USA > Ohio > Memories of the crusade a thrilling account of the great uprising of the women of Ohio in 1873, against the liquor crime > Part 33
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
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upon receiving my circular and temperance literature, and organized nine Sabbath-schools into Temperance Societies, numbering 600 chil- dren. At one of their temperance meetings 300 adults and 48 children signed the pledge-nearly a thousand as the result in that county.
" BLOODY COPIAH."
I have been very much interested in reading in the papers, from time to time, of the remarkable fact that Copiah county, Mississippi,-" Bloody Copiah"-was actually a prohibition county, where there was no liquor ; and as a matter of course, crime, of whatever shape, had almost entirely disappeared. But I said the world did not know that it was the transforming hand of a Crusader that was laid on "Bloody Copiah " and changed it into "Prohibition Copiah."
In opening up my Southern work, I was glad to remember that one of the first and most helpful ladies that came and stood by me in the first days of my work, our dear Mrs. A. E. B. Ridgely, was now living in Hazelhurst, Copiah county, Miss. I hastened to write to her, send- ing my circular, with the request that she send it to her county paper, indorsing it with an article from her own pen.
She answered at once, but said, while she saw the great need of enlisting the women of the South in the temperance work, the whole thing loomed up before her such a mountain of diffi- culties that her heart fainted. "But life is a
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MEMORIES OF THE CRUSADE.
succession of overcomings." It was such an unheard of thing for ladies to take part in any such public work, that she had little hope of any consideration being given the subject. But she sent the appeal to the paper, with an article of her own, and wrote me, "The editor of the Copiahan, our county paper, published your circular and a short article of my own very promptly, and called attention to the article in a short paragraph. The next issue contained a letter from Dr. Rowan, of Beauregard, ( in this county ), calling upon the people to rise up and take action in regard to the liquor question in their county. (There was no reference, however, to the article of the week before.) Quite a heated discussion followed, then a meeting to issue a call for a County Convention. The Convention was held; the ladies had been particularly invited ; there were not many in attendance, but they were invited to sign the constitution and to vote upon questions before the house. No word, however, acknowledging the origin of the move- ment."
But said my friend, " I thought if they would only do all that might be done, you would rejoice in that fact, satisfied to remain an un- known promoter of good measures. I felt that I would."
I sent Our Union and other papers, which Mrs. R. judiciously distributed. A petition was circulated against granting the application of the saloon-keeper in Hazelhurst for a renewal of his
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MEMORIES OF THE CRUSADE.
license. It was not long till " Bloody Copiah " was heralded to the world as "Prohibition Copiah." I do not claim for my Crusade co- worker, neither does she for herself claim, more than that "solitary and alone she put the ball in motion."
I have felt all through the penning of this history of my Southern experience, that I ought to apologize to my sisters who are to-day doing such marvelous work in all fields, for making so much of this year's work, for I am sure, to them it looks hardly worth the attention I am claiming for it. But I would beg them to remember that this was in 1880 ( eight years ago ). It was the beginning. I went by call of the Master, carry- ing the olive branch of the W. C. T. U., and the people-women and men-gave me a warm welcome and cordially co-operated with me in planting it in that warm, Southern soil; and while it was watered with many a tear and watched with almost painful solicitude, in that day of small beginnings, I am to-day filled with rejoicing that Miss Willard, our President, and others have followed and been able in the years since to do a blessed work, with the assistance of Mesdames Sallie Chapin, who has come to her kingdom for such a time as this, Lide Merriweather, Mollie McGee Snell, with a whole regiment of like faith and work. These, our Southern sisters, are pushing the battle to the gates of the enemy, and are, by their untiring zeal and practical methods, often giving us hints we would do well
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MEMORIES OF THE CRUSADE.
to act upon. While thus working for their own beloved South land, they have gladly joined us in bridging the chasm of sectional hate, and in pouring the oil of Christ's blessed Gospel of peace and good-will to all mankind on the troubled waters. And so are we once more a united people, -united through the loving mis- sion of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
On the 4th of October, 1887, the Ohio State Union held its fourteenth annual convention in Springfield, where it was organized thirteen years before. I deem it appropriate in closing this story of the Crusade, to copy a few extracts from the address of welcome I had the honor of delivering to the delegates on that occasion :
Thirteen years ago Ohio organized the first State W. C. T. Union of the world, little knowing whith- erto it would lead. We had come to see that such an organization was imperatively needed to syste- matically and continuously prosecute the work to which we had consecrated our lives. Days of beginnings were these,-of laying foundations and opening up highways for woman's feet to tread, in fields hitherto deemed inaccessible to woman.
To day, as we naturally cast a retrospective glance back over the intervening years, we exclaim, "Be- hold what hath God wrought - wrought by the hand of woman !"
In every State and Territory in our beloved land, from the State of the midnight pine to the golden gate, from the far Northwest to the Keys of the Land of Flowers, we are fully organized and actively pushing forward our work. Women hitherto separated by sectional strifes and prejudices, growing out of that other great national sin and conflict, are to-day side by side in most loving harmony, vying with each other in zeal and good works for home and native
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land. But not to our own shores was the blessed work confined,-the sound thereof has gone out into all the world.
I shall never forget the emotion that thrilled my breast as, standing addressing a ladies' conference in Belfast, Ireland, on the 21st of April, 1876, a telegram was handed me from Mrs. Parker, of Dundee, Scotland, dated New Castle-upon-Tyne, announcing the glorious news of the organization of the British Woman's Temperance Association there. This had been the burden of my mission to that country, and together, she and I had matured our plans, and parting at Glasgow, she going to New Castle, and by the aid of the Good Templars, whose Grand Lodge was at that time in session there, to put our purpose into execution; I, to Belfast, by invita- tion, to speak at the annual meeting of the Irish Temperance League.
And thus Great Britain gladly clasped hands across the ocean with us in this holy war. Now, in the Queen's possessions, on which they boast that "the sun never sets," they are emulating us and provoking us to good works.
When, as fraternal delegate from our National W. C. T. U., I attended the meeting of the R. W. Grand Lodge of Good Templars in Saratoga, last May, I was made very happy by meeting Mrs. Denholm, then of London, the Secretary of the first Union I formed in Great Britain, now of Cape Town, South Africa, and Vice-President of the World's Union for the dark continent. And one of our own, a gentle- spirited Quakeress, Mary Clement Leavitt, is sweep- ing around the world laden with the good news of the W. C. T. Union for God and Home and ALL LANDS, winning victories and accessions to our cause every- where. Think of it! In Japan, in China, countries whose gates were only so recently barred to woman, and to attempt to enter which would have cost her life; in India, Siam, holding grave counsel with crowned heads in the interest of our blessed work. And thus, to-day, the world is girdled with a band of white ribbon, and the white-winged dove of prohi- bition, prosperity, purity and peace shall ere long perch upon our banner.
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What has this phenomenal broadening of woman's field brought to her as an individual ? Oh, so much, beyond the power of the most vivid imagination to have forecast. A spiritual and intellectual develop- ment of which we had no previous conception. Women, not in the least conscious of the rich gifts and powers with which the Father had endowed them, having, as their several talents were laid at the Master's feet, been called into this great army, have astonished the world with their ability to devise, plan, organize, thrill and sway great audiences with burning words of eloquence, write books, edit and publish newspapers,-our Union Signal being a wit- ness of which we are justly proud.
The Secretary reports thirty-eight States, six terri- tories, and the District of Columbia, under organiza- tion. Forty various branches of benevolent work, some of which we had been in doubt as to the right or expediency of women entering upon, have we taken up in the interest of humanity, and for the ‘ amelioration of the sorrows of this sin-laden world.
A mighty force is this W. C. T. U., influencing and winning the profoundest respect of municipal, educational, corporate and religious bodies and legislative assemblies-even of the Executive of the Nation. It would seem, indeed, as if the blessed Lord were saying to us by the tokens of his favor, "Oh, woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee as thou wilt."
What has it brought to the Christian world ? An awakening of conscience and agitation on the drink question of which we have no previous record in history.
To the home ? An enlightenment and education that shall give to the world a generation of strong, brave men, and true, devoted women, who shall grasp the standard from our hands as they shall fall palsied in death, and bear the colors of Temperance and Total Prohibition aloft, and will push the battle to the final overthrow of the reign of King Alcohol, and usher in the day of gladness for which our eyes are growing dim with the watching.
What to the victims of the dread curse ? Restored manhood, happy women, glad, shouting, little chil-
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dren, bright, happy homes, where God is reverenced and worshiped. What woman does not, to-day, remembering all the way He hath led us, exclaim from the depths of a heart surcharged with gratitude, "I am glad I am in this army ?"
We have not attained the end of our hope-the total annihilation of the curse. Ah, no! But, stimulated even by the apparent defeat we have experienced in the past, through intriguing politi- cians, bribery and fraud, procured by the liquor- dealers' gold at the ballot-box, and even in legislative halls, we renew the conflict day by day. We know the victory must come. Everything that defileth, everything that can hurt in His holy mountain, shall be destroyed; for the mouth of the Lord God Om- nipotent hath spoken it.
FINIS
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ADDENDA.
Q Wreath of Immortelles.
AM happy after some pains of inquiry to present each reader of the preceding pages with this living Boquet of Immortelles that shall continue to distill the sweet odors of Christian love and charity, and shall increase in marvelous beauty as the years roll by. These names of the heroic women who meekly, but bravely, bore insult and imprisonment, not counting their lives dear unto them, for the blessed work to which the Master had called them, shall be conned with reverence by the coming generations, while with amazement and in- dignation they will ask if it can be possible that there was a time in this land of boasted freedom when Christian women were insulted, and even imprisoned, for trying to save their husbands and sons from that scourge of mankind, the liquor saloon.
Cincinnati contributes to the wreath the forty- three arrested May, 1874, -as Mrs. Leavitt the leader puts it, for "praying on the street," with age and nationality, all according to law !
Mrs. S. K. Leavitt, leader. Mrs. A. F. Whitman.
66 W. Whitridge.
" L. M. Mckenzie.
WV. I. Fee. Miss Ella King.
C. H. Payne.
Anna McHugh.
Mrs. Mary Frances. 66 J. E. Massey.
66 D. H. Baldwin.
66 Dr. Carter.
Mrs. Kate M. Warden.
Miss Jennie Forbes.
" Helen Russell.
Mary White.
Miss Mary Talbott.
C. H. Folger.
Sarah Shipley.
Mrs. Susan Sutton.
ADDENDA.
Mrs. Mary Whittaker.
F. French.
Miss Anna Nunn.
Mary A. French.
Mrs. Elizabeth Hopkins.
" Maria Stevens.
' I. R. Squires.
Olive Roseboom.
Fred. Hambold.
A. V. Crum.
66 M. I. Mansfort.
Lottie Oldrieve.
Mary Warren.
" H. Robinson. 66 Ellen Henson.
Lizzie Hervey. " E. H. Mann.
Miss Lottie Nunn.
" Wealthy Fisk.
" Mary Scott.
" S. R. Elstner.
Mrs. C. H. Taylor.
Pittsburg brings the following thirty-two names arrested May 22, 1874, to add to the boquet :
Mrs. A. W. Black, the leader, with her son, Mr. A. W. Black, who always walked by his mother as her protector.
Mrs. Van Horn. Mrs. J. S. Collins.
66 Mrs. Matchett.
" Johnston.
W. W. Morris.
" M. Gray.
" Sarah Moffett.
" J. I. Logan.
Grace Hopefull.
Macken. M. E. Tutell.
Miss E. B. Carmichael 66 A. Hill.
A. A. Starr.
Samuel Allinder.
" Pearl Starr.
Lee Starr.
Miss E Beeson.
Mrs Youngson. Mrs. D. N. Courtney.
66 M. B. Reese.
" Jane Nelson.
" John Foster.
" Martha Woods.
Mary Caldwell. Miss E. J. Foster.
Miss bessie Black.
" McClung.
Properly enough, Springfield brings her gift of two ladies to add to this unique boquet, Mrs. Charity Little and Mrs. Nancy Pearson, who were arrested on April 13th, 1874, charged with obstructing the sidewalk while quietly sitting near Mitsche's saloon. The charge was not sustained, though some tremen- dous swearing was done to effect it. It was in this saloon that a murder had been committed only some weeks before, the owners being implicated, causing much excitement. Here, however, was the saloon still doing a " lawful business," while these Christian ladies were arrested for keeping guard over it.
" W. M. Gormly.
Alice Gillchrist.
Mrs. E. B. Dalton.
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