—Visiting
the Camp at Readville.—Governor N. P. Banks.—Governor John A.
Andrew.—Parade of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery.—Death of
Little Sammy.—Assassination of Lincoln.—My Father Serves on the
Freedmen’s Commission._

WORK for the soldiers began promptly. In the general enthusiasm for knitting some one asked our minister, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, whether it was right to do this work on Sunday. Any lingering doubts vanished when he returned home and found his wife, a woman of saintly character, lying down to rest, her needles still flying! Plain knitting I had mastered long before, but now I learned to make stockings. My first pair were by no means mates. As I learned to knit better, and so more loosely, the second stocking bloomed to a tremendous size! I could only survey it sadly in the fond hope that shrinking in hot water might reduce it to the size of its companion.

We all scraped lint and there were sewing-circles in the afternoon and in the evening. The latter were the more festive, gentlemen coming in after our work was done.

The Sanitary Commission then occupied much the same position that the Red Cross does to-day. Women showed the greatest zeal in working for it, though their efforts were not always wisely directed.

The great patriotic fairs were a striking feature of war-days. The one held in New York for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission was the largest of all. The tremendous labor involved killed the noble woman who took a leading part in it. Boston also held a great bazaar for the benefit of the National Sailors’ Home, in which we assisted my mother. She was editor of the fair newspaper, _The Boatswain’s Whistle_. I remember the discussion of the title with William Morris Hunt, the artist, who imitated the action of the boatswain piping up aloft. He possessed the power to present, in this way, pictures which his striking head and figure made perfect. Doubtless he would have made a fine actor.

At the head of the little newspaper stood the device of the boatswain designed by Mr. Hunt. My mother had the assistance of some of our best-known writers, but the responsibility and the heaviest share of labor she bore herself. Mr. James C. Davis helped in the work of arranging the paper, but it was necessary also to employ a professional person who understood the technicalities of the “make-up.”

The Great Fair was held in the Boston Theater, and lasted some ten days. Every variety of object was sold there—many by means of raffles. It seemed fitting that there should be a table for the sale of our paper. We of the younger generation duly established ourselves in charge of it—selling also stationery and small articles. We thought it all great fun. I am ashamed to think how much we tormented Mrs. Hooper, the lady at the head of the fair management, for our various small needs.

Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, who occupied a unique position in the Boston society of that day, was prominent among the women who worked for the national cause. She had been beautiful in her youth, but retained no vestige of good looks that were perceptible to the clear, cruel eyes of youth. I could hardly believe my father when he told us of her former sylph-like slenderness.

For many years she gave a reception on the morning of Washington’s Birthday, which the whole world of society attended. My mother took us once, when we found Mrs. Otis arrayed in a low-necked black dress, with a black velvet head-dress. Her black hair was arranged in puffs or bandeaux coming down over the ears, a style extremely unbecoming to the lined face of an elderly woman. Mrs. Otis was tall and dignified, standing to receive her guests. The entire house was thrown open to visitors, who wandered up and down-stairs at will.

It already has been said that my father was too old for military service. Brother Harry was too young, being only thirteen when war broke out. The only near relatives who joined the army were two cousins of my mother, William Greene Ward and John Ward, and my father’s nephew, Thomas Beale Wales, Jr. Fortunately, none of the three was wounded. The two Wards were taken prisoner at Harper’s Ferry, but were paroled.

Many of the young men of our acquaintance joined the army, some of them never to return. A sad case was that of Charlie Hickling, whose slight frame held a heroic spirit. In spite of his frail physique, he insisted on enlisting, only to return hopelessly broken in health. He died not long afterward.

Tragedies were all around us. I was staying with my dear friend, Alice Weld, at Jamaica Plain, when news arrived of the capture of her brother, Stephen Minot Weld, Jr. The anxiety of his father may be imagined, yet he took the blow bravely. The horrors of the Southern prisons made confinement there a thing to be greatly dreaded. Libby was bad enough, but of Andersonville one cannot speak or think without deep indignation. I shall never forget the appearance of Arthur Sedgwick soon after his return from a Southern prison. With great black hollows under his eyes, he looked like a walking ghost.

Another tragic picture comes to my mind. We were passing the day quietly at Lawton’s Valley when suddenly a distracted figure appeared among us. It was that of Mrs. McDonald—“D.D.,” as we affectionately called her—the matron of the School for Idiots. Her hair, always neatly arranged, was now blown by the wind and wet with the rain, but she was too deeply moved to think of that. She had braved the storm and come, in an open wagon, to seek help and comfort from the “Doctor”—a tower of strength to all who knew him. Her adored eldest son, serving on the Christian Commission, had been taken prisoner. After a time he came back to her, only to die a year or two later of tuberculosis. Like many other persons at that time, Mrs. McDonald found comfort in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s “Gates Ajar.” This was written, it will be remembered, after the author herself had passed through the bitterest sorrow.

From the window of Miss Clapp’s school in Boston we saw the funeral cortege of Arthur Dehon Hill, who had been killed in the war. At the time we knew the family very slightly. A thoughtless school-girl, I little realized what death and sorrow meant. Six months later, when my own little brother died, I learned the sad lesson which all must learn for themselves.

Visits to the camp at Readville, near Boston, were the order of the day, but, according to etiquette, these were made very sparingly. It was said of the Misses X—— that they went so often the officers could hardly find time to change their clothes!

One of our friends arranged an expedition for us, our chaperon agreeing to join us in Readville. This young girl was terribly pestered by aunts, of whom she possessed eleven. She was wont to complain that wherever she went, an aunt was sure to appear on the scene!

One of the eleven heard of the proposed expedition, and jumped to the conclusion that a chaperon in the hand was worth several in the bush. Accordingly, when our carriage started for Readville, another, containing the aunt and her fellow-conspirators, followed close behind. This greatly fretted our young companion, who, at the age of twenty, felt she was too old to need supervision. The expected chaperon failed to appear and the troublesome aunt serenely took charge of our expedition.

Among the members of the Vigilance Committee mentioned earlier in this chapter was John Albion Andrew.

One of the occasions when I remember seeing the man who was afterward the great war Governor of Massachusetts was at the parade of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery. In ante-bellum days this event elicited popular interest and was conducted with some formality. It was held on Boston Common, where the Governor reviewed the troop. The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company has the unique distinction of consisting wholly of former officers of other militia companies. They wear a motley variety of uniforms, producing a picturesque but singular effect.

Nathaniel P. Banks, a fine-looking man with thick, iron-gray hair, was at this time Governor of the state. His imposing and martial air enabled him to appear to advantage at a military festival. His deep voice and good delivery made him effective as a speaker in a day when oratory was still highly considered. As a warrior he was not a success.

My mother used to tell us, with a mischievous air, a story of his experience in the army. On receiving a report that the enemy was attacking in force, he replied, laconically:

_“Let them be repulsed forthwith.”_

I remember how jolly and merry Mr. Andrew was as we stood, a party of plain citizens, in the throng that pressed as near as they could to the rope which divided us from the glory of uniforms blazing within the charmed circle. In those early days our beloved friend was the most delightful companion, brimful of fun, singing comic songs and telling funny stories, to the great delight of the Howe children. I remember hearing him repeat with gusto a ridiculous mock sermon from the text, “And they shall flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, where the lion roareth and the whangdoodle mourneth for its first-born.”

Although he amused us with the “flatboat” sermon, he was a truly religious man whose sympathies were by no means limited to his own sect.

In figure he was short and stout. His round, smooth face, fair, close-curling hair, and blue eyes, reminded one of a benevolent cherub in spectacles. His mouth was like a woman’s, it was so pretty and sensitive, yet, when the occasion called for it, his face never lacked the dignity of expression springing from serious and noble purpose.

We were present at his inauguration as Governor, and also on the occasion when he received, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the gun that had belonged to Theodore Parker’s grandfather. This was one of the guns that fired, at the battle of Lexington, the shot heard around the world. Governor Andrew, filled with an emotion shared by the audience, kissed the weapon as he was about to give it up. Whereupon _Vanity Fair_, the comic newspaper of the period, published an absurd cartoon representing the audience weeping floods of tears and waving their handkerchiefs, the people in the pit holding up umbrellas to ward off the briny stream dropping from the galleries!

In the days before he took office, Governor Andrew had been a familiar and delightful friend who came often to “Green Peace” and visited us also at Lawton’s Valley. Mrs. Andrew, who was a very pretty woman, usually accompanied him. His son, John Forrester, a pretty, fair-haired boy, later a member of Congress, we often saw, as well as the daughters. Elizabeth, or Bessie, looked very much like her father, and was said to be like him in character. Edith was a great friend of my sister Maud.

After our friend became Governor and the Great Rebellion cast its dark shadow—the shadow of the cross—upon his path, we saw him less frequently. The cares of office weighed heavily upon him in those terrible days of the war. We began to miss him from his accustomed seat in the Church of the Disciples—he could not even go to church because so many people followed and waylaid him with their endless petitions. We heard with indignation of the box of copperhead snakes sent him by some wicked person.

Toward the close of the war my mother and I had the pleasure of going, as members of the Governor’s party, to the Agricultural Fair and Ball at Barnstable. Usually the cadets accompanied him as escort, but this time the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company were chosen for the honor. We were disappointed at the exchange, for the Independent Corps of Cadets contained a number of young men whom we knew. However, the “Ancients” undeniably furnished a sufficient number of partners. This affair has been described in my mother’s _Reminiscences_ and in her _Life_.

One verse in her humorous account of it records, the leniency of Governor Andrew:

Governor A. won’t hang for homicide,
That’s a point that bothers us all.
He must banish ever from his side
Such as murdered the Barnstable Ball.

Our friend had received some criticism for refusing to sign the death warrant of a condemned murderer. He justified his action on the legal ground that, since the man had been judged only on his own confession, it was not right to hang him without a full and fair trial. When the war was over, Governor Andrew retired to private life, resuming the practice of his profession. The strain upon him had been tremendous. He laughingly said: “It’s nip and tuck. I may bust my boiler, or I may not.” Alas! A stroke of apoplexy carried him off while still under fifty years of age. He was as much a victim of the Civil War as if he had died on the field of battle.

On the morning of Saturday, April 19, 1865, came the terrible news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the murderous attack on Secretary Seward and his son. Evidently there was a plot on foot to kill the chief officials of the national government. To the deep sorrow at the death of the beloved President was added the fear of the unknown evils threatening us and great indignation at the dastardly deed. How wide-spread the plot might be we did not know. Grief for the death of Lincoln was the predominant feeling. The sudden and tragic ending of his career showed his countrymen, as by a flash of light, the nobility of his character and the magnitude of what he had accomplished.

Even the London _Punch_, which had jeered at the cause of the North during the Civil War, now made such atonement as was possible. I quote a verse of the poem by Douglas Jerrold:

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high;
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came.

I do not believe our country has ever shown such universal signs of mourning. As my father and I rode on horseback about the suburbs of Boston, we saw house after house draped with black and white, some of the decorations being very elaborate. For a long time the countryside was swathed in mourning.

The day after Lincoln’s death was Easter Sunday. In our own Church of the Disciples the pulpit was draped with purple cloth and adorned with flowers. In the afternoon I attended the services of the Church of the Advent, in which my friend, Louise Darling, was much interested, an Episcopal church of strongly ritualistic tendencies. There were no signs of mourning and no mention of the national sorrow! This seemed to me very heartless.

Meanwhile the assassin was at large. It was a most dramatic as well as a most terrible time in our history. I read the newspapers—doubtless every one did—with the greatest interest. Here the story gradually unfolded itself, culminating in the trial and execution of Mrs. Surratt and the other conspirators. I remember wading through endless testimony, the question whether Edward Spingler did or did not wear a mustache being much discussed.

In spite of his crime, I felt a pang of pity for Wilkes Booth when I read of his tragic death. It was necessary that he should be shot down, like a creature at bay, but the attendant circumstances, the firing through the cracks of the barn, lent additional ignominy to his fate.

While we were still living at “Green Peace” our youngest brother, Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr., was born. He was a fine, large baby, weighing twelve pounds at birth. Soon after his arrival in this world (on Christmas Day, 1859), and while our mother was still confined to her room, several of us were attacked with scarlet fever. The great danger of contagion from this disease was not then clearly understood. My father inquired of Mr. Gardner, headmaster of the Boston Latin School, whether he wished brother Harry, who had not contracted the fever, to remain away. Mr. Gardner decided it would be safer for the boy to do so. The breaking out of smallpox at the Idiot School, of which my father retained the supervision, brought my mother a new anxiety. Would it come to her, and was it, as she had heard, fatal in confinement cases? Fortunately, our household escaped the disease and the scarlet fever left no bad effects behind.

Little Sammy was a beautiful and healthy child, yet he fell a victim to diphtheritic croup in May, 1863, when he was three and a half years old. His death brought me the first realization of the meaning of sorrow. We had lost my father’s sister, our kind and devoted Aunt Lizzie, two years earlier, but the loss of little Sammy was a much greater bereavement. I could not understand then, nor do I now, the point of view which those persons take who declare that it is a beautiful thing for a little innocent child to leave this world and go to heaven. I felt, at seventeen, as I do at seventy, that it is contrary to the laws of nature for a child to die. It is the saddest death of all, for the little one has been cut off untimely from the life on this earth that his Creator meant him to enjoy.

As this was my first experience of deep sorrow, it brought me the first knowledge of the beautiful human sympathy without which grief would be unendurable. Friends and relatives gathered about my stricken parents, helping them to bear the dull burden of grief. It made my father seriously ill; indeed, he grieved for the boy to the end of his life. My mother, like most women, was able to give more expression to her sorrow. After her death we found a little book of verses and a letter written to her lost darling, in which she poured out her grief.

In her journal are many mentions of the little boy, showing how his memory dwelt in her heart throughout her life.

Fortunately for my father, he had on hand a task of wide importance in connection with the recently freed slaves. From the beginning of the war he had labored to bring about the freeing of the negroes. It had not been five months in progress when he called a meeting of anti-slavery men at his office “to take into consideration measures tending to the emancipation of slaves as a war policy.” This resulted in the formation of the Emancipation League, the _Commonwealth_ being once more brought to life as its organ. As my father’s duties on the Sanitary Commission took him frequently to Washington, in 1861–62, he was able to urge upon the President the necessity of emancipating the negroes.

But he well understood that so tremendous a change involved the making of preparations beforehand. In September, 1862, the month when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, we find him writing from Washington to a friend of his plan for the creation of a bureau to inquire into the actual condition of the freedmen, their wants and their capacities. In 1863 Stanton, then Secretary of War, appointed a Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, the members of it being my father, Robert Dale Owen, and James McKay.

So, when we came to New York for a change of air and scene, shortly after little Sammy’s death, we found my father busy in the office of the commission, in spite of his sufferings from the gout.

It was always his policy to gather facts and knowledge before taking action. Hence the many reforms which he instituted were lasting. They were not built for a day, and as he took no thought of his own glorification, no personal element deflected them from the right track.

Evidently it was important to ascertain what the negroes had done with their freedom in other English-speaking countries. So the commission thoroughly investigated conditions in the Province of Ontario (then Canada West), where twenty thousand colored people were living, and made an exhaustive report.

The labors of the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission were those of a pioneer body. They were carried on later by the Freedmen’s Bureau.

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XIII

THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE IN THE CIVIL WAR

_How We Dressed and Danced in the ’Sixties.—War Prices.—Mrs. Jared
Sparks.—Visit of the Russian Fleet.—The Brain Club.—Oliver Wendell
Holmes.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.—William R. Alger.—William M.
Hunt.—“Mamma’s Owls.”—William and Henry James.—A Clever Group of
Society Women.—A Historic Nose-pulling._

IN Boston, your age is always carefully calculated in accordance with the year of your début in society and the sewing-circle to which you belong. In case of doubt, the maximum number of years are unfailingly attributed to you. I had the fortune, bad or good, to come half-way between two sets, and therefore to belong to neither of them. Our mother, who liked to give her daughters a little glimpse of society, took us to a few informal occasions while we were still at school. The exact Boston mind was therefore baffled in the very beginning as to our true age.

At school all the girls in my class were older than I, except my friend, Louise Darling. Sister Julia and I were so nearly of the same age that in our school-girl days, as in those of our childhood, we went to parties together. Hence, when she began to go into society it was rather hard for me to stay behind, although I was only seventeen and still at school. By this time the unwisdom of exaggerating your age had appealed to my Boston soul, which was greatly torn during that winter. The older set, a number of whose members had been classmates at school, were now in society. As by a flash of light, I saw the dangers of my position, and drew back before it was too late. I joined the dancing-class of the younger set—the girls not yet out—although at school there had been little commerce between us.

When a dance was given at our house, sister Julia should really have had all the honors. But she cared little for dancing, while I was very fond of it. One of my special friends, Charlie Longfellow, the poet’s eldest son, was my partner for the german. I carried a large bouquet and altogether had a royal time. Julia danced with Mr. Braggiotti, a Greek gentleman, and no doubt their conversation was less frivolous than ours. Charlie Longfellow ran away to the war not long afterward.

When the time for my real entrance into society came, in the following year, there were only three other débutantes, namely, the Misses Sara P. Lowell, Cora Crowninshield, and Clara Gardner. Obviously no sewing-circle could be formed for us, so I joined that of the older set. Instead of the handsome lunch now customary at the meetings of these societies, we enjoyed a modest repast, consisting exclusively of bread and butter in endless variety—crumpets, brown bread, biscuits, etc., with tea or chocolate. It was served at eleven or twelve o’clock in the forenoon, dinner being at half past two.

With gold going always higher, the price of everything soared in the ’Sixties, as in the present war. The sad part of it was that they did not come down until years afterward. The highest point reached by gold was three hundred, but, although it dropped later, prices did not. They were so sensitive as to respond instantly to any rise, but were entirely unaffected by a fall of the precious metal. This seemed to me very unfair. With occasional help from my mother, I had bought my own clothes after reaching the age of fifteen, when I was given an allowance for dress.

It was indeed a problem for the girls of those days to dress suitably, when everything was so dear. Some of my friends bought braid and made their own straw hats. The price of kid gloves—even the short ones then usually worn—was so high that certain girls with skilful fingers made their own. We also made our own undersleeves and even a few linen collars. The enormous hoops of this period required a large amount of material for the skirts of gowns, especially as these were not gored, the entire fullness being gathered or plaited at the waist-line. When certain girls first appeared at the Assemblies, it was said that their skirts were six yards in circumference! Our hoops were not quite so large as this, but they were terrific in size, especially for evening dress. For a lady to enter an omnibus at that time was no easy matter. Fortunately, our wire cages were very light and elastic. You had to be very careful, however, when you sat down in a crowded car, to pull up the hoop behind, as otherwise it would stick straight out in front! At one time these great bird-cages were arranged so that they teetered back and forth as you moved along. The skirts, which were long, were then looped up gracefully in scallops, when you walked abroad, showing your balmoral, or ornamental petticoat of woolen cloth. The balmorals were often pretty, and did prevent our skirts from trailing in the gutter. They were much more economical, also, than the starched white skirts which preceded them.

But, oh, how sad it was when each succeeding year brought an expansion in the circumference of our gowns, obliging us to discard these before they were half worn out! It is my firm belief that the persons who set the fashions purposely change them in such a way as to promote as much as possible the casting away of half-worn garments and the purchase of new ones.

Fortunately, there were ingenious dressmakers in the ’Sixties who could do wonders in the way of combination, a fine new dress coming out of two old ones. The fashion of making evening dresses of tarlatan and similar diaphanous materials enabled young girls to have a number of gowns for a relatively small price. True, many layers of the stuff were necessary—but the construction, with a little help from the dressmaker, was easy, thus lessening the expense of labor. You can take grand large stitches in tarlatan and they will not show!

We made many of our own bonnets, also, some clever girls actually quilting the silk in diamonds instead of buying it ready made. It must have been a hideous material, but we admired it when it was in fashion. This reminds me that among my early memories are those of certain very old gentlemen in Boston wearing high hats and overcoats of quilted silk!

Our ball dresses were made with bodice cut moderately low, a long point in front and at the back and full sleeves reaching half-way to the elbow. The effect of these pointed waists over the full skirts was certainly elegant. Somebody had to lace you up behind, for obviously you could not do this yourself. If you were clever, you could undo the lacing on your return home from the ball. The Assemblies, usually held in Papanti’s Hall, were the backbone of the winter’s entertainments for the young set, although there were always private dances also.

In that primitive day a book was sent around to the families who were considered eligible as subscribers for the Assemblies. Boston was then extremely stern in its construction of who should and who should not have the privilege of entering their names on this sacred scroll.

My mother, always generous in such matters, asked to have the book sent to certain people who had not hitherto been subscribers, although they were descendants of a good old family. Her request was not granted, probably because it was suspected that the husband had engaged in some financial transaction not altogether in accordance with the Puritan notions of uprightness.

The young people of the ’Sixties owed a debt of gratitude, which they did not fully recognize, to Mrs. Jared Sparks, the wife of the historian. The unique form of her entertainments disturbed the conventionality of the youthful mind. The good lady’s motive was doubtless to prevent boredom by carrying out conceptions of striking originality. As we did not live in Cambridge, we were not invited to the pencil party, nor to that where, all the chairs being removed, the guests sat on the floor. But I did go to the famous _thé dansant_ which Boston discussed long and vigorously.

Mrs. Sparks thought it would be a pleasant thing to give a party early in the evening, where the young people could dance till midnight and then go home. So she asked us to a _thé dansant_ at Papanti’s Hall to which we went, and had a very good time. Chocolate and cake were quite sufficient for the dancers, but Mrs. Sparks had not calculated the probable feelings of the dowagers. They found it hungry work to sit and watch other people dance and highly disapproved of the simple repast. As time went by, low and deep were the murmurings. Even the quality of the cake was unkindly called in question. Mrs. Sparks’s friends sent a sample, it was said, to a lady of the opposite faction, so that the latter might see for herself the excellent quality of the butter and eggs. But she declared it was now so stale (for the controversy lasted for days or even weeks) she could tell nothing about the ingredients!

Mrs. Sparks’s original turn of mind also showed itself in the dealings with her children. One of the daughters had a will of her own and it was sometimes necessary to discipline her. This was done by taking a tuck in her dress, thus doubly punishing her; she had the mortification of appearing in childish array at an age when every girl desires to seem grown up, and she was obliged also to betray to all friends and acquaintances the fact that she had been naughty. You had only to look at her skirts to know what her behavior had been.

The historian himself sometimes came to dances. From the expression of his countenance, I am sure he did not enjoy them. The top of his head was bald, yet the curly hair at the sides stood out in a way to show that it had once been thick. If you had any doubt of it, you had only to look at the tremendous crop of curly hair belonging to his son.

His harassed air made it evident that he had come in a spirit of parental resignation, not in one of joy. A legend of that time described Mr. and Mrs. Sparks driving together on a hot summer’s day. As the horse showed signs of fatigue, Mr. Sparks suggested stopping. “Drive on, Mr. Sparks,” replied the lady, majestically. After two or three similar stoppages the horse fell down dead!

Most of our dancing partners were Harvard students, with a sprinkling of older men and returned soldiers. Two of these, Col. Francis Palfrey and Capt. William Horton, had been wounded in the arm, so that the latter was held in a sling. This did not prevent their dancing, however.

One of our amusements was going on board warships, not only those of our own navy, but on Swedish and Russian vessels as well.

The visit of the latter to American waters was one of the political and social events of the day. Among the hostesses who gave dances for the officers were Mrs. Storer of Cambridge, our aunt, Mrs. Joseph N. Howe, and our mother. We were also invited to dances on board the Russian ships and to services of the Orthodox Church held there.

Uniforms are always attractive to young women. When worn by handsome young foreigners the charm is doubled. My special partner, being in the engineering department, wore silver instead of gold decorations. He was nicknamed “Cranberry Cheeks” by the family. As neither of us could speak the language of the other, our conversation was carried on entirely in French. Now my education in this language at school had not dwelt especially on the sentimental side, so that the explanation of words was occasionally necessary. However, I always succeeded in grasping the idea.

We were very sad when the Russian fleet sailed, taking away all our delightful friends.

Among the pleasant entertainments of the ’Sixties were those given by the Brain Club, as it was popularly called.

My mother’s position in it might fitly be described as “Queen of the Revels,” for she devised and helped carry out many of the programs. We of the younger generation were allowed to attend some of the meetings. William Hunt, the artist, took part in a most ridiculous burlesque of a tourney, where he and his competitor, Hamilton Wilde, mounted on pasteboard hobbyhorses, engaged in a deadly encounter, prancing meanwhile about the drawing-room. Mrs. Charles Homans, as the Queen of Love and Beauty, wore a wonderful wig made of raveled tow. Mr. Hunt, being overthrown, toppled over, pretending to be mortally wounded, and a leech was summoned to prescribe for him. Mr. Jere Abbott, wearing a long false nose, took this part admirably, making many absurd inquiries of the patient: “Have any of your wife’s family suffered from this disease?” etc.