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President Thomas Jefferson began holding White House Receptions for the general pubic each July 4th

July 4, 2014, 4:00 am
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White House Receptions -

Thomas Jefferson began the tradition of receiving citizens at the White House, which was called The President's House before 1812, to celebrate the Fourth of July in 1801. The mansion was opened to all people. Tables pushed against the walls of the State Dining Room were filled with bowls of punch and plates of sweets. Presidents held these receptions until just after the Civil War.


Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 1801-1809

President Thomas Jefferson held an open house for his 2nd inaugural in 1805, & many of the people at his swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol followed him home, where he greeted them in the Blue Room. Those open houses sometimes became rowdy: in 1829, President Andrew Jackson had to leave for a hotel, when roughly 20,000 citizens celebrated his inauguration inside the White House. His aides ultimately had to lure the mob outside with washtubs filled with a potent cocktail of orange juice & whiskey. Even so, the practice continued until 1885, when newly elected Grover Cleveland arranged for a presidential review of the troops from a grandstand in front of the White House instead of the traditional open house. 

Jefferson also permitted public tours of the President's House, which have continued ever since, except during wartime, & began the tradition of annual receptions on New Year's Day & on the Fourth of July. Those receptions ended in the early 1930s, although President Bill Clinton would briefly revive the New Year's Day open house in his 1st term.
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President John Tyler & Turtle Soup on the 4th of July

July 4, 2014, 5:00 am
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Turtle Soup -

William Henry Harrison died only a month after his inauguration in 1841, and John Tyler, who succeeded him, held a Fourth of July dinner that year that included turtle soup. A giant 300 pound turtle from Key West had been given to the president as a gift and ended up on the dinner table. After dinner, Tyler and his guests walked out onto Lafayette Square to enjoy a fireworks display.


John Tyler (1790-1862) 1841-1845


Turtle Soup was popular at Fourth of July celebrations prior to the Civil War. Turtle soup was a favorite of Philadelphians, Charlestonians, New Yorkers, and Washingtonians. In New York, in 1828, for example, "Flushing Bay Clam and Turtle soup . . . [was] served up in the usual style, at the Flushing Hotel," while "green turtle soup" was available at the Washington Hall dinner (New-York Enquirer, 4 July 1828, 2-3). In Washington turtle soup was served at two different places: at Lepreux & Kervand's "near the 7 buildings," from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., and at Burckhart & Koemig, at the Columbia Garden, near the Centre Market at 12 noon. Both vendors provided carry out service (National Intelligencer, 3 July 1820, 3 and 4 July 1820, 3, respectively).



A menu for an 1825 Fourth of July dinner in the collections of The New-York Historical Society lists 51 main dishes—spread over two courses—along with 12 desserts and an additional 15 fruits and ices. After green turtle and lobster soups, the guests moved on to fish (blackfish, sheepheads, trout); haunches of beef, lamb, and venison; a range of poultry from duck to capon to turkey, lobster patties, as well as sweetbreads, eel, and pigeon pies. The cooks combed the market for delicacies—ragoûts and stews of "Gallipagos [sic]," green, and snapping turtles; woodcock, partridges, and wild pigeons; lamb, veal and pigs feet; galantines and smoked tongue. For dessert, they tucked into puddings, fruit tarts, cheesecakes, trifles and syllabubs, and an array of fresh fruits, ices, and ice creams.



A Turtle Soup recipe from Virginian Mary Randolph's (1762-1828) book, The Virginia Housewife: or, Methodical Cook.

"TO DRESS TURTLE. 
KILL it at night in winter, and in the morning in summer. Hang it up by the hind fins, cut off the head and let it bleed well. Separate the bottom shell from the top, with great care, lest the gall bladder be broken, which must be cautiously taken out and thrown away. Put the liver in a bowl of water. Empty the guts and lay them in water; if there be eggs, put them also in water. It is proper to have a separate bowl of water for each article. Cut all the flesh from the bottom shell, and lay it in water; then break the shell in two, put it in a pot after having washed it clean; pour on as much water as will cover it entirely, add one pound of middling, or flitch of bacon, with four onions chopped, and set it on the fire to boil. Open the guts, cleanse them perfectly; take off the inside skin, and put them in the pot with the shell; let them boil steadily for three hours, and if the water boils away too much, add more. Wash the top shell nicely after taking out the flesh, cover it, and set it by. Parboil the fins, clean them nicely- taking off all the black skin, and put them in water; cut the flesh taken from the bottom and top shell, in small pieces; cut the fins in two, lay them with the flesh in a dish; sprinkle some salt over, and cover them up. When the shell, &c. is done, take out the bacon, scrape the shell clean, and strain the liquor; about one quart of which must be put back in the pot; reserve the rest for soup; pick out the guts, and cut them in small pieces; take all the nice bits that were strained out, put them with the guts into the gravy; lay in the fins cut in pieces with them, and as much of the flesh as will be sufficient to fill the upper shell; add to it (if a large turtle,) one bottle of white wine;cayenne pepper, and salt, to your taste, one gill of mushroom catsup, one gill of lemon pickle,mace,nutmegs and cloves, pounded, to season it high. Mix two large spoonsful of flour in one pound and a quarter of butter; put it in with thyme, parsley, marjoram and savory, tied in bunches; stew all these together, till the flesh and fins are tender; wash out the top shell, put a puff paste around the brim; sprinkle over the shell pepper and salt, then take the herbs out of the stew; if the gravy is not thick enough, add a little more flour, and fill the shell; should there be no eggs in the turtle, boil six new laid ones for ten minutes, put them in cold water a short time, peel them, cut them in two, and place them on the turtle; make a rich forcemeat, (see receipt for forcemeat,) fry the balls nicely, and put them also in the shell; set it in a dripping pan, with something under the sides to keep it steady; have the oven heated as for bread, and let it remain in it till nicely browned. Fry the liver and send it in hot.

"FOR THE SOUP. 
AT an early hour in the morning, put on eight pounds of coarse beef, some bacon,onions,sweet herbs,pepper and salt. Make a rich soup, strain it and thicken with a bit of butter, and brown flour; add to it the water left from boiling the bottom shell; season it very high with wine,catsup,spice and cayenne; put in the flesh you reserved, and if that is not enough, add the nicest parts of a well boiled calf's head; but do not use the eyes or tongue; let it boil till tender, and serve it up with fried forcemeat balls in it. If you have curry powder, (see receipt for it,) it will give a higher flavour to both soup and turtle, than spice. Should you not want soup, the remaining flesh may be fried, and served with a rich gravy."


And an earlier recipe from American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life. By Amelia Simmons.  Hartford: Printed for Simeon Butler, Northampton, (1798)

"To Dress a Turtle. 
Fill a boiler or kettle, with a quantity of water sufficient to scald the callapach and Callapee, the fins, &c. and about 9 o'clock hang up your Turtle by the hind fins, cut off the head and save the blood, take a sharp pointed knife and seperate the callapach from the callapee, or the back from the belly part, down to the shoulders, so as to come to the entrails which take out, and clean them, as you would those of any other animal, and throw them into a tub of clean water, taking great care not to break the gall, but to cut it off from the liver and throw it away, then seperate each distinctly and put the guts in another vessel, open them with a small pen-knife end to end, wash them clean, and draw them through a woolen cloth, in warm water, to clear away the slime and then put them in clean cold water till they are used with the other parts of the entrails, which must be cut up small to be mixed in the baking dishes with the meat; this done, separate the back and belly pieces, entirely cutting away the fore fins by the upper joint, which scald; peal off the loose skin and cut them into small pieces, laying them by themselves, either in another vessel, or on the table, ready to be seasoned; then cut off the meat from the belly part, and clean the back from the lungs, kidneys, &c. and that meat cut into pieces as small as a walnut, laying it likewise by itself; after this you are to scald the back and belly pieces, pulling off the shell from the back, and the yellow skin from the belly, when all will be white and clean, and with the kitchen cleaver cut those up likewise into pieces about the bigness or breadth of a card; put those pieces into clean cold water, wash them and place them in a heap on the table, so that each part may lay by itself; the meat being thus prepared and laid seperate for seasoning; mix two thirds part of salt or rather more, and one third part of cayenne pepper, black pepper, and a nutmeg, and mace pounded fine, and mixt altogether; the quantity to be proportioned to the size of the Turtle, so that in each dish there may be about three spoonfuls of seasoning to evey twelve pound of meat; your meat being thus seasoned, get some sweet herbs, such as thyme, savory, &c. let them be dryed and rub'd fine, and having provived some deep dishes to bake it in, which should be of the common brown ware, put in the coarsest part of the meat, put a quarter pound of butter at the bottom of each dish, and then put some of each of the several parcels of meat, so that the dishes may be all alike and have equal portions of the different parts of the Turtle, and between each laying of meat strew a little of the mixture of sweet herbs, fill your dishes within an inch an half, or two inches of the top; boil the blood of the Turtle, and put into it, then lay on forcemeat balls made of veal, highly seasoned with the same seasoning as the Turtle; put in each dish a gill of Madeira Wine, and as much water as it will conveniently hold, then break over it five or six eggs to keep the meat from scorching at the top, and over that shake a handful of shread parsley, to make it look green, when done put your dishes into an oven made hot enough to bake bread, and in an hour and half, or two hours (according to the size of the dishes) it will be sufficiently done."
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President Zachary Taylor's 4th of July fatal tragedy

July 4, 2014, 5:30 am
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A Fatal Fourth -

After participating in July 4 ceremonies at the Washington Monument in 1850, Zachary Taylor fell ill. He drank freely of ice water during the event and after reaching the White House gorged on cherries with iced milk. Within five days he was dead. It was believed he contracted cholera. Waterborne diseases, including cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery, were not uncommon in Washington, D.C. before the advent of modern plumbing and sewerage and water chlorination.


Zachary Taylor (1784-1850)    1849-1850


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President Abraham Lincoln's July 4th celebration of African American groups & his relationship with the Jews

July 4, 2014, 6:30 am
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On July 4, 1864, Abraham Lincoln attended a fundraiser for African American schools & religious groups in the District of Columbia. He allowed the group to hold a festival on the south grounds of the White House. A great crowd attended, & Lincoln accompanied by members of his cabinet appeared at the event hoping to set an example for the country. On June 28, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, had signed the charter for the YMCA of the City of Washington.


Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 1861-1865

"Abraham Lincoln – America’s “Great Emancipator”– never liberated any Jewish people. But in death, America’s Jews compared him reverentially to Moses. Like the prophet and lawgiver from Exodus, Lincoln had led people from bondage, yet did not live to see the Promised Land. As Rabbi M. R. Deleeuw put it in his eulogy at Congregation B’nai Israel in New York on April 19, 1865, Lincoln “had brought this nation within reach of the great boon he sought to attain,” but “was not destined to taste the sweets of the peace he had so zealously labored to establish.” The analogy was not lost on the nation’s small but vocal Jewish community. On a more practical level, Lincoln had not only befriended Jewish people throughout his life but made several major presidential decisions that benefited American Jewry. 

"This is not to suggest that American Jews had an easy time during the Civil War era.  They were a tiny and often oppressed minority of the population: 150,000 out of about 32 million – just half of one percent – although the country did boast vibrant centers of Jewish life in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Some 6,000 Jews served in the American military, a number that included twelve generals, many surgeons, and six Medal of Honor winners. 

"But it was not a monolithic group:  Northern Jews remained loyal to the Union, Southern Jews mainly to the Confederacy and to slavery. In fact, Southern society may have in some ways been more hospitable to Jews than that of the North. In an era in which Jews filled no major roles in the Lincoln administration, Judah P. Benjamin became Secretary of State of the Confederacy. Yet Benjamin’s elevation did not eliminate bigotry there. According to one Southern diarist in 1861: The Jews are at work.  Having no nationality, all wars are harvests for them.  It has been so from the day of their dispersion.  Now they are scouring the country in all directions, buying all the goods they can find in distant cities, and even from the country stores.  These they will keep, until the prices of consumption shall raise a greedy demand for all descriptions of merchandise.

"Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in this atmosphere, one county in Georgia was actually consumed by an uprising aimed at driving out Jews.  Things could be just as dangerous, however, in the supposedly enlightened North. In New York, the same city where the “Jews’ Hospital” changed its longtime admissions policy so it could treat wounded soldiers of all faiths (today the once-modest institution is known as Mount Sinai Medical Center), draft rioters attacked and pillaged Jewish stores just a few days after the Battle of Gettysburg. When the Union Treasury began issuing paper money, one Confederate newspaper taunted, “Why are Lincoln’s green-backs like the Jews? Because they come from Abraham and have no redeemer.” Against that backdrop of discrimination stood a modern Abraham: Abraham Lincoln.

"A New York rabbi named Morris Raphall came to the White House early in the war to ask Lincoln to promote his son to the rank of lieutenant in the Union Army. Lincoln had declared that day a national prayer and fast day, and after he listened to the rabbi’s plea, he asked, “As God’s minister, is it not your duty to be home today to pray with your people for the success of our armies, as is being done in every loyal church throughout the North?”

"Taken aback, the rabbi managed to explain that his assistant was doing so in his place.  “Ah,” Lincoln replied, “That is different.” Then he wrote out the promotion, handed it to Raphall, and said, “Now, doctor, you can go home and do your own praying.”

"Raphall was not the first Jew Lincoln ever encountered, but it is fair to say that Lincoln probably never saw one until he was about 30 years old, when he first met a fellow Illinois lawyer named Abraham Jonas. Jonas became an enthusiastic political supporter, whom Lincoln would call one of his “most valued friends.” He later appointed Jonas a postmaster, a position he held until his death, when Lincoln quietly transferred the plum job to his widow (at a time when he was reluctant to name his own female relatives to such coveted patronage posts). Lincoln even paroled Jonas’s son, a captured Rebel, to visit his father on his deathbed. The sins of the son were not visited on the loyal father.

"Lincoln counted other Jews among his friends and allies:  Julius Hammerslough, one of his hometown Springfield merchants, who attended his inauguration and later helped raise funds to build his tomb; and Henry Rice, a clothing retailer who sold Lincoln “duds,” as his famous customer referred to them, on the Illinois prairie. Photographer Samuel Alschuler lent Lincoln a velvet-trimmed coat to wear in a photograph taken in Urbana, Illinois, in 1858. Two years later, and now relocated to Chicago, Alschuler took another portrait of Lincoln, now President-elect. It turned out to be the first ever made of him with a beard.

"Bavarian-born Chicago merchant Abraham Kohn, president of Congregation Anshe Maariv (Men of the West), was another staunch Republican supporter. Just before Lincoln left Illinois for the White House, Kohn sent the president-elect a flag emblazoned with Hebrew writing from Deuteronomy 31: “Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

"A few days later, as Lincoln left his Springfield home for Washington, he gave a farewell speech to his neighbors offering words clearly inspired by Kohn. That day, Lincoln declared his trust in a God who can “go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good.” Here was an Old Testament inspiration, direct from a Jewish friend. Later witnesses remembered seeing Kohn’s flag on display at the White House.

"But the most fascinating – and influential – of Lincoln’s Jewish acquaintances was undoubtedly his Jewish chiropodist, Isachar Zacharie. A New York newspaper described him as having “a splendid Roman nose, fashionable whiskers, an eloquent tongue, a dazzling diamond breastpin,” and, most important of all for treating a patient with chronically aching feet, “great skill in his profession.”  In 1862, Lincoln heard that Zacharie could boast in his résumé of having had feet of Clay – Henry Clay, that is, Lincoln’s personal and political hero. So the President sent for him to see if the chiropodist could alleviate his aching corns. One newspaper joked, “It would seem . . . that all of our past troubles have originated not so much with the head [of the nation] but with the feet of the nation. Dr. Zacharie has shown us precisely where the shoe pinches.”

"Jokes aside, Zacharie worked wonders with Lincoln.  As the President put it, in an endorsement of his skill, “Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success and considerable addition to my comfort.” Not everyone who met the chiropodist was able to overcome prejudice. One general assessed Zacharie“the lowest and vulgarest form of Jew Peddlars,” adding, “It is enough to condemn Mr. Lincoln that he can make a friend of such an odious creature.”  Lincoln was not swayed by such prejudice. He not only retained Zacharie as his physician, bit he also found other ways for him to serve the Union as an unofficial envoy to Jewish communities in the South with an eye toward rebuilding their ties to the Union. The doctor turned up in New Orleans, for example, supposedly to arrange financial aid for that city to ease it back under federal authority. Later, Lincoln twice sent him to Richmond on mysterious missions. In return, Zacharie peppered Lincoln with boastful letters and gifts like fresh pineapples, bananas, and hominy grits.

"Zacharie worked hard for Lincoln’s re-election in 1864, writing to assure the President during the campaign: The Isrelites [sic] with but few exceptions they will vote for you.  I understand them well.... I have secured good and trustworthy men to attend to them on Election day. My men have been all the week seeing that their masses are proparly [sic] registered—so that all will be right. Zacharie’s efforts predictably aroused a stir among – who else? – his fellow Jews, some of whom took issue with Zacharie’s claim that he could “deliver” the Jewish vote as a bloc.  “There is no ‘Jewish vote,’” the editor of the Jewish Messenger, Meyer Isaacs, wrote angrily to Lincoln, “and if there were it could not be bought.” The fracas threatened to erupt into a political crisis until Lincoln ordered an aide to write a letter assuring Jewish leaders that no one had ever pledged the Jewish vote to the President, and he in turn had offered no inducements to secure it.

"The fact that Lincoln utilized a character like Zacharie remains surprising. The doctor was rather full of himself. In 1863 he talked about “the great responsibility resting upon me,” words Lincoln had more appropriately employed to describe the burdens on him! A week before Election Day 1864, Zacharie bragged that he had accomplished “one of the Largest things that has been done in the campaign.” Then he complained to the exhausted President that he was tired.  “I wish to God all was over,” he wrote, “for I am used up, but 3 years ago, I promised I would elect you, and if you are not it shall not be my fault.” Notwithstanding such boasting, Lincoln saw something in his doctor that historians have never quite understood.  Lincoln was an excellent judge of character, so it’s difficult not to conclude that somehow, Zacharie did serve him beneficially – and not just medically.

"Critics point to an odd memorandum Lincoln wrote during the war that began, “About Jews,” and went on to offer instructions on seemingly unrelated matters: issuing to “Dr. Zacharie a pass to go to Savannah,” and providing some kind of hearing to a Mr. “Blumberg, at Baltimore.” In a way, the memo suggests that Lincoln tended to think of Jews as a nation within the nation, perhaps not as truly assimilated as American Jews thought themselves to be. On the other hand, the memo also sent a signal to the bureaucracy that the President believed that Jews, at least these particular Jews, should be treated decently by the government.

"There were two real tests of Lincoln’s tolerance during the Civil War.  A year into the war, there was still not one Jewish chaplain in the armed services.  Federal law required that all chaplains be “regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination.”  
Jews wanted their own.  They had a champion in Ohio Congressman Clement L. Valandigham, who took to the House floor to demand equal chaplaincy rights for Jews. Unfortunately, they could not have recruited a more counterproductive ally. Valandigham was a so-called “Copperhead,” an anti-war Democrat. “Valiant Val” later would be arrested for treason and expelled from the Union. His support guaranteed defeat for expanding chaplaincy rights.

"The issue might have died there had it not been for the so-called “Allen incident.” Michael Allen was a rabbinical student elected chaplain of a largely Jewish regiment headed by a Colonel Max Freedman. When the army found out about him, they pressured him into quitting, arguing that he was not yet fully ordained. Colonel Freedman promptly named a fully ordained New York rabbi named Arnold Fischel to take his place. But the U. S. Sanitary Commission, the charity that attended to the soldiers’ medical and moral needs, turned him down, too, citing the law that required all chaplains to be Christians.  Frustrated, Jewish leaders went public. They wrote editorials for Jewish periodicals, got liberal newspapers to support them, and finally sent a delegation to the White House. There, Dr. Fischel begged Lincoln to recognize “the principle of religious liberty . . . the constitutional rights of the Jewish community, and the welfare of Jewish volunteers” who were dying in battle without access to spiritual support.

"Lincoln swiftly pledged, “I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.” The following summer, the law was duly amended to include all “regularly ordained ministers of some denomination.” The word “Christian” was expunged. That September, Lincoln named Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia the first Jewish chaplain in American military history. The Jews, under Lincoln, had reversed four score years of institutionalized discrimination within the army.

"Another crisis followed, a result of an action by one of the war’s greatest heroes, Ulysses S. Grant. After his triumph at the Battle of Shiloh, the general inexplicably began imagining Jews infiltrating his encampments en masse, speculating, profiteering, and conducting other wicked business unchecked. Grant was determined to root them out. In July 1862, he ordered his commanders to inspect all visitors’ baggage and confiscate contraband, noting, “Jews should receive special attention.” That November he advised another officer, “Refuse all permits ... the Isrealites [sic] especially should be kept out.” A day later he repeated, “No Jews are to be permitted to travel on the Rail Road southward from any point. They are such an intolerable nuisance, that the department must be purged of them.” Weeks afterward, he was still railing about “the total disregard and evasion of orders by the Jews,” admitting, “my policy is to exclude them as far as practicable.” A camp newspaper not surprisingly echoed the popular general:  The Jews were “sharks, feeding upon the soldiers.”  Then, Grant’s own father turned up in camp, hand-in-hand with some Jewish cotton brokers eager for profit, though no greedier for money than the elder Mr. Grant. Perhaps believing his father had been duped, the general let his hostility run wild. On December 17, 1862, he issued his infamous General Orders Number 11, declaring in part:  The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade ... are hereby expelled from the department within 24 hours. ... Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be ... required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement.

"Reaction was swift. A Jewish captain named Philip Trounstine promptly resigned his commission, complaining of “taunts and malice.” Respected Northern rabbis unleashed a firestorm of criticism from the pulpit and in the press. Even Grant’s greatest Washington champion, Illinois Congressman Elihu Washburne, admitted, “Your order touching the Jews has kicked up quite a dust among the Israelites. They came here in crowds. ...”  Some of the crowds went directly to the President, who might easily have ignored the outcry for fear of humiliating one of his most valuable military assets. To Lincoln’s credit, he did not excuse or cover up. He came to the rescue. When a delegation led by Cesar Kaskel visited him to lodge a formal protest, the President supposedly said, “So the children of Israel were forced out of the happy land of Canaan?”

"A clever delegate shot back, “Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom asking protection.” Replied Lincoln, “That protection you shall have.” Another group headed by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise soon followed, and Lincoln told them, “I don't like to see a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.” Wise remembered, “The President fully convinced us that he knew of no distinction between Jews and Gentiles and that he feels none against any nationality and especially against Israelites.”

"In one of the rare occasions in which he ever overruled his prize general, Abraham Lincoln made sure that General Orders Number 11 was rescinded a few weeks after its publication. He did not mind expelling peddlers, Lincoln explained privately. But, as he put it, Grant had “proscribed a whole class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks.” This was unacceptable. Another threat to the legal standing of Jewish citizens had been recognized and corrected. Whether it inspired Jews to vote as a bloc for Lincoln’s re-election the following fall remains impossible to know, but the positive impact on Lincoln’s reputation was incontestable.

"History books note the irony of the fact that like Jesus, Lincoln was slain on Good Friday. It is seldom observed that the 1865 calamity also occurred during Passover weekend.  Seders that season were dedicated in part to Lincoln’s memory.  Synagogues across the North draped themselves in black and devoted Sabbath and holiday sermons, as one Jewish newspaper reported, “to the grief that sorrowed the hearts of the people.” Jews took an active part in the Lincoln funeral in Washington. At the public ceremonies in New York, a rabbi was even asked to recite a prayer. One young local Jewish shopkeeper named Abraham Abraham was so moved that he bought a bust of Lincoln, draped it in black, and displayed it in his window. The shop later became the department store of Abraham & Strauss. In Chicago, a special canopy was provided by the city’s Jews, inscribed with the Hebrew lament:  “The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places.”

"Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who had earlier called Lincoln a “primitive,” now praised “the spirit and principles of the man.” At Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan the mourners’ Kaddish was recited for the first time in memory of a non-Jew, inspiring a protest from some outraged Orthodox Jews but praise from most congregants. If Lincoln could break precedent by opening up the army to Jewish chaplaincy, then synagogues could say Kaddish for their gentile champion. Even in the South, Jewish leaders acknowledged a special bond between Lincoln and the Jews and a special sorrow at his loss. It was attributable mainly to Lincoln’s acts of compassion and justice, but perhaps, also, to the fact that his religious beliefs seemed so universal.

"Lincoln had once summed up his faith:  “When I do good I feel good, and when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.” Perhaps it is no accident that the sentiment is remarkably close to what Hillel urged in his teachings:  “To forbear doing unto others what would displease us.”  That deceptively simple but poignant philosophy made Lincoln seem to Jews of his day like God’s child and America’s father at one and the same time. When Lincoln died, many Jews really did feel “the beauty of Israel was slain upon the high places.” But as Rabbi Samuel Adler put it at Temple Emanu-el in New York City on April 19, 1865: “Abraham Lincoln has not fallen. He is lost to us but he is as Light ... and remains with us in memory and adoration and will so remain for ever.” Rabbi Adler called him “Father Abraham” that day, a rare tribute from the pulpit echoed at synagogues throughout the nation during that Passover of mourning. “Fear not, Abraham,” Rabbi Samuel Meyer Isaacs declared, quoting the Bible, from the pulpit of the Broadway synagogue, “I am thy shield; thy reward shall be exceedingly great.”


A version of this article appeared in Lincoln and the Jews: The Last Best Hope of Earth (Chicago: The Skirball Cultural Center, 2002) written by Harold Holzer. 
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Crowds mobbed Grover Cleveland & his very young bride Frances Folsom on July 4, 1886

July 4, 2014, 7:00 am
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The Marine Band performed weekend summer concerts on the south grounds of the White House from June to September for many years. In 1886, Grover Cleveland and his new bride Frances Folsom made an appearance on the South Portico at a Fourth of July concert. The crowd rushed to get a view of the new, very young first lady. As the president saw the huge crowd approaching, he waved to them with his straw hat and hurried Mrs. Cleveland indoors. The crowd then flocked back to the concert.

The early Cleveland White House had been a bachelor’s household; the president worked long hours and rarely entertained. Rose Cleveland, the president’s sister, acted as first lady, managed the affairs of the residence, and spent much of her time studying.



No sooner did the public become accustomed to the image of a lonely White House, than did the picture change. President Cleveland had been secretly courting Frances “Frank” Folsom, the daughter of Oscar Folsom, his late law partner. When Folsom was killed in a carriage accident, Cleveland became the administrator of his estate and the ward of then 12-year old Frances, devoting himself to the welfare of the girl and her mother.

Intimates of the Clevelands and Folsoms knew that the attachment between the president and Frank was more than friendship. A year before he went to the White House, he obtained permission from Mrs. Folsom to correspond with her daughter.



A graduate of Wells College at Aurora, New York, Frances was bright, had an animated wit, unaffected nature, and natural beauty that left the president smitten. Their courtship was conducted largely by mail and the president included his proposal of marriage in a letter.

On May 28, 1886, after Frances and her mother returned from a nine-month tour of Europe, the formal announcement of the engagement was made; five days later, the 49-year old bachelor married 21-year old Frances Folsom in a small White House ceremony. The public was captivated.

On Wednesday, June 2, 1886, at 6:30 in the evening, cabinet members and their wives, selected government officials and close family friends were ushered into the Blue Room. The state floor was decorated with a profusion of palms, ferns, and flowers from the White House greenhouses. At the east end of the grand Cross Hall, the Marine Band, led by John Philip Sousa, played the Wedding March.




Cleveland and his bride, with no attendants, descended the stairs, crossed the hall and stood beneath the flower-laden chandelier in the Blue Room. Presbyterian minister, Reverend Byron Sunderlund performed a specially written rite of marriage. The couple then led their guests through the Green Room into the East Room, where they promenaded in the shimmering light of the gas chandeliers.



The new Mrs. Cleveland wore an elegant wedding gown of heavy corded satin draped in frail, pearl white, India silk, edged in real orange blossoms. A pair of silk scarves criss-crossed the front of the dress covering the low Parisian neckline. Her long silk veil was held in place with orange blossoms and seed pearls; attached to the bodice was a 15-foot silk train.

After about a half an hour had passed in promenade, the doors of the Cross Hall were opened and the bride and groom led the guests to the State Dining Room for a seated, candlelit dinner. A three-masted ship made of flowers and christened the Hymen dominated the table.



After dinner the bride and groom disappeared to change into street clothes for traveling and left the White House by way of the Blue Room where a coach awaited at the foot of the South Portico stairs. Canvas screens blocked the public’s view.

Escorted by mounted police, coachman Albert Hawkins drove the carriage through a cheering crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Clevelands traveled by private railroad car to Deer Park Resort in the mountains of western Maryland for their honeymoon.

See The White House Historical Association's website for more information.
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July 4th Postcard

July 4, 2014, 8:30 am
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Letter from 17 year old Jennie McCleary, a witness to the Battle of Gettysburg

July 5, 2014, 1:00 am
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Letter published in Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, July 02, 1938.  Reportedly Jennie was 17 years old at the time of the battle.  She is writing to her sister Julia, who lives back home in Kittanning (Armstrong County) with the rest of Jennie's family.

July, 22, 1863

My Dear Julia: 

Agnes wrote day before yesterday and I suppose has told you nearly everything concerning the battle. Perhaps I can tell you some things she may have forgotten or did not hear of. But indeed I scarcely know how to begin, so many things have happened and in so short a time that I have gotten things confused. It seems like more of a dream than reality. I wonder sometimes how we passed through it all with as little fear as we felt and so small an amount of damage done to our home, which was indeed nothing to speak of, only the tearing down of our fences. That was done by the rebels on the second day of the battle. They made a road all the way through town so that, as they said, it would be a way of retreat if the enemy conquered. 

But I had better begin with the first day of the battle and tell you all I can of it. On Tuesday, which was the day before the battle, we were all down at Huber's corner looking at some of our men who were passing through town on their way the mountain to attack the rebels there. There were 5,000 of Beauforts Cavalry with 20,000 infantry following. They, however, did not get there that day. The cavalry were ordered back to town before they got to the Mountain, as it was supposed the rebel force there was to great for them to attack. They encamped there that night. 

The next day we heard the rebels were just out of town. we did not know how many there were, nor how many of our own men were here either. About 9 o'clock every person was ordered to leave the street as it was supposed there would be a fight out at the ridge. We never expected a battle, thought it would only be an artillery duel or something of that kind. kate and I went on the roof of the house watching it. We could not see the rebels and only part of our men. We saw shells fly in the air and then burst. We did not stay on the roof long; found the contest was going to be of a more serious nature than we at first supposed. 

We had been downstairs but a few minutes later when we saw an officer dash up the street and order ambulances to carry the wounded from the fields. Next came a soldier wounded in the arm and then an officer on horseback. He wore no hat, his head was tied up blood streaming down his neck. I then went over to Weaver's to help them roll bandages. We had not rolled many before we saw the street filled with wounded men. Men wounded in arms, limbs, head and breast. Oh, it was sickening to see them and hear their groans. Weaver's house was soon filled. I never thought I could do anything about a wounded man but I find I have a little more nerve than I thought I had. I could look at the wounds, bathe them, bind them up without feeling least bit shock of nervous. The tears came only once and that was when the first soldier came in the house. He had walked from the field and was almost exhausted. He threw himself in the chair and said, "Oh girls, I have as good a home as you. If I were only there!" He fainted directly afterward. That was the only time I cried. 

At first we thought our men would be victorious, as they had brought quite a number of rebel prisoners into town, but it was not long after we found out different. General Reynolds who had the plan of attack, was killed shortly after the battle commenced. He attacked them rather recklessly, too, I think. his command was but a small one and they were worn out with hard marching and then he was not aware that the rebel force was so large. After he was killed, General Doubleday took command but things went wrong with our soldier all day. It was about 12 o'clock when we were told to go to the cellar, the rebels were entering the town. If ever I wished myself at home I did then. There I was, the only one of our family shut down in a damp, dark hole with crying children and a poor young soldier who had received three wounds and had not yet been attended to and though he seemed to try his best could not keep from groaning. I cannot tell what my feelings were then. To be in that place, to know the rebels were in town, to hear shells bursting and expecting every minute they would fall on the house, was indeed horrible. If I had been with the rest I would not know were or what was happening to them. We were down in the cellar about two hours. 

While there a good many of our soldiers were killed in our street. I saw two dead ones lying in McCurdy's alley when I crossed the street to go home. Four of our men were carrying a wounded soldier down the street when a ball came along and took the legs off the two front men. There were some rebels killed too. kate and i were down at the end of our street the Sunday after the battle, when we saw the dead rebels that had been lying there since Wednesday. 

When I went home I found two wounded men at our house. Col Leonard shot in the arm and Dr parker slightly in the head. They are both from Massachusetts. Dr parker was wounded whilst coming down the college church steps. One of the rebel sharpshooters fired on him from Boyer's corner, the same ball that struck him killed the chaplin that regiment. All that day our house was full of soldiers, all wanting something to eat. That day we gave then everything we had and what do you think we had to eat the rest of the week? Nothing but bread and molasses and coffee without milk. I must say we felt rather poverty stricken. If we had been by ourselves it would have been nothing but to seat from 12 to 15 men to a table like that , with bread and molasses breakfast, molasses and bread for dinner and the same for supper was anything but agreeable, but they were very well satisfied to get even that. 

The next day of the battle, which was Thursday, we heard nothing but a continual roar of cannons and musketry. The firing began about 4 in the morning and lasted until dark. Our forces were on the cemetery hill and Round Top. We did not mind the shells so much, we were getting used to them. The greatest danger was from the sharpshooters. Early that morning some of the men we had overnight , I think that the chaplin, a couple of surgeons and the colonel were standing on the porch when a ball came and struck just above their heads. Indeed i had to laugh to see them jump, although it was not a laughing matter, for if it had been a little lower it would have struck one of them.They did not appear to mind it at all, laughed at themselves for jumping. A good many shells were thrown into town that day and came from our own men. The rebels had possession of the town and as there were a great many collected in the diamond they fired on them. We were not in much danger that day, all we had to do was keep in the house and run to the cellar when the shells became thickest. We retired about 11 o'clock. 

All were in bed but myself when there was a rap at the door. Papa got up and went to the door. There were two rebels there. They said that General Trimble and three of his aids wanted supper and lodging. Well, all we could do was get what we had for supper and made a place for them to sleep, although our house was full already. After we had fixed everything his aides came to say the General had concluded to stay where he was. They however took supper and went away. After they were gone Kate and I were standing in the kitchen when there was a knock at the door. kate went and there were two of our soldiers wanting bread. They had not gone when someone knocked at the other door. I opened it and three rebels asked for bread and permission to sleep in the kitchen. I gave then bread but of course did not let them stay all night. 

That night the rebels tried to break in the house but Captain Palmer, the one who is still here, called to them and told them it was a hospital and they went away. I must tell you about General Trimble. He was wounded in Friday's battle, had his leg amputated and was at the college hospital and very anxious to be brought to tow.. mcCurdy had him brought to their house. He had been there nearly two weeks when yesterday he was ordered taken to the hospital . He was very angry about it.When the surgeon went into his room he said: "General I have orders to take you to Seminary Hospital" Well the General refused to go and said it was certain death to go there. "Well, but General, my orders are to take you there""Well", said the General, "give ne a week to stay yet""General , I am ordered to take you now.""Well give me four days""General you have been in the army long enough to kow orders must be obeyed". "Well give me until tomorrow then""General the ambulance is at the door and you must go now""Well is General Paul to be moved?"" General Paul is very comfortable where he is." The General was terribly angry and said it would not always be this way and they would retaliate. 

The third day of the battle was comparatively quiet, until about three in the afternoon and the cannonading began and such cannonading no one ever heard. Nothing can be compared to it. No one who has heard it can form any idea of how terrible it is. All felt that the day must decide who should conquer. The firing was kept up until sometime after dark, it never for a moment ceased. During the night we knew we were victorious, we saw the rebel train moving off. In the morning not a rebel was to be seen. How happy everyone felt. None but smiling faces were to be seen then. It was indeed a joyous fourth for us. " I wish you could be here now, "tis not the same quiet old place it was when you were here. The streets are always full of strangers, soldiers , ambulances and government wagons. 
Frank was here a week before last from Thursday until Monday. Richard is here now, is the leader of a band that belongs to one of the regiments here. We got Mr Earnest's note late evening. papa had gone to bed, was not all that well. I opened the letter, just expected what was in it. I knew he was drafted, that his congregation thought too much of him to let him go. Will he be here now? Oh I have so much to tell you but my sheet is full and I am so tired writing. I know you will excuse bad writing, have been writing so long my hand trembles. You ought to see Uncle Samuels house. It is just riddled with shot.

Give my love to every person. kiss dear little alice and paul for me. Write soon, Your sister, Jennie. - 

From In the Swan's Shadow


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A very quick & personal look at American Women fighting for the right to vote

July 5, 2014, 1:30 am
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I have noticed, while writing these blogs about the work of women in America beginning in the early 1700s, that I am particularly incensed that women did not get the right to vote in our democracy until 1920.

Nearly 30 years ago, I found myself at lunch with a former ambassador and a female member of Congress, who politely disagreed on a point or two over crabcakes, with all the dancing & bowing inherent in such genteel disagreements.

When the congresswomen excused herself, the gentleman declared, "She doesn't know her place. I can remember, when women couldn't even vote."It was as if I wasn't even there, although there were only two of us left at the table; or as if I weren't a woman as well. A knife into the soul-not easily forgotten.

That memory inspires this very quick review of the women's rights movement. (For all those courageous women that I leave out of this overview, and for all those scholars who have spent years searching for them, I am truly sorry.)

Basically, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) created the agenda for the woman’s rights movement. Elizabeth grew up in a period when women were expected to restrict their activities to home and family. Most were not encouraged to pursue a serious education or a career. After marriage, women did not have the right to own their own property, keep their own wages or inheritance, or sign a contract. In addition, no woman in America had the right to vote. Before the American Revolution, women could vote in several British American colonies. After 1776, most states rewrote their constitutions preventing women from voting. After 1787, women were able to vote only in New Jersey; until 1807, when male legislators officially outlawed woman suffrage.



During the years Elizabeth Cady was growing up, thousands of American women were becoming interested in abolishing slavery. Women wrote articles for anti-slavery papers and circulated abolitionist petitions for Congress. Southerners Angelina Grimke Weld (1805-1879) and Sarah Moore Grimke (1792-1873) became famous for making speeches to mixed (male and female) audiences about slavery.


Clergymen rebuked them for their “unwomanly behavior." As a result, in addition to working for abolition, the Grimke sisters began to advocate for women’s rights. The Grimke sisters found it strange that society would condemn them for making speeches to both men and women, but do nothing to condemn "gentlemen" like their deceased father, South Carolina Judge John Grimke, who had owned hundreds of slaves enduring daily horrors and injustices.

The sisters came from a family of 14; but eventually they left Charleston heading to Philadelphia to join the Quaker faith, where they could rail against slavery, especially the brutal slaveowning practiced in South Carolina and by their brother Henry, who fathered three children by one of his slaves. Sarah was one of the first to compare the restrictions on women and slaves, writing that "woman has no political existence . . . . She is only counted like the slaves of the south, to swell the number of lawmakers."

When Elizabeth Cady was a young girl, her only brother died; and her grief stricken father declared, "Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy!" Elizabeth vowed to be as good as any boy. She excelled in Greek, Latin, and mathematics, while obtaining the finest education then available to women at Troy Female Seminary. In March, 1840, Elizabeth married abolitionist lecturer Henry Stanton, and they eventually had 7 children. In an unusual choice, the newlywed Stantons decided to travel to London for their honeymoon to attend a World’s Anti-Slavery convention.


There convention officials rejected the credentials of American delegate Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880), Quaker preacher and abolitionist. Santon and Mott became furious with male abolitionists (and the general patriarchal system they represented), who had excluded women from the London conference. They vowed to call a woman’s rights convention back in the United States.

Stanton and Mott, like other activist women in the United States, began to see the obvious similarities between their status and that of the slaves. Nearly 8 years later, they convened the first Woman’s Rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. There Stanton presented “The Declaration of Sentiments,” demanding changes in America's law and society - educational, legal, political, social, and economic - to elevate women’s status and to give women the right to vote.

After the Seneca Falls conference, Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) introduced Stanton to Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906). Bloomer was noted for her pioneering temperance and woman’s rights newspaper,  The Lily (1849), and for wearing a "reform"dress featuring full pantaloons and a short skirt – "bloomers."Freedom from the strictures of womanhood, even if they
looked ridiculous. Ultimately Bloomer and other feminists abandoned the more comfortable outfit, deciding that too much attention swirled around clothing rather than the issues at hand.

Susan B. Anthony first became interested in equality for women while teaching in New York state, where she discovered that male teachers were paid several times her salary. She led a woman's protest at the 1876 Centennial delivering a Declaration of Rights written by Stanton and Frances Dana Barker Gage (1808-1884), whose gravestone reads, "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven; that word is Liberty."

Anthony, Stanton, and Cady were also joined by the likes of Ernestine Louise Siismondi Potowski Rose (1810-1892). Rose had been born in Poland; and at 16, she petitioned Polish courts to obtain the inheritance she received from her mother. As was the custom, her father had assigned Rose and her "dowry" in marriage to a man his age. After successfully appealing to retain her inheritance at court, she fled Poland and ended up in the United States, lobbying for the passage of a married women’s property bill. At the first woman’s rights convention in her heavy accent, she boldly called for“political, legal, and social equality with man.” Rose merged anti-slavery, temperance, and freedom of thought philosophies into the woman’s rights speeches she delivered at many rights conventions between 1850 and 1870.

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was the first Massachusetts woman to receive a college degree in 1847. Shortly after graduating from Oberlin, Stone began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Association. As a protest of restrictive marriage laws, Stone kept her maiden name when she married, thereby coining the phrase “Lucy Stoner” for all women refusing to take their husband’s name. Stone began the Woman’s Journal which gained the reputation as the “voice of the woman’s movement.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) is best known for writing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and co-founding the American Woman Suffrage Association with Lucy Stone. She helped Stone found its paper, the Woman’s Journal, which she edited for 20 years. She established and led major women’s clubs and suffrage organizations in the Northeast, and was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Howe fought for the right to vote and to liberate women from the confinement of the traditional “woman’s place” in often stifling marriages.

Caroline Maria Seymour Severance (1820-1940), pioneer organizer of women’s clubs, distinguished herself as “The Mother of Clubs,” founding the first club in the East, the New England Woman’s Club (1868), and the first club in Los Angeles. Viewing clubs as vehicles for social reform and a bridge for women from the home to the public arena, she brought political awareness and support of women's rights to the club movement.

By 1861, the Civil War curtailed most suffrage activity, as women from both the Union and the Confederacy, concentrated their energies on the war. After the war, women created memorial societies to help preserve the memory of their losses. This brought many white Southern women into the public realm for the first time. During this same period, newly emancipated Southern black women began organizing as well.

Sensing that it was time to energize the movement again, in 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for all women and men dedicated to universal suffrage.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified, to extend to all citizens the protections of the Constitution against unjust state laws. This Amendment was the first to define "citizens" and "voters" as "male." Now it was all spelled out. No women of any color simply could vote in America nor did they have equal protection under the Constitution.

In this same year, the Wyoming territory organized with a woman suffrage provision. In 1870, the 15th Amendment passed declaring that voting rights could not be denied on account of race but did not mention sex.

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested and brought to trial in Rochester, New York, for attempting to vote for in the presidential election. At the same time, civil and women's rights activist and former slave Sojourner Truth (1797?-1883) appeared at a polling booth in Grand Rapids, Michigan, demanding a ballot. She was immediately turned away.

Frances Gage attributed the inspiring “Ain’t I a Woman” speech to Truth. In 1867, Frances Gage spoke at the First Anniversary of the American Equal Rights Association. Gage wrote the lift all boats speech with a few jabs at the menfolk. "When we hold the ballot...Men...will actually respect the women to whom they now talk...silly flatteries: sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, pearly teeth, ruby lips, the soft and delicate hands of refinement...The strength, the power, the energy, the force, the intellect and the nerve, which the womanhood of this country will bring to bear...will infuse itself through all the ranks of society, (making) all its men and women wiser and better."


From 1876 to 1879, lawyer Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917) was denied permission to practice before the Supreme Court. She spent three years pushing through legislation to allow women to practice before the Court and became the first woman to do so in 1879. Buoyed by her success, Belva Ann Lockwood ran for president in the 1884, on the National Equal Rights Party ticket. Although suffrage leaders opposed her candidacy, Lockwood saw it as an entering wedge for women. She polled nearly 4,500 votes and ran again in 1888. She was the first woman to dare to run for president, even though women could not vote.

A Woman Suffrage Amendment was introduced in 1878 to the United States Congress. The wording remained unchanged in 1919, when the amendment finally passed both houses. Progress was slow. In 1893, Colorado became the first state to adopt a state amendment enfranchising women. In 1895, the aging but still angry Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Woman’s Bible, questioning Biblical pronouncements on the inferiority of women, which she declared were the greatest obstacles to women’s progress.

Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Progressive (Bull Moose/Republican) Party was the first national political party to adopt a woman suffrage plank. In 1913, members of the Congressional Union organized a suffrage parade, carefully scheduling it for the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration and causing a commotion in Washington, D.C.


By 1916 , Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) unveiled her "secret" plan for suffrage victory at a large women's rights convention in New Jersey. Catt's tactics called for the coordination of activities by suffrage workers in all state and local associations. In the same year, Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first American woman elected to represent her state in the U.S. House of Representatives. The next year women won the vote in New York State.

Between 1917 and 1919, World War I slowed down the campaign as some--but not all--suffragists curtailed their activism in favor supporting the troops "over there."

But momentum propelled the drive ahead, and in the summer of 1919, the 19th Amendment passed both House and Senate and was sent to the states for ratification. On August 26, 1920, following ratification by the necessary thirty-six states, the 19th Amendment was adopted. Now female citizens could vote in the United States of America.

That little boy, with whom I had lunch and who grew up to become an ambassador for the United States of America, was 10 years old in 1920.

Three years later,in 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed the Equal Rights Amendment to eliminate discrimination on the basis of gender. It has never been ratified.


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Mary Ann M’Clintock 1800-1884

July 6, 2014, 1:00 am
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Mary Ann M’Clintock (1800-1884) was born to Quaker parents. She married Thomas M’Clintock, a druggist and fellow Quaker, in 1820, and they lived in Philadelphia for seventeen years. During that time Mary Ann gave birth to four daughters, Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Sarah, and Julia and a son, Charles. She was recognized by her fellow Quakers as a minister and leader. By 1833 M’Clintock was a social activist when she along with Lucretia Mott and others, became founding members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.



In 1836 the family moved to Waterloo, New York, where they would join a network of Quaker abolitionists that included Richard and Jane Hunt and George and Margaret Pryor, Mary Ann’s half-sister. They lived in a house owned and built by Richard Hunt at 14 East Williams Street, and ran a drugstore and school in one of Hunt’s commercial buildings behind their house on Main Street in Waterloo.

In 1842, at an annual convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society held in Rochester, New York, Thomas and Mary Ann became founding members of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and helped write its constitution. They were joined by Frederick Douglass, Jane and Richard Hunt, Isaac and Amy Post, George and Margaret Pryor.

Mary Ann became an organizer of the First Woman’s Rights Convention when she joined a group of friends on July 9, 1848, in the front parlor of the Hunts’ home. She hosted a second planning meeting at her house on July 16, where she, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and possibly several others drafted the Declaration of Sentiments that was read, discussed, and ratified in the Wesleyan Chapel.

While living in Waterloo, Mary Ann and Thomas M’Clintock became very active in the local Hicksite Quaker community, the Junius Monthly Meeting. In October of 1848, they led several hundred members of the Hicksite community to form the new Progressive Friends or Friends of Human Progress. Thomas and Mary Ann served as clerk and associate clerk at nearly every yearly meeting while they lived in Waterloo.

They returned to Philadelphia circa 1876. Mary Ann remained active until her death in 1884.


National Park Service


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Jane Clothier Master Hunt 1812-1889

July 7, 2014, 1:00 am
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Jane Clothier Master Hunt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 26, 1812, the daughter of William and Mary Master. Her marriage to Richard Pell Hunt in November 1845 brought her to Waterloo as part of the extended family of Hunts, M'Clintocks, Mounts, Plants, and Pryors, all of them related to Richard P. Hunt as sisters, nieces, in-laws, or siblings of in-laws. At least one person from each of these nuclear families signed the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, including Jane and Richard Hunt, four M'Clintocks, Lydia Mount and her daughter Mary E. Vail, Hannah Plant, and George and Margaret Pryor. While these family ties seem complicated, all of them reflect the importance of sibling relationships and the responsibilities that brothers and sisters also felt for nieces and nephews. All of these families were of Quaker background. All of them had migrated to Waterloo either from Philadelphia or from eastern New York State.



Jane's marriage at age thirty-three made her the step-mother of three older children, all born to Richard's third wife, Sarah M'Clintock
Hunt--Richard, born July 4, 1838; Mary M., born in 1839; and Sarah M., born in 1841. On October 6, 1846, two years after her marriage, Jane bore her own first child, a son named William Master Hunt. Less than a month before the Seneca Falls convention, on June 23, 1848, she gave birth to a daughter, Jane M., whom they called Jenny. Jane’s third child, George Truman Hunt was born on April 18, 1852. The Hunts named him after Jane’s brother in law, George Truman. Truman was married to Jane’s sister Catharine and was a Quaker minister and physician living in Philadelphia. He attended Richard P Hunt during his final illness in 1856. The Hunts, M’Clintocks and Trumans frequently visited each other in Waterloo and Philadelphia. A fourth child, Anna, died at birth in March of 1854.

In 1850, the Hunt household, like those of many other signers, included not only Jane and Richard Hunt and their children but also three non-related members. George Hunter was an Irish-born laborer, aged thirty. Ann McClelland, also Irish-born, was twenty-five. Both probably worked in the Hunt household. Elizabeth Kinnard, only thirteen years old, also lived with the Hunts.

Jane's marriage to Richard P. Hunt made her the wife of one of the richest men in Seneca County, and their home at 6 Main Street on the Seneca Turnpike (now Routes 5 and 20), just east of the village of Waterloo, reflected their prosperity. The house was an eleven-room brick Federal-style mansion with a central hallway, old-fashioned for the 1840s but commodious. They lived in considerable comfort, with carpeted floors, upholstered sofas, rocking chairs in the sitting room and the parlor, astral lamps, window shades (probably painted) in the parlor, curtained windows in the sitting room and bedrooms, and a full complement of dinner ware, silver teaspoons, glasses, and candle sticks. They kept a horse, four carriages, and a sleigh in the barn.

When several Quaker women decided to invite Lucretia Mott, a well-known minister and reformer from Philadelphia, to visit Waterloo in July 1848, Jane Hunt offered her house for the meeting. On Sunday, July 9, 1848, Mott arrived at the Hunt house with her sister, Martha Wright, from Auburn, New York. Mary Ann M'Clintock of Waterloo was also there. So was one other woman, the only non-Quaker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton had first met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, when Stanton was on her honeymoon. When the London meeting refused to admit women delegates from the U.S., Stanton remembered, the women had agreed to hold a meeting when they returned home solely to discuss the rights of women. Now, seeing Mott again after many years apart inspired Stanton once more. She "poured out her long-standing discontent." 

The women decided to hold a meeting "for protest and discussion."Richard P. Hunt may have encouraged this decision, for family legend suggests that, practical Quaker that he was, he reminded them that "faith without works is dead." The women decided to meet quickly, before Mott returned home to Philadelphia. Around the Hunts' tea table, they drafted a brief notice announcing, "A Convention to discuss the social, civic and religious condition and rights of Woman will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July. . . ." The notice was delivered to the offices of the Seneca County Courier in Seneca Falls, where it first appeared on Tuesday, July 11. Without that gathering of Quaker women who were experienced in the strategy and tactics of the abolition movement, energized by Stanton around Jane Hunt's tea table, there would have been no Seneca Falls convention.

Richard P. Hunt died November 7, 1856, leaving Jane a widow with six children eighteen years old and younger. Jane C. Hunt continued the family's tradition of philanthropy when she gave to St. Paul's Episcopal Church the land for St. John's Chapel on the east side of Chapel Street in Waterloo. She lived in the family home until her own death while on a visit to her daughter in Chicago on November 28, 1889, aged 77. She was buried next to her husband in Maple Grove Cemetery in Waterloo.

Sources:

1850 census.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 80 Years & More.
Weltha Bacon Woodward, "Bacon-Woodward Peigree of Paternal Branch," Vol. I, Series VI, unpublished typescript (1968), Waterloo [Library and] Historical Society.
John E. Becker, comp. "Some Waterloo Citizens of Yesterday," unpublished typescript (1950) in the Waterloo [Library and] Historical Society.
Friends' Intelligencer 46 (1889): 777. Obituary.
Inventory of Richard P. Hunt's estate, December 8, 1856, Probate File #592, Surrogate's Office, SenecaCounty. Found by Barbara Pearson.
Inventory of Jane C. Hunt's estate, February 7, 1890, Probate File #2214, Surrogate's Office, SenecaCounty. Found by Barbara Pearson.



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Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902

July 8, 2014, 1:00 am
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton(1815-1902) is believed to be the driving force behind the 1848 Convention, and for the next fifty years played a leadership role in the women's rights movement. Somewhat overshadowed in popular memory by her long time colleague Susan B. Anthony, Stanton was for many years the architect and author of the movement's most important strategies and documents. Though she became increasingly estranged from the mainstream of the movement, particularly near the end of her career, she maintained to the end her long time friendship with Anthony.



Stanton had an early introduction to the reform movements, including encounters as a young woman with fugitive slaves at the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. It was at Smith's home that she also met her husband Henry Stanton. Soon after their marriage in 1840 they traveled to London, where Henry Stanton was a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. There she met Lucretia Mott, the Quaker teacher who served in many of the associated Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Women's Rights organizations with which Stanton is associated. Denied her seat at the convention, as were all the women delegates, Mott discussed with Stanton the need for a convention on women's rights. The plan came to fruition when Mott again encountered Stanton in the summer of 1848 in the home of fellow Quaker Jane Hunt. After a month of missionary work on the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation, James and Lucretia Mott were attending the annual meeting of the Religious Society of Friends at Junius, near Seneca Falls, and staying at nearby Auburn with Lucretia Mott's sister, Martha Coffin Wright.

Stanton, Mott, Wright, Hunt, and Mary Ann M'Clintock made the plan to call the first women's rights convention, initiating the women's rights movement in the United States, and Stanton's role as a leader in that movement. In 1851, Susan B. Anthony was staying at the home of fellow Temperance worker Amelia Bloomer, while attending an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls. Stanton encountered Bloomer and Anthony on the street. She recorded the meeting in her diary as follows:  "How well I remember the day! George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison having announced an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls, Miss Anthony came to attend it. These gentleman were my guests. Walking home after the adjournment, we met Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Anthony, on the corner of the street, waiting to greet us. There she stood, with her good earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why I did not at once invite her home with me to dinner I do not know... "

History records the lasting relationship between these two women as well as the strains that resulted from their different roles and priorities. Unwilling to commit to a vigorous travel schedule until her children were grown, Stanton wrote many of her speeches for delivery by Anthony. As the years wore on the two held closely together, splitting with many other women as well as Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass, over the idea that suffrage for black men, after emancipation should take precedence over suffrage for women. Along with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the two led the National Woman Suffrage Association, opposing the concept of "precedence" accepted by the less radical American Woman Suffrage Association.

Almost thirty years after the Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton and Gage authored the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, which Anthony presented, uninvited, at the Centennial celebration in Washington in 1876. The Declaration was signed in the Centennial Books of the NWSA by Stanton, Anthony and Gage, as well as many later arrivals to the movement such as Virginia Minor and Lillie Devereux Blake. Also signing the original Declaration were Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M'Clintock, and Amy Post, all of whom were present at the 1848 Convention.


Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) with Susan B. Anthony (standing)

Later in her career Stanton, like Gage, focused increasingly on social reforms related to women's concerns other than suffrage. The two worked together on Stanton's Woman's Bible a work rejected by many of the more conservative elements in the movement. The two also collaborated with Anthony in the first three volumes of A History of Woman Suffrage, covering the period 1848 to 1877. Though Gage split completely with Anthony over Anthony's successful effort to merge the NWSA with its more conservative counterpart into the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Stanton agreed to serve as President of the combined organization for a brief period. At the end she took to having her resolutions introduced by others, so fully was her leadership rejected by the newer forces, many of whom saw suffrage as a step toward introduction of a conservative religious social agenda that Stanton strongly and openly opposed. The resiliency of the friendship between Stanton and Anthony is illustrated in the photograph of the two at Anthony's home in Rochester late in their lives.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902, and like Anthony and Gage, did not live to see women's suffrage in the United States. She is nonetheless regarded as one of the true major forces in the drive toward equal rights for women in the United States and throughout the world. The statue of Stanton, Mott and Anthony housed in the U.S. Capitol was used as the symbol of the American Delegation to the 1995 Peking Conference.

National Park Service


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Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902 - Solitude of Self - an address to US Congress 1892

July 9, 2014, 1:00 am
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Solitude of Self

Address Delivered by Mrs. Stanton before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, Monday, January 18, 1892 Reprinted from the Congressional Record


Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Born November 12, 1815 in Johnstown Died October 26, 1902 in New York City

Mrs. Stanton's Address

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should repeat them again.

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such as men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of woman may never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother, or a son, relations some of which he may never fill. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual.

Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

Nature having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.

To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us; we leave it alone under circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal ever has been, no mortal over will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. There can never again be just such environments as make up the infancy, youth and manhood of this one. Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will never find two human beings alike. Seeing, then, what must be the infinite diversity in human, character, we can in a measure appreciate the loss to a nation when any large class of the people in uneducated and unrepresented in the government. We ask for the complete development of every individual, first, for his own benefit and happiness. In fitting out an army we give each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder, his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities, then each man bears his own burden.

Again we ask complete individual development for the general good; for the consensus of the competent on the whole round of human interest; on all questions of national life, and here each man must bear his share of the general burden. It is sad to see how soon friendless children are left to bear their own burdens before they can analise their feelings; before they can even tell their joys and sorrows, they are thrown on their own resources. The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. What a touching instance of a child's solitude; of that hunger of heart for love and recognition, in the case of the little girl who helped to dress a christmas tree for the children of the family in which she served. On finding there was no present for herself she slipped away in the darkness and spent the night in an open field sitting on a stone, and when found in the morning was weeping as if her heart would break. No mortal will ever know the thoughts that passed through the mind of that friendless child in the long hours of that cold night, with only the silent stars to keep her company. The mention of her case in the daily papers moved many generous hearts to send her presents, but in the hours of her keenest sufferings she was thrown wholly on herself for consolation.

In youth our most bitter disappointments, our brightest hopes and ambitions are known only to otherwise, even our friendship and love we never fully share with another; there is something of every passion in every situation we conceal. Even so in our triumphs and our defeats.

The successful candidate for Presidency and his opponent each have a solitude peculiarly his own, and good form forbide either in speak of his pleasure or regret. The solitude of the king on his throne and the prisoner in his cell differs in character and degree, but it is solitude nevertheless.

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest ties, alone we sit in the shadows of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the devine heights of human attainments, eulogized land worshiped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded thro dark courts and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

To throw obstacle in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.

The girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to support herself, to make her own place in society, to resist the temptations that surround her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do all this by native force or superior education. She does not acquire this power by being trained to trust others and distrust herself. If she wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to swim upstream, and allow herself to drift with the current, she will find plenty of company, but not one to share her misery in the hour of her deepest humiliation. If she tried to retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her life is hedged about with fears last willing hands should tear the veil from what she fain would hide. Young and friendless, she knows the bitter solitude of self.

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible.

The young wife and mother, at the head of some establishment with a kind husband to shield her from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety, occurs against the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a deatrable influence in society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all this she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most successful statesman possesses.

An uneducated woman, trained to dependence, with no resources in herself must make a failure of any position in life. But society says women do not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal training that experience in public life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when for the lock of all this, the woman's happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humiliation; and the attitude of the weak and the ignorant in indeed pitiful in the wild chase for the price of life they are ground to powder.

In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and hustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old armchair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms, with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us continues. If from a lifelong participation in public affairs a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our private homes, public buildings, and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, here solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.

The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties an pleasures is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone. I once asked Prince Krapotkin, the Russian nihilist, how he endured his long years in prison, deprived of books, pen, ink, and paper. "Ah," he said, "I thought out many questions in which I had a deep interest. In the pursuit of an idea I took no note of time. When tired of solving knotty problems I recited all the beautiful passages in prose or verse I have ever learned. I became acquainted with myself and my own resources. I had a world of my own, a vast empire, that no Russian jailor or Czar could invade." Such is the value of liberal thought and broad culture when shut off from all human companionship, bringing comfort and sunshine within even the four walls of a prison cell.

As women of times share a similar fate, should they not have all the consolation that the most liberal education can give? Their suffering in the prisons of St. Petersburg; in the long, weary marches to Siberia, and in the mines, working side by side with men, surely call for all the self-support that the most exalted sentiments of heroism can give. When suddenly roused at midnight, with the startling cry of "fire! fire!" to find the house over their heads in flames, do women wait for men to point the way to safety? And are the men, equally bewildered and half suffocated with smoke, in a position to more than try to save themselves?

At such times the most timid women have shown a courage and heroism in saving their husbands and children that has surprise everybody. Inasmuch, then, as woman shares equally the joys and sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the height of presumption in man to propose to represent her at the ballot box an the throne of grace, do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to assume the position of priest at the family alter.

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, every where conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities of life rests equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce sterns of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of individual. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman, it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, on one mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.

From the mountain tops of Judea, long ago, a heavenly voice bade His disciples, "Bear ye one another's burdens," but humanity has not yet risen to that point of self-sacrifice, and if ever so willing, how few the burdens are that one soul can bear for another. In the highways of Palestine; in prayer and fasting on the solitary mountain top; in the Garden of Gethsemane; before the judgment seat of Pilate; betrayed by one of His trusted disciples at His last supper; in His agonies on the cross, even Jesus of Nazareth, in these last sad days on earth, felt the awful solitude of self. Deserted by man, in agony he cries, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" And so it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, on the long weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience each moral stands alone.

But when all artificial trammels are removed, and women are recognized as individuals, responsible for their own environments, thoroughly educated for all the positions in life they may be called to fill; with all the resources in themselves that liberal though and broad culture can give; guided by their own conscience an judgment; trained to self-protection by a healthy development of the muscular system and skill in the use of weapons of defense, and stimulated to self-support by the knowledge of the business world and the pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever give; when women are trained in this way they will, in a measure, be fitted for those hours of solitude that come alike to all, whether prepared or otherwise. As in our extremity we must depend on ourselves, the dictates of wisdom point of complete individual development.

In talking of education how shallow the argument that each class must be educated for the special work it proposed to do, and all those faculties not needed in this special walk must lie dormant and utterly wither for want of use, when, perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed in life's greatest energies. Some say, Where is the use of drilling series in the languages, the Sciences, in law, medicine, theology? As wives, mothers, housekeepers, cooks, they need a different curriculum from boys who are to fill all positions. The chief cooks in our great hotels and ocean steamers are men. In large cities men run the bakries; they make our bread, cake and pies. They manage the laundries; they are now considered our best milliners and dressmakers. Because some men fill these departments of usefulness, shall we regulate the curriculum in Harvard and Yale to their present necessities? If not why this talk in our best colleges of a curriculum for girls who are crowding into the trades and professions; teachers in all our public schools rapidly hiring many lucrative and honorable positions in life? They are showing too, their calmness and courage in the most trying hours of human experience.

You have probably all read in the daily papers of the terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay when a tidal wave such havoc on the shore, wrecking vessels, unroofing houses and carrying destruction everywhere. Among other buildings the woman's prison was demolished. Those who escaped saw men struggling to reach the shore. They promptly by clasping hands made a chain of themselves and pushed out into the sea, again and again, at the risk of their lives until they had brought six men to shore, carried them to a shelter, and did all in their power for their comfort and protection.

What especial school of training could have prepared these women for this sublime moment of their lives. In times like this humanity rises above all college curriculums and recognises Nature as the greatest of all teachers in the hour of danger and death. Women are already the equals of men in the whole of ream of thought, in art, science, literature, and government. With telescope vision they explore the starry firmament, and bring back the history of the planetary world. With chart and compass they pilot ships across the mighty deep, and with skillful finger send electric messages around the globe. In galleries of art the beauties of nature and the virtues of humanity are immortalized by them on their canvas and by their inspired touch dull blocks of marble are transformed into angels of light.

In music they speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics, and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, and plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, and speak from the pulpit and the platform; such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes today, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.

Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No! no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.

We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human being for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self dependence of every human soul we see the need of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.

Whatever may be said of man's protecting power in ordinary conditions, mid all the terrible disasters by land and sea, in the supreme moments of danger, alone, woman must ever meet the horrors of the situation; the Angel of Death even makes no royal pathway for her. Man's love and sympathy enter only into the sunshine of our lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever. A recent writer says:

I remember once, in crossing the Atlantic, to have gone upon the deck of the ship at midnight, when a dense black cloud enveloped the sky, and the great deep was roaring madly under the lashes of demoniac winds. My feelings was not of danger or fear (which is a base surrender of the immortal soul), but of utter desolation and loneliness; a little speck of life shut in by a tremendous darkness. Again I remember to have climbed the slopes of the Swiss Alps, up beyond the point where vegetation ceases, and the stunted conifers no longer struggle against the unfeeling blasts. Around me lay a huge confusion of rocks, out of which the gigantic ice peaks shot into the measureless blue of the heavens, and again my only feeling was the awful solitude.

And yet, there is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.

Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?


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Susan B. Anthony 1820-1906

July 10, 2014, 1:00 am
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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) is perhaps the most widely known suffragist of her generation and has become an icon of the woman’s suffrage movement. Anthony traveled the country to give speeches, circulate petitions, and organize local women’s rights organizations.



Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts. After the Anthony family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, they became active in the antislavery movement. Antislavery Quakers met at their farm almost every Sunday, where they were sometimes joined by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Later two of Anthony's brothers, Daniel and Merritt, were anti-slavery activists in the Kansas territory.

In 1848 Susan B. Anthony was working as a teacher in Canajoharie, New York and became involved with the teacher’s union when she discovered that male teachers had a monthly salary of $10.00, while the female teachers earned $2.50 a month. Her parents and sister Marry attended the 1848 Rochester Woman’s Rights Convention held August 2.

Anthony’s experience with the teacher’s union, temperance and antislavery reforms, and Quaker upbringing, laid fertile ground for a career in women’s rights reform to grow. The career would begin with an introduction to Elizabeth Cady Stanton.



On a street corner in Seneca Falls in 1851, Amelia Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later Stanton recalled the moment: “There she stood with her good earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray silk, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why I did not at once invite her home with me to dinner, I do not know.”

Meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton was probably the beginning of her interest in women’s rights, but it is Lucy Stone’s speech at the 1852 Syracuse Convention that is credited for convincing Anthony to join the women’s rights movement.

In 1853 Anthony campaigned for women's property rights in New York State, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and lobbying the state legislature. Anthony circulated petitions for married women's property rights and woman suffrage. She addressed the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1854 and urged more petition campaigns. In 1854 she wrote to Matilda Joslyn Gage that “I know slavery is the all-absorbing question of the day, still we must push forward this great central question, which underlies all others.”



By 1856 Anthony became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, arranging meetings, making speeches, putting up posters, and distributing leaflets. She encountered hostile mobs, armed threats, and things thrown at her. She was hung in effigy, and in Syracuse her image was dragged through the streets.

At the 1856 National Women’s Rights Convention, Anthony served on the business committee and spoke on the necessity of the dissemination of printed matter on women’s rights. She named The Lily and The Woman’s Advocate, and said they had some documents for sale on the platform.

Stanton and Anthony founded the American Equal Rights Association and in 1868 became editors of its newspaper, The Revolution. The masthead of the newspaper proudly displayed their motto, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

By 1869 Stanton, Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association and focused their efforts on a federal woman’s suffrage amendment. In an effort to challenge suffrage, Anthony and her three sisters voted in the 1872 Presidential election. She was arrested and put on trial in the Ontario Courthouse, Canandaigua, New York. The judge instructed the jury to find her guilty without any deliberations, and imposed a $100 fine. When Anthony refused to pay a $100 fine and court costs, the judge did not sentence her to prison time, which ended her chance of an appeal. An appeal would have allowed the suffrage movement to take the question of women’s voting rights to the Supreme Court, but it was not to be.

From 1881 to 1885, Anthony joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage in writing the History of Woman Suffrage.


Susan B Anthonuy and Elizabeth Caty Stanton

As a final tribute to Susan B. Anthony, the Nineteenth Amendment was named the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. It was ratified in 1920.

National Park Service


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Lucy Stone 1818-1893

July 11, 2014, 1:00 am
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Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was an early advocate of antislavery and women’s rights. She was born in Massachusetts. After she graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, she began lecturing for the antislavery movement as a paid agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She said in 1847, “I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.”



Lucy Stone did not participate in the First Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, but she was an organizer of the 1850 Worcester First National Woman’s Rights Convention. She also participated in the convention and addressed the audience. It is her 1852 speech at the National Woman's Rights Convention in Syracuse, New York, which is credited for converting Susan B. Anthony to the cause of women’s rights. Lucy Stone participated in the 1852, 1853, and 1855 national woman’s rights conventions, and was president of the 1856 National Woman’s Rights Convention held in New York, New York.

In 1855 Stone married Henry Blackwell. At the ceremony the minister read a statement from the bride and groom, announcing that Stone would keep her own name. The statement said that current marriage laws “refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer on the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.” Women who followed her example called themselves "Lucy Stoners."

After the Civil War, Lucy Stone joined Frederick Douglass and others who supported the Fifteenth Amendment as a partial gain, as they continued to work for women’s rights. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment outraged most women’s rights leaders’ because the word “male” was included for the first time in the Constitution. This debate divided the women’s rights movement. By 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association and focused their efforts on a federal woman’s suffrage amendment. Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe led others to form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which chose to focus on state suffrage amendments.

By 1871 Stone had helped organize the publication of The Woman’s Journal and was co-editing the newspaper with her husband Henry Blackwell.

National Park Service

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"Sold South" - Baltimore City Slave Trade

July 12, 2014, 1:00 am
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Baltimore City Slave Trade

The Baltimore Sun 20 June 1999, 
by Scott Shane

E. Sachse's view of Baltimore City looking west from Calvert Street on Market Street c 1850.

ON JULY 24, 1863, three weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg, Union officers freed the inmates of a slave trader's jail on Pratt Street near the Baltimore harbor. They found a grisly scene.

"In this place I found 26 men, 1 boy, 29 women and 3 infants," Col. William Birney of the U.S. Colored Troops wrote to his commanding officer. "Sixteen of the men were shackled and one had his legs chained together by ingeniously contrived locks connected by chains suspended to his waist." 

The slaves were confined in sweltering cells or in the bricked-in yard of "Cam- liu's slave-pen," where "no tree or shrub grows"and "the mid-day sun pours down its scorching rays," Birney wrote. Among those imprisoned was a 4-month-old born in the jail and a 24-month-old who had spent all but the first month of his life behind bars.

The liberation of the slave jails marked the end of a brutal Baltimore institution whose story remains unknown except to a handful of local historians.

For a half-century before the Civil War, more than a dozen slave traders operated from harborside storefronts along Pratt and adjacent streets. Some advertised regularly in The Sun and other papers, declaring "5,000 Negroes Wanted" or "Negroes! Negroes! Negroes!" In an 1845 city directory, "Slave Dealers"are listed between "Silversmiths" and "Soap."

Out-of-town dealers would routinely stop for a week at Barnum's or another downtown hotel and place newspaper advertisements declaring their desire to buy slaves.

A routine spectacle was the dreary procession of black men, women and children in chains along Pratt Street to Fells Point, where ships waited to carry them south to New Orleans for auction. Weeping family members would follow their loved ones along the route; they knew their parting might be forever, as there would be no way to know where slaves shipped south would end up.

The grim drama in Baltimore was part of a major industry. Though the United States banned the import of slaves in 1808, the domestic slave trade thrived, as the need for labor shrank in the Chesapeake area and boomed in the Deep South, where the cotton gin had revolutionized agriculture. Between 1790 and 1859, according to one scholar's estimate, more than 1 million slaves were "sold south," most of them from Virginia and Maryland.

The broken families and severed relationships resulting from this commerce were a human catastrophe that can be compared in scale, if not in violence or death toll, to the original tragedy of the Middle Passage. Scholars estimate that perhaps 11 million captured Africans survived the journey to the Americas, but most went to Brazil and the Caribbean; only about 650,000 came to the colonies that would become the United States.

Yet the story of the domestic slave trade has been swallowed in America's long amnesia about slavery in general.

"A dream of mine would be to have a little Baltimore tour -- not showing where Frederick Douglass worked in Fells Point or where Thurgood Marshall lived, but where the slave traders were, where the slaves were whipped," says Ralph Clayton, a librarian at the central Pratt library and a historian who has authored most of the few works on the city's slave trade. "But I've run into many people of both races who say, 'Why are you digging this up? Leave it alone.'"

Agnes Kane Callum, dean of Maryland's African-American genealogists, remembers seeing a still-standing slave jail as a girl in the 1930s. Her father would take the family on Sunday drives and point out a hulking brick building with barred windows at Pratt and Howard streets.

"He called it a slave pen," recalls Callum, 74, a North Baltimore grandmother who has researched slavery for 30 years. "He'd say,'That was where my grandmother was held.'"The slave dealer sold Callum's great-grandmother, who had been snatched as a girl from a beach in the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa, to a plantation in St. Mary's County.

Camliu's and all the other physical evidence of Baltimore's once-thriving slave trade has been erased by demolition and redevelopment. But its history can be pieced together from surviving documents.

The slave jails served several purposes. Slave owners leaving for a trip could check their slaves into a jail to ensure they would not flee. Travelers stopping in Baltimore could lock up their slaves overnight while they slept at a nearby inn. Unwanted slaves or those considered unreliable because of runaway attempts could be sold and housed at the jail until a ship was ready to take them south, usually to New Orleans.

The slave ships anchored off Fells Point, which the traders' generally preferred because of fear of interference from the large number of free blacks working at the Inner Harbor, says Clayton. He has researched the story of an Amistad-style rebellion by slaves on one ship, the Decatur, southbound from Baltimore. The Sun carried ads for the ships' regular runs from Baltimore to New Orleans.

By the Civil War, while slaves outnumbered free blacks in Maryland, in Baltimore there were 10 free people of color for every slave. Yet the slave trade posed a constant threat to free African-Americans, who were in danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

In fact, the warden of the Baltimore County jail ran regular newspaper notices listing black men and women he had arrested on suspicion of being runaways but who claimed to be free. Each notice would include a detailed description and the admonition, "The owner of the above described negro man is requested to come forward, prove property, pay charges and take him away, otherwise he will be discharged according to law."

In The Sun in 1838, Hope H. Slatter, a Georgia-born trader who succeeded Woolfolk as Baltimore's leading trafficker in human beings, announced under the heading "Cash for Negroes" the opening of a private jail at Pratt and Howard, "not surpassed by any establishment of the kind in the United States." Slatter offered to house and feed slaves there for 25 cents a day, declaring: "I hold myself bound to make good all jail breaking or escapes from my establishment."

To keep the supply flowing, Slatter added: "Cash and the highest prices will at all times be given for likely slaves of both sexes. ... Persons having such property to dispose of, would do well to see me before they sell, as I am always purchasing for the New Orleans market."

Facing complaints about the grim procession of chained human beings along Pratt Street, Slatter found a solution of sorts: He hired newfangled, horse-drawn "omnibuses" to move the slaves to the Fells Point docks. He would follow on horseback.

"The trader's heart was callous to the wailings of the anguished mother for her child. He heeded not the sobs of the young wife for her husband," wrote one abolitionist eyewitness whose account was discovered by Clayton.

"I saw a mother whose very frame was convulsed with anguish for her first born, a girl of 18, who had been sold to this dealer and was among the number then shipped. I saw a young man who kept pace with the carriages, that he might catch one more glimpse of a dear friend, before she was torn forever from his sight. As she saw him, she burst into a flood of tears, sorrowing most of all that they should see each other's faces no more," the abolitionist wrote.

Rogers' mother was particularly distraught, the flier said, because she had lost another daughter in the same manner four years earlier, "of whom she has never since heard." Rogers' stepfather, a free man, had offered to bind himself to service to work off the $850 necessary to buy her freedom. But the slave trader was unwilling to wait, so the preacher, identified as S. Guiteau, was trying to raise the necessary sum.

"Let mothers and daughters imagine the case their own,"Guiteau wrote, "and they cannot but act with promptness."

Why have such spellbinding stories so rarely been told? Callum, the Baltimore genealogist, attributes it to the reluctance of both races to reopen the wound left by slavery.

"White people naturally don't want anyone to know their ancestors owned slaves," Callum says. But black people, too, have kept silent, she says. Callum's maternal grandfather was born into slavery, but when the subject arose, the old man would declare, "No man owned me!"

"His voice was so full of emotion, a hush would fall over the room," Callum recalls, sitting in her North Baltimore rowhouse surrounded by the tools of the genealogical trade.

"Some black people still feel that way today, six generations later," she says. "But we cannot let people forget our holocaust, the black holocaust of slavery."

(By Scott Shane, a reporter, for The Baltimore Sun.)


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Amelia Jenks Bloomer 1818-1894 & the real story of "bloomers"

July 13, 2014, 1:00 am
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Amelia Bloomer edited the first American newspaper for women, The Lily. It was issued from 1849 until 1853. The newspaper began as a temperance journal. Bloomer felt that as women lecturers were considered unseemly, writing was the best way for women to work for reform. Originally, The Lily was to be for “home distribution” among members of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, which had formed in 1848. Like most local endeavors, the paper encountered several obstacles early on, and the Society’s enthusiasm died out. Bloomer felt a commitment to publish and assumed full responsibility for editing and publishing the paper. Originally, the title page had the legend “Published by a committee of ladies.” But after 1850 – only Bloomer’s name appeared on the masthead.




Although women’s exclusion from membership in temperance societies and other reform activities was the main force that moved the Ladies Temperance Society to publish The Lily, it was not at first a radical paper. Its editorial stance conformed to the emerging stereotype of women as “defenders of the home.” In the first issue, Bloomer wrote:  It is woman that speaks through The Lily…Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness. It is that above all that has made her Home desolate and beggared her offspring…. Surely, she has the right to wield her pen for its Suppression. Surely, she may without throwing aside the modest refinements which so much become her sex, use her influence to lead her fellow mortals from the destroyer’s path.

The Lily always maintained its focus on temperance. Fillers often told horror stories about the effects of alcohol. For example, the May 1849 issue noted, “A man when drunk fell into a kettle of boiling brine at Liverpool, Onondaga Co. and was scaled to death.” But gradually, the newspaper began to include articles about other subjects of interest to women. Many were from the pen of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pseudonym “sunflower.” The earliest Stanton’s articles dealt with the temperance, child-bearing, and education, but she soon turned to the issue of women’s rights. She wrote about laws unfair to women and demanded change.



Bloomer was greatly influenced by Stanton and gradually became a convert to the cause of women’s rights. Recalling the case of an elderly friend who was turned out of her home when her husband died without a will she wrote:  Later, other similar cases coming to my knowledge made me familiar with cruelty of the laws towards women; and when the women rights convention put forth its Declaration of Sentiments. I was ready to join with that party in demanding for women such change in laws as would give her a right to her earnings, and her children a right to wider fields of employment and a better education, and also a right to protect her interest at the ballot box.

Bloomer became interested in dress reform, advocating that women wear the outfit that came to be known as the “Bloomer costume.”  Actually the reform of clothing for women began in the 1850s, as a result of the need for a more practical way of dressing . The reform started in New England where the social activist Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822-1911), called Libby Miller. Mrs Miller  was the daughter of abolitionists Gerrit Smith and his second wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh. She was a lifelong of the women's rights movement. She  became famous when she  adopted what she considered a more rational costume: Turk trousers - loose trousers gathered at the ankles like the trousers worn by Middle Eastern and Central Asian women – worn under a short dress or knee length skirt. The outfits were similar to the clothing worn by the women in the Oneida Community, a religious commune founded  by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, New York in 1848.



This new fashion was soon supported by Bloomer, by then a women's rights and temperance advocate. Bloomer popularized Mr Miller’s idea in her bi-weekly publication The Lily. And this women's clothing reform soon was named bloomers.

The rebellion against the voluminous and constraining fashion of the Victorian period was both a practical necessity and a focal point of social reform. Stanton and others copied a knee-length dress with pants worn by Elizabeth Smith Miller of Geneva, New York. For some time the "Bloomer" outfit was worn by many of the leaders in the women's rights movement, then it was abandoned because of the heavy criticism in the popular press. In 1859, Amelia Bloomer herself said that a new invention, the crinoline, was a sufficient reform.  The bloomer costume returned later, adapted and modified, as a women's athletic costume in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Although Bloomer refused to take any credit for inventing the pants-and-tunic outfit, her name became associated with it because she wrote articles about the unusual dress, printed illustrations in The Lily, and wore the costume herself. In reference to her advocacy of the costume, she once wrote, “I stood amazed at the furor I had unwittingly caused.” But people certainly were interested in the new fashion. She remembered: “As soon as it became known that I was wearing the new dress, letters came pouring in upon me by the hundreds from women all over the country making inquiries about the dress and asking for patterns – showing how ready and anxious women were to throw off the burden of long, heavy skirts.”

In May of 1851 Amelia Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton said, "I liked her immediately and why I did not invite her home to dinner with me I do not know."

The circulation of The Lily rose from 500 per month to 4000 per month because of the dress reform controversy. At the end of 1853, the Bloomers moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where Amelia Bloomer continued to edit The Lily, which by then had a national circulation of over 6000. Bloomer sold The Lily in 1854 to Mary Birdsall, because she and her husband Dexter were moving again this time to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where no facilities for publishing the paper were available. She remained a contributing editor for the two years The Lily survived after she sold it.



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Martha Coffin Wright 1806-1875

July 14, 2014, 1:00 am
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Martha Coffin Wright (1806-75) was the youngest of 8 children; her sister Lucretia Coffin Mott was the second oldest. Throughout her life Martha worked in reform alongside her sister Lucretia Mott. Martha preferred to take a supportive role, frequently serving as secretary, while her more outgoing sister Lucretia was frequently the keynote speaker at public meetings.



In 1848, Wright was living with her husband David & 4 children in Auburn, New York, 10 miles to the east of Seneca Falls. Martha Wright was several months pregnant that summer, while Lucretia & James Mott were staying with Martha & her growing family. On July 19, 1848, the 1st day of the Seneca Falls First Women’s Rights Convention, Lucretia Mott & Martha Wright arrived by train from Auburn accepting Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s invitation to stay the night at her home before attending the 2nd day’s activities. At the afternoon session on the 1st day, the Report noted that “Lucretia Mott read a humorous article from a newspaper, written by Martha C. Wright.”

After helping organize the First Women’s Rights Convention, Martha Wright participated in many state & national women’s rights conventions in various capacities. She was secretary at the 1852 & 1856 National Women’s Rights Conventions, served as an officer at the 1853 & 1854 National Women’s Rights Conventions & presided over the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1855 in Ohio & the New York State Women’s Rights Convention held in Saratoga that year.

Martha C. Wright was also an ardent abolitionist & ran her home in Auburn as a station on the Underground Railroad, frequently allowing fugitive slaves to sleep in the kitchen. In a letter to her sister from Auburn, New York on December 30, 1860, Martha C. Wright wrote:  …We have been expending our sympathies, as well as congratulations, on seven newly arrived slaves that Harriet Tubman has just pioneered safely from the Southern Part of Maryland.--One woman carried a baby all the way and bro’t [sic] two other chld’n that Harriet and the men helped along. They bro’t a piece of old comfort and a blanket, in a basket with a little kindling, a little bread for the baby with some laudanum to keep it from crying during the day. They walked all night carrying the little ones, and spread the old comfort on the frozen ground, in some dense thicket where they all hid, while Harriet went out foraging, and sometimes cd not get back till dark, fearing she wd be followed. Then, if they had crept further in, and she couldn’t find them, she wd whistle, or sing certain hymns and they wd answer.

National Park Service


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Lucretia Coffin Mott 1793-1880

July 15, 2014, 1:00 am
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One of 8 children born to Quaker parents on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880) dedicated her life to the goal of human equality. As a child Mott attended Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school located in New York, where she learned of the horrors of slavery from her readings & from visiting lecturers such as Elias Hicks, a well-known Quaker abolitionist. She also saw that women & men were not treated equally, even among the Quakers, when she discovered that female teachers at Nine Partners earned less than males. At a young age Lucretia Coffin Mott became determined to put an end to such social injustices.


Lucretia Mott (1793 - 1880), by Joseph Kyle (1815 - 1863)

In 1833 Mott, along with Mary Ann M’Clintock & nearly 30 other female abolitionists, organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1840 she was one of several American women chosen as delegates to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London by the American Anti-Slavery Society & by other abolitionist groups. 

Arriving in England with her husband, she found the convention controlled by the rival American & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society -known to Garrisonians as the “New Organization”& its opposite number, the British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, both opposed to public activity by women.  Despite vigorous protests by Wendell Phillips & others, the American women delegates were refused recognition & assigned seats “behind the bar.” Though Lucretia Mott was deprived of a voice in the proceedings, she was nevertheless described by a journalist as “the lioness of the Convention” (Liberator, Oct. 23, 1840, p. 170).  

It was there, that she 1st met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was attending the convention with her husband Henry, a delegate from New York. Mott & Stanton were indignant at the fact that women were excluded from participating in the convention simply because of their gender, & that indignation would result in a discussion about holding a woman’s rights convention. Stanton later recalled this conversation in the History of Woman Suffrage:  As Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wended their way arm in arm down Great Queen Street that night, reviewing the exciting scenes of the day, they agreed to hold a woman’s rights convention on their return to America, as the men to whom they had just listened had manifested their great need of some education on that question. Thus a missionary work for the emancipation of woman…was then and there inaugurated.

Eight years later, on July 19 & 20, 1848, Mott, Stanton, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, & Jane Hunt acted on this idea; when they organized the First Woman’s Rights Convention.

Two weeks after Seneca Falls,  a 2nd convention was held in the Unitarian Chapel at Rochester, N.Y.  From this time on, woman’s rights claimed as much of Lucretia Mott’s attention as any of the other reforms with which she associated herself.  In a closely reasoned Discourse of Woman (1850) she attributed the alleged inferiority of women to the repressions under which her sex had always labored -unequal educational opportunities, a lower standard of wages, restricted employment, & denial of political rights.  

Throughout her life Mott remained active in both the abolition & women’s rights movements. She continued to speak out against slavery; & in 1866, she became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, an organization formed to achieve equality for both African Americans & women.

For nearly 20 years the Motts lived & reared their children in a red brick house at 136 North Ninth Street in Philadelphia.  In 1850, they moved to 338 Arch Street, a spacious house; where they entertained on a simple but generous scale during the Quaker Yearly Meeting & the annual sessions of the reform societies & where they sometimes harbored runaway slaves. Unlike some “strong-minded” female reformers, Mott was a conscientious housekeeper who never laid herself open to the charge, that she neglected her domestic duties.  In 1857 she & her husband, now retired from business, moved to Roadside, a plain, rambling country house on the Old York Road, north of Philadelphia, where Lucretia continued her efficient housewife concerns: sewing carpet rags, cooking Nantucket blackberry pudding, raising vegetables in her kitchen garden.

Always a strong believe in the Quaker peace testimony, she regularly attended meetings of the Pennsylvania Peace Society, of which she was vice-president.  She seldom missed a woman’s rights or suffrage convention & seldom failed to be called upon for an address.  At the 1st convention of the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, she was named president at the insistence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  When in 1869, the movement split into rival factions, one led by Mrs. Stanton & Susan B Anthony, the other by Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, & Julia Ward Howe, she sought earnestly but unsuccessfully to overcome the division.

During her last 12 years she was without the faithful support of her husband, for James Mott died on Jan. 26, 1868.  She herself lived to the age of 87,  active to the end, publicly & privately, in good causes.  

National Park Service


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Report of the Woman's Rights Convention 1848 Seneca Falls, New York

July 16, 2014, 1:00 am
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Report of the Woman's Rights Convention 1848


A Convention to discuss the SOCIAL, CIVIL, AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF WOMAN, was called by the Women of Seneca County, N.Y., and held at the village of Seneca Falls, in the Wesleyan Chapel, on the 19th and 20th of July, 1848...

Whereas, the great precept of nature is conceded to be; "that man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." Blackstone, in his Commentaries, remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times; not human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; Therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and of no validity; for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man's equal--was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation, by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, not their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak, and teach as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior, that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in the feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, Therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause, by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth, growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, and custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as self-evident falsehood, and at war with the interests of mankind...

Declaration of Sentiments

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.


The text of this report is from the original tract produced after the Convention in the North Star Printing Office owned by Frederick Douglass, Rochester, New York. It was reprinted several times and circulated as a sales item at local and national women's rights conventions.

Held at Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 19th and 20th, 1848. Rochester: Printed by John Dick at the North Star Office


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The Connection between the Women's Rights movement & the Anti-Slavery movement

July 17, 2014, 1:00 am
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Neither Ballots nor Bullets: The Contest for Civil Rights

"Women can neither take the Ballot nor the Bullet . . .therefore to us, the right to petition is the one sacred right which we ought not to neglect." Susan B. Anthony, Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society,1863

Susan B Anthony 1820-1906

"It is, perhaps, too late to bring slavery to an end by peaceable means, -- too late to vote it down. For many years I have feared, and published my fears, that it would go out in blood. These fears have grown into a belief." Gerrit Smith, Utica Daily Observer,1859

Gerrit Smith 1797-1874

Two great early 19th-century social movements sought to end slavery and secure equal rights for women. Gerrit Smith and Susan B. Anthony helped shape these two movements. The anti-slavery movement grew from peaceful origins after the American Revolution to a Civil War, or War Between the States, that effectively ended slavery while severely damaging the women's rights movement.

Wielding the ballot and the bullet as well as the petition to win the legal, political, and military contest of the Civil War, abolitionists decided the fate of slavery with the 1865 passage of the 13th Amendment. Seeking their own rights, women used more peaceful tactics but suffered long delays. Not until 1920 did women add the ballot to their arsenal of political tools.

The women's rights movement was the offspring of abolition. Many people actively supported both reforms. Several participants in the 1848 First Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls had already labored in the anti-slavery movement. The organizers and their families - the Motts, Wrights, Stantons, M'Clintocks and Hunts - were active abolitionists to a greater or lesser degree. Noted abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass attended and addressed the 1848 Convention.

Both movements promoted the expansion of the American promise of liberty and equality - to African Americans and to women. How did these two movements develop and how were they related to each other? How did each develop strategies and deal with the contradiction of violence and war that results from the advocacy of peaceful change?

"...the flagrant injustice and deep sin of slavery"
Preamble to the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Constitution, 1833

After the American Revolution, northern states began to abolish slavery. Many slaveholders in the upper South also freed slaves. In 1817, the American Colonization Society formed to resettle freed slaves in Africa. However, the South depended on slave labor as cotton production expanded after the 1793 invention of the cotton gin. Repressive laws and public justification of slavery followed southern slave revolts in the 1820s and 1830s.

Religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening intensified anti-slavery activity after 1830. Seeking to perfect society, adherents targeted slavery as an evil that destroyed individual free will as moral beings. Abolitionists began to demand immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves.

In 1833, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, Quaker Lucretia Mott, and several others formed the American Anti-Slavery Society. Women were a large part of the general membership and formed separate, local female anti-slavery branches. Mott also helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, an organization, noted for its promotion of racial and gender equality, that included African American and white women as leaders and members.

Many anti-slavery reformers, like the Quakers, came from pacifist backgrounds or espoused nonviolent social reform. They shaped public opinion by distributing newspapers and tracts, sending out organizers and lecturers, and hosting fundraising fairs. Garrison, who saw the U.S. Constitution and federal government as pro-slavery forces, observed Independence Day as a day of mourning. Lucretia Mott and Thomas M'Clintock helped form the Philadelphia Free Produce Society, which boycotted slave-made products.

Between 1838 and 1840, the American Anti-Slavery Society split in three, in part over the issue of women's leadership, specifically Abby Kelley's appointment to the business committee. Radical abolitionists and women's rights supporters, known as "Garrisonian" abolitionists, remained in the American Anti-Slavery Society. The newly formed American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society restricted membership to males, with auxiliaries for females. The politically minded formed the Liberty Party, limiting women's participation to fundraising. The discrimination of women in abolition and other reform movements led them to advocate for women's rights.

Timbuctoo: Gerrit Smith’s Experiment.  From 1846 through 1853, Gerrit Smith developed a plan to give away 120,000 acres of Essex and Franklin County New York, farmland to 3,000 free black men. He hoped to qualify the men to vote. Although Smith's supporters promoted the project in churches and conventions, the plan eventually failed due to poor soil, harsh Adirondack winters, and the inexperience of the farmers themselves.

"Justice and Equality:" Antislavery and Women's Rights 

"…this is the only organization on God's footstool where the humanity of woman is recognized, and these are the only men who have ever echoed back her cries for justice and equality…. All time will not be long enough to pay the debt of gratitude we owe these noble men…who roused us to a sense of our own rights, to the dignity of our high calling."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.

At the 1848 First Women's Rights Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments, drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Elizabeth and Mary Ann M'Clintock, was read and signed by 100 men and women. Claiming that "all Men and Women are created equal," the signers called for extending to women the right to vote, control property, sign legal documents, serve on juries, and enjoy equal access to education and the professions.

Arguments for women's rights came from experiences in the anti-slavery movement. Angelina and Sarah Grimké of South Carolina were Quakers and effective anti-slavery speakers, although it was considered improper for women to speak before "promiscuous" audiences composed of both men and women. During a petition drive in Massachusetts in 1837, male listeners thronged to female-only lectures. While condemning slavery, the Grimkés upheld "the cause of woman as a moral being.""Sister Sarah does preach up woman's rights most nobly and fearlessly," reported Angelina to a friend. Rebuked by Congregational ministers and others for speaking to promiscuous audiences, they held their ground. To do otherwise would have been "…a violation of our fundamental principle that man & woman are created equal, & have the same duties & the same responsibilities as moral beings."

As reformers, women developed organizational skills necessary for a successful social movement. They learned to write persuasively, raise funds, organize supporters and events, and speak to large groups of men and women about important political and social issues. In the service of anti-slavery, women found their voices. Between 1850 and 1860, women's rights advocates held state and national conventions and campaigned for legal changes.

The Emergence of Violence

By 1848, the Liberty Party, which had earlier split from the American Anti-Slavery Society, joined a coalition to create the Free Soil Party. Free Soilers sought to limit slavery by denying it to new territories entering the union. In July, 1848, a Free Soil Convention was held in Seneca Falls, just before the Women's Rights Convention. Some male village residents attended both conventions. Jacob P. Chamberlain and Saron Phillips, who signed the Declaration of Sentiments, were chosen as delegates to the Free Soil Party's national convention.

The 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law authorized federal marshals to seize and return fugitive slaves. Northern free blacks had little protection against false claims by southern slaveholders. While many free blacks fled to Canada, previously neutral northerners were enraged at the injustice.

As the U.S. expanded, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, allowing each new area to decide whether it would allow slavery. Slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed into Kansas to claim it for their side. In 1856, after anti-slavery settlers died during an attack in Lawrence, Kansas, John Brown led a raid against pro-slavery homes along Pottawatomie Creek, killing five men in retaliation.

With a warrant out for his arrest, John Brown returned east to plan a daring raid. He hoped to create a large slave insurrection in Virginia. Brown sought support among prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, provided financial support. A decade earlier, he had sold Brown a parcel of land in a settlement for free blacks in the Adirondacks. Now, Brown asked Smith to help finance his scheme. Smith agreed, becoming one of the "Secret Six" financiers of John Brown's raid.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one followers launched an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When the anticipated slave revolt failed to materialize, the raid ended in dismal failure. Brown and his men were tried, convicted, and hanged. A letter in Brown's possession incriminated Smith, who went insane as a result of the publicity and threat of prosecution. A martyr in the eyes of non-violent abolitionists, Brown became a symbol of escalating violence in pursuit of emancipation.

"How Glass Our House Is:" An Uneasy Truce with the War

"The death of my father, the worse than death of my dear cousin Gerrit, the martyrdom of that great and glorious John Brown, all conspire to make me regret more than ever my dwarfed womanhood.…in times like these, everyone should do the work of a full grown man."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony, 1859

Many nonviolent reformers, concluding that slavery could only be purged by war, welcomed the outbreak of the Civil War in April, 1861. Even Quaker pacifists reluctantly supported the war if it would bring an end to slavery. David Wright's support of the war brought no criticism from sister-in-law Lucretia Mott, considering, "how glass our house is." She hoped the war "would be prosecuted with energy and faith since it was founded on so good a cause."When Horace Greeley and others pointed out that these hardly seemed the words of a pacifist, she responded, "…as the natural result of our wrong-doings and our atrocious cruelties, terrible as war must ever be, let us hope it will not be stayed by any compromise which shall continue the unequal, cruel war on the rights and liberties of millions of our unoffending fellow beings.…"

Meanwhile, the national conventions for women's rights ended. In 1864, the National Woman's Loyal League, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, gathered 400,000 signatures on a petition for an immediate end to slavery. Having neither access to the vote nor military service, women used the petition to support the 13th Amendment.

The Civil War ended in 1865, followed by passage of the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery. In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote. Stanton and others fought, and lost, the battle to include women in expanded suffrage.

In victory over slavery, decades-long alliances were broken. The women's rights movement split and old friends in the abolition and women's rights movements parted company. Just as anti-slavery forces had divided, so too did organizations struggling for women's suffrage.

National Park Service


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