USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 11
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I have not traced so much silent Berserker rage that I remember of in any man. " Yet when all eyes were fixed upon Webster and he had the chance of his life for power and prophecy he faced South instead of North - and betrayed the constituents who trusted him. Whether the dominant desire of his seventh of March speech was to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement and in that way put an end to the dangers which threatened the Union, or whether his only thought, as his harshest critics aver, was so to curry favor with the South that he would gain the Presidency he coveted, the result was the same: for him moral and political suicide; for those who had believed in him bitter disappointment and disillusion.
Happily there was raised up, just then, to lift the flag of freedom which Webster had allowed to be trampled in the dust, Charles Sumner, who had been Phillips' friend in college and who had latterly been growing greatly in power and in the confidence of the public. Sumner was Bostonian to the core. The family home, where he was born, was on the corner of Revere and Irving Streets and in the upper part of the house his aunt kept a private school at which he received his first instruction. At the university Sumner had had a brilliant career and after he began the practice of law in Boston he was able to build up a lucrative
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DANIEL WEBSTER'S HOUSE WHICH STOOD ON THE COR- NER OF SUMMER AND HIGH STREETS.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
From a daguerreotype made by Richards, of Philadelphia, about 1850.
CHARLES SUMNER.
DR. SAMUEL A. GREEN. From the painting by Frederic Vinton in the possession of the Groton Library. Page 174.
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practice much more quickly than is usually the case with young lawyers. But as yet he had felt no overwhelming interest in public affairs. Instead, it was literature and literary men which fascinated him, and when (in 1837) he went on a European tour it was Carlyle, Wordsworth, Lady Blessington and Mrs. Jameson in whose society he delighted, not in that of George Thompson or his co-workers. Even when he returned to Boston (in the spring of 1840) and was welcomed back into a circle which included Judge Story, Washington Allston, Jeremiah Mason, Dr. Channing, Rufus Choate, Prescott, Bancroft, Longfellow, Dr. Howe and Felton (some of whom were ardent Abolitionists) his interest in the anti-slavery cause was only a mild one. Always, however, he was distin- guished by a fine sense of duty and by an inclina- tion to unselfish service. To Horace Mann he gave substantial aid in his efforts to improve educational methods in Massachusetts, and Dr. Howe he helped in such ways as he could in his work for the blind. Howe, who was one of his warmest friends, wrote him, about this time, " I know not where you may be or what you may be about; but I know what you are not about; you are not seeking your own pleasure or striving to advance your own interests; you are, I warrant me, on some errand of kindness - some work for a friend or for the public."
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So the soil was ready. Should Sumner once become aroused to the overwhelming importance of the anti-slavery cause none could be more depended on than he to give it enthusiastic support. His début as a public speaker came in 1845 when he was invited to deliver the Fourth of July oration in Boston. The subject he chose was - Peace. It was a significant choice, not so much because Peace was an unusual topic for a Fourth of July oration (though it was that), as because of the way in which the speaker proceeded to marshal his arguments against the horrors of war, its sinful wastefulness, its absurdity and its utter failure, in most cases, to accomplish the object for which it had been waged. It was a speech fifty years ahead of its time, and it demonstrated conclusively that Charles Sumner possessed high courage as well as marked eloquence and rare scholarship. Though he was still less than thirty-five, Sumner was, from that moment, a recognized leader of men!
His next noteworthy speech was a Phi Beta Kappa oration in the summer of 1846, and in this he "took advantage of the occasion to express himself freely, especially on the two great questions of slavery and war." About the former topic he had been thinking deeply since the Fourth of July of a year ago, and of the result Emerson wrote in his journal: "Sumner's
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oration was marked with a certain magnificence which I do not well know how to parallel; " and Everett said, " It was an amazingly splendid affair. I never heard it surpassed; I don't know that I ever heard it equalled." The following month Sumner broke into politics, being sent as a delegate to the Whig State convention and voicing very effectively there the sentiments of the anti-slavery faction in
that party. When Webster, however, became, in his famous speech of March 7, 1850, the apologist of slavery, the swan-song of the Whig party was sung, in Massachusetts. And when Charles Sumner was elected to replace Webster in the Senate (the great Daniel having been called into President Fillmore's Cabinet) it was as the choice of the Free Soil party, the child and successor of the old Liberty party, that he entered upon his duties. This "party of freedom," as Sumner termed it, was founded on the principle that new States admitted to the Union should be free States. Gloriously did Charles Sumner uphold this principle in Wash- ington !
In Massachusetts, meanwhile, Wendell Phil- ips, agitator, embraced a new cause. In London, it will be recalled, Phillips, at a crucial moment in the anti-slavery movement, cham- pioned the cause of Woman. Naturally, there- fore, he was glad, with Mrs. Phillips, to sign
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the call for the Women's Rights Convention which met at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 23 and 24, 1850. The year is important because in Old England, as in New England, the women's cause - to which Mary A. Livermore and Lucy Stone here gave their lives - dates from this Worcester gathering; the Westminster Review, apropos of the convention, gave space to an exhaustive article on the subject written by Mrs. John Stuart Mill. The attendance at Worcester was large, women naturally being in the majority; but Phillips, Garrison and Douglass were there, also, to represent the anti-slavery interest, and Sargent and Channing found their way to the meetings in behalf of the liberal pulpit. illiberal pulpit com- mented upon the gathering in characteristically unpleasant fashion. A certain Universalist clergyman - whose name Carlos Martyn says it would be cruel to give but which I should give just the same if I knew it - thus announced a meeting at which Lucy Stone was to speak: " Tonight, at the Town Hall, a hen will attempt to crow." One very interesting thing about this convention was that Wendell Phillips there made a prophecy, for which he was rebuked by Lucretia Mott, but of which time has, none the less, proved the truth: i. e., that " the cause would meet more immediate and palpable and insulting opposition from women
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that from men." Throughout the long strug- gle of women to obtain the franchise we encoun- ter the principles for which that convention first stood, principles set forth for all time by Phillips a year later in that matchless speech of which George William Curtis has said : ". . . All the pleas for applying the Ameri- can principle of representation to the wives and mothers of American citizens echo the eloquence of Wendell Phillips at Worcester." This address is easily accessible in the collected speeches of Phillips. But I would advise all men who prefer to "protect" women and keep them in "their place, the home," (for- getting that nearly nine million women in the United States are already earning their living outside the home) I would advise such men and women, I say, not to read the speech. It will make them feel so silly!
When Phillips met Theodore Parker, after returning from the Women's Rights Conven- tion, the clergyman said to him:
" Wendell, why do you make a fool of your- self? "
" Theodore," was the reply, "this is the greatest question of the ages; you ought to understand it."
Inside of a year Parker had not only espoused the cause but had preached four sermons on it.
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It was in the year 1851, which we have now reached in our story of Phillips' life, that Kos- suth came to America, seeking the intervention of the United States in the cause of Hungary against Austria. Kossuth is remembered by a few " old-timers " as a " short thick-set man with brown hair, a full brown beard and large blue eyes." He was a graceful and impressive speaker, aflame with patriotic devotion to his oppressed country. But, unhappily for his cause in Boston, he ignored the fact that in this country also, a large question concerning human freedom was being debated. He ac- cepted the hospitality of slave-holders while in the South and he carefully refrained from raising his voice on what, to the Abolitionists, was the most important issue then connected with the word, freedom. Wendell Phillips, accordingly, improved the opportunity offered by the annual anti-slavery Bazaar in Boston to make (on December 27, 1851) a perfectly tremendous speech on Kossuth's anomalous position. He showed that the patriot had been informed of the condition of the American struggle before he left the old world, so that he could not plead ignorance as his excuse, and he contrasted - greatly to Kossuth's disad- vantage - his attitude in regard to the in- stitution of slavery with that of Lafayette and O'Connell. Not that Phillips felt it necessary
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that Kossuth, who had come to raise money for Hungary, should take a pronounced anti- slavery stand; but he did feel that this friend of freedom might at least have withheld sweep- ing praise of American institutions, praise so fulsome and so enthusiastic as to convince the slave-holders that their visitor distinctly approved of them and of their ways. The only report of the speech is in the Liberator (vol. XXII, p. 3), but it is well worth searching out there, for Phillips never rose to greater heights than when he pointed out to Bostonians the paradox of Kossuth's position in America and lashed with sarcasm this eminent patriot who was endorsing the "great American lie, that to save or benefit one class a man may right- eously sacrifice the rights of another." Webster, who since his speech in behalf of the Fugitive Slave Law had systematically adhered to the position then taken, fittingly did the honors for Boston at the dinner given here to Kossuth.
A year later Webster was no more and Boston honored him in the last rites that may be paid to any man. Though the use of Faneuil Hall for a reception had been refused the great Daniel by the Boston board of aldermen only a year before, his faults were now forgotten in genuine grief at the passing on October 24, 1852, of a mighty intellect. The burial was at Marsh- field, Webster's summer home, and though the
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nearest railway station then was at Kingston, eight miles distant, and transportation was not easy, twenty thousand people went out for the services. Crowded memorial services were sub- sequently held in Faneuil Hall and in the Hollis Street Church, and beautiful and appropriate mourning was displayed for days throughout the city. From Faneuil Hall was hung a banner inscribed, "Like Daniel of Old: His Trust Was In God. Upon Whom Shall His Mantle Fall? " And from Bunker Hill where he had made two of the greatest speeches in the English language floated the legend, "Bunker Hill Mourns the Departed Patriot."
One other important thing happened in Boston that year of our Lord 1852. J. P. Jewett, a young and hitherto unknown pub- lisher, brought out in book form Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Stowe had known Boston well as a girl, for her father had been a prominent pastor here. But during her maturity the city seems to have made its impression upon her chiefly through the Libera- tor. Not only had she diligently read this and other anti-slavery papers; she had seen slavery at work in Kentucky. For nearly twenty years before the publication of "Uncle Tom" she had been brooding over the wrongs of the slaves. When comparative leisure came to her the story, as she has said, " wrote itself."
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(At the time it found its way to paper she was living in what was then known as the Titcomb house in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Professor Stowe, had lately been called as the incumbent of the chair of natural and revealed religion at Bowdoin College.)
No woman with Mrs. Stowe's heritage and character could have had intimate knowledge of the horrors of slavery without being deeply moved by them. Yet, until she came back to New England, by way of Boston, she had not felt impelled to the duty she afterwards under- took. On her journey to Maine she happened to stop at the Boston home of her brother, Dr. Edward Beecher. Daniel Webster's Seventh of March speech was still ringing in the ears of the people and all good men were aflame with the infamy of the Fugitive Slave Act which he had been defending. The heart- rending scenes which occurred in connection with slave-renditions under this Act were re- hearsed and commented on in all Abolition homes and terrible stories told of men frozen while trying to escape in the dead of winter through rivers and pathless forests to Canada. After Mrs. Stowe reached Brunswick her Bos- ton sister-in-law wrote her, " Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can I would write something to make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is." While Mrs. Stowe was pon-
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dering this saying she came upon an authenti- cated account, in an anti-slavery magazine, of the escape of a woman with her child on the ice across the Ohio River from Kentucky. This suggested a plot which soon crystallized in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The National Era, pub- lished in Washington, was glad to bring the
story out in numbers and for this Mrs. Stowe received three hundred dollars. But it remained for J. P. Jewett, of Boston, to see the great possibilities of the story when it should be brought out in book form. None the less he hesitated over the step, for the work was longer than he would have wished. When, however, the competent literary critic to whom he had submitted it for an opinion reported, "The story has life in it; it will sell," he hesitated no more. Finding that Professor Stowe could not share equally with him the expense and the profits of bringing out the work Mr. Jewett offered the usual ten per cent. royalty, which was accepted.
The success of the book was immediate. Three thousand copies were sold the first day and within a few days ten thousand copies had gone. Then a second edition went to press, and thereafter eight presses, running night and day, were barely able to keep pace with the demand. Within a year three hundred thou- sand copies were sold and newspapers and
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pulpits were alternately defending and attack- ing the book.
Mrs. Stowe was now comparatively rich as well as famous. When her husband, four months after the book's publica- tion, was asked by Mr. An Edition for the Million., Jewett how much he UNCLE TOM'S CABIN POR. 871-8 OTB. TVE have yielded to the repeated and earnest solici- tations of numerous friends of humanity, and now offer to them and to the public generally-TO THE LIVING MASSES-an edition of Mire. Stow's. unrivalled work at a price so low as to bring it within the means of every person. It seems a work of super- erogation to speak in complimentary terms of. a book, ONE MILLION COPIES DO expected to receive as royalty, he replied whim- sically that he hadn't of which have been printed, in this country and in Europe, in a little more than six montha,-s male which has no counterpart in the world's history. Yet, notwithstarling this immenso sale, there are hundreds of thousands in our own country who have not yet perused the glowing pages of UNCLE TOM'S CAB- IN. many of whom have been prevented from doing so, from inability to purchase. To remove this obsta- cle, we have issued this edition the slightest idea but hoped it would be enough to buy Mrs. Stowe a FOR THE MILLION. new silk dress. The pub- And millions will now resd it, and own it, and drink in its heavenly principles, and the living generations of men will imbibe its noble sentiments, and genera- tions ret unborn will rise up and bless its author, and. thank the God of Heaven for inspiring a noble wo- man to utter auch glowing. burning truths, for the re- demption of the oppressed millions of our race. lisher handed him a check for ten thousand dollars. To Booksellers, Philanthropists, or Societies, who wish to purchase the shore by the thousand; for sale or distribution, a liberal discoun: will be made. The edition is very nently printed in a large nctaro pamph. let of 166 pages, double columns, thick paper covers, and firmly stitched. We now offer to the public the following editions :- Yet because the author had neglected to secure the dramatic rights of UNCLE TOM'S CABLE. RETAIL The edition for the Million, 37 1-2 cents. In German, (in press, to be published about tho Ist of Junuary. 1853.) 50 : her work she derived no The edition in two vols., bound in cloth, best library edition, 81 60 profits from the great Superb Illustrated Elition, with 145 Original Designs, by Billings, en- graved by Baker & Smith, in 1 .vol. octavo, cloth, 2:50 success the story had Cloth, full gilt, 3'60 Extre Turkey, full gilt, 5 00 as a play. It was first JOHN P. JEWETT & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. .P. S .- MRS. STOWE IS NOW PREPARING. and in a few days will offer to the public, presented on the stage A KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Being a complete refutation of some chargee which have been made against her on account of alleged overstatements of facts in Uncle Tom. It will make a pamphlet of about 100 pages, double columns, and will present original facta and documents, most thoroughiv establishing the truth of every statement in her book. Price 25 cts. in August, 1852, - and today it is being played by scores of travelling Dec. 3 6tis companies in the United States. From its enor- mous success, both as a book and as a play, the story earned vast sums in Europe also. But from
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these Mrs. Stowe made no money; and by the laws of her own country even her ten per cent. on the American sales of the book ceased before her death.
But Harriet Beecher Stowe had written Uncle Tom's Cabin to advance a cause and not to accumulate wealth. How wonderfully it did this every American school boy knows. Charles Dudley Warner (in the Atlantic Monthly of September, 1896) attributes to the vigorous and noble appeal which Mrs. Stowe addressed to the women of England, - while the Civil War was going on, - a great measure of the sympathy that England felt for the North during that "irrepressible conflict." And this appeal was directly due to a remarkable docu- ment sent to the women of America by the women of England just after "Uncle Tom " was brought out in the mother country. There had then (in 1853) been presented to Mrs. Stowe as a result of a meeting at Stafford House a huge petition against slavery together with an address composed by Lord Shaftesbury. This petition had previously been put into the hands of canvassers in England and on the continent as far as Jerusalem, with the result that signatures of 562,848 women were ob- tained " with their occupations and residences from the nobility on the steps of the throne down to the maids in the kitchen." All who
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. From the drawing by George Richmond, London, 1853.
MARY A. LIVERMORE. Page 182.
LUCY STONE. Page 182.
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A PROCESSION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY COURT STREET.
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signed the petition acknowledged England's complicity in the sin of slavery but prayed for aid in removing from the country " our common . crimes and common dishonor."
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Personally, Mrs. Stowe was the most in- teresting member of a highly interesting family. She was attractive to look at, too, though the portraits of her which are usually given would not in the least lead one so to believe. Mrs. Fields, who has written her life, tells us that once, after she had accompanied Mrs. Stowe to a well-known house in Boston, the hostess came to her exclaiming, "Why did you not tell me that Mrs. Stowe was beautiful? " Mrs. Stowe herself relates that during her triumphant tour of England, after the pub- lication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the general topic of remark on meeting her seemed to be that she was " not so badlooking " as they were afraid she was.
Lincoln characterized Harriet Beecher Stowe as "the little woman who made this great war." Before the publication of her book, slavery, though the question of questions for a devoted body of reformers, was an academic question to people generally. After the book came out it became a matter of wide popular interest. This interest the anti-slavery societies carefully fanned. Meeting after meeting was arranged with stirring addresses and special
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anti-slavery hymns or songs in which all could join. Moreover, Bostonians, who had here- tofore been comparatively conservative, began to concern themselves that territories about to be admitted to the Union should be of the " Free State " variety. By the autumn of 1854 Amos A. Lawrence and his associates began to send men out to Kansas in order to make that a free State, and these parties would go swinging across the intervening territory singing the words of Whittier:
" We cross the prairie as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free."
Now it happened that, ten years earlier, a certain John Brown, who had meanwhile grown more and more interested in the suppression of slavery, had been the buying agent in Ohio of the wool firm in which Amos Lawrence of Boston was a member. We are beginning, are we not, to smell powder? It seems, at any rate, to be a fact that Amos Lawrence and his co-workers in the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company were soon giving not only moral support to the men who were going out to help make Kansas a free State; they were also, as Frank Sanborn makes very clear (in his Life and Letters of John Brown), helping them, as early as 1855, by supplying them with Sharpe's rifles!
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John Brown's first visit to Boston, for the purpose of advancing his plans for Kansas (to which place he had gone, two years earlier, from his home in North Elba, New York), occurred just after Christmas, 1856. He came at the invitation of George Luther Stearns, a wealthy Boston manufacturer whose home was in Medford and who had married the niece of Lydia Maria Child. The next Sunday, the first in January, 1857, Brown went to the Boston Music Hall to hear Theodore Parker preach. He seems indeed to have met a number of the Abolitionists of the city during his stay here and to have stimulated very effectively the determination which existed to make Kansas a free State. The crisis called for action. For in spite of yeoman service rendered by Sumner in the Senate the Missouri Compromise had been repealed and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill passed. This Bill provided that the question of slavery in a State should be determined by those who settled there. The need of the moment was that Kansas should be settled by colonists who would be anti-slavery men, men who should send forth an " everlasting No" to every scheme to advance the Southern interest.
Boston became the centre of operation for the ensuing organization. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who had fought for Greek independence and participated also in the revolutionary strug-
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gles of Poland and France, took an especially deep interest in making Kansas a Free State, and at his office on Bromfield Street were to be met those men and women who were similarly concerned. For while the men were raising funds to furnish the Kansas' colonists with Sharpe's rifles and ammunition the women were getting together clothing and money for food to be forwarded by a committee of which Mrs. Samuel Cabot, Jr., was the efficient and ad- mirable head.
Sumner imperilled his life, as the event proved, for a free Kansas. At first the pro- slavery element had been successful out there - thanks to neighboring Missourians who de- liberately rode across the line to vote fraudu- lently, to shoot and to rob. The Legislature which these men put in promptly took steps to make Kansas a slave Territory and passed a severe code of laws for the protection of slavery. Northern men proceeded to ignore this government as illegitimate, by meeting in convention at Topeka, forming a State Con- stitution and in turn seeking admittance to the Union. Thus there were two authorities in Kansas, one pro-slavery, the other anti- slavery, and for about two years the history of the settlement was one of disgraceful violence. From November first, 1855, until that December when John Brown came to Boston and heard
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