Davidson: But your fame shall never die

The Battle of Lake Champlain during the War of 1812 took place on September 11, 1814. Many of the sailors who were killed during that military engagement were buried in a mass grave on Crab Island, just outside the town of Plattsburgh, New York.

About eight years later, the young Plattsburgh-born poet Lucretia Maria Davidson traveled across Lake Champlain in a steamboat and saw Crab Island. Remembering the dead that remained interred and unmarked there, the 14-year old poet wrote "Reflections, on Crossing Lake Champlain in the Steamboat Phoenix":

Islet on the lake's calm bosom,
    In thy breast rich treasures lie;
Heroes! there your bones shall moulder,
    But your fame shall never die.

Islet on the lake's calm bosom,
    Sleep serenely in thy bed;
Brightest gem our waves can boast,
    Guardian angel of the dead!

Calm upon the waves recline,
    Till great Nature's reign is o'er;
Until old and swift-winged time
    Sinks, and order is no more.

Then thy guardianship shall cease,
    Then shall rock thy aged bed;
And when Heaven's last trump shall sound,
    Thou shalt yield thy noble dead!

Davidson was already sick with the tuberculosis that would kill her about two years writing the above poem. She was 16. Her sincere interest in poetry, coupled with her young innocence, lent credence to the belief that her tuberculosis inspired her to have a strong poetic sensibility. Her supporters after her death included Samuel F. B. Morse and Catharine Maria Sedgwick each of whom assisted with posthumous publications of her work.

Death of Murfree: the sun had gone down

When Mary Noailles Murfree died on July 31, 1922, the author Charles Egbert Craddock died with her. Born and raised in Tennessee, she moved to St. Louis with her family after the Civil War. Some sort of childhood illness (usually reported as "lameness") inspired her interest in reading and literature. Nostalgia for her home state likely inspired her to begin writing "local color" stories about Tennessee. These tales and sketches portrayed a frontier, rural south, a mountainous and wild region made up of tough and rugged characters. Murfree made a good marketing decision, then, to write under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock. She maintained her ruse for several years before surprising, if not shocking, New England's literary elite when her true identity was revealed.

In reality, Murfree/Craddock had little contact with the Appalachian mountain men and women that she featured in her work. She came from a well-known and aristocratic family (her home town of Murfreesboro was name after her ancestor, a veteran of the American Revolution) in central Tennessee. She spent her summers with her family in the mountainous regions in the eastern part of the state, among the Appalachian folks. Her family rank, however, as well as her "lameness" prevented her from much direct interaction with those people. She instead relied on those who made their way to do business to the resort hotel where she stayed.

In other words, though Murfree/Craddock presented herself as someone who knew the ins and outs of this cultural group, she was really an outsider. She certainly was sympathetic to that group of people, though her stories are more sentimental than reality. A sample from her chapter "Drifting Down Lost Creek" from In the Tennessee Mountains shows both her commitment to showing the "color" of Tennessee, her romanticism of the mountains, and her use of local dialect:

The sun had gone down, but the light yet lingered. The evening star trembled above Pine Mountain. Massive and darkling it stood against the red west. How far, ah, how far, stretched that mellow crimson glow, all adown Lost Creek Valley, and over the vast mountain solitudes on either hand! Even the eastern ranges were rich with this legacy of the dead and gone day, and purple and splendid they lay beneath the rising moon. She looked at it with full and shining eyes.
 "I dunno how he kin make out ter furgit the mountings," she said; and then she went on, hearing the crisp leaves rustling beneath her tread, and the sharp bark of a fox in the silence of the night-shadowed valley.

*I am indebted for information in this post to Wingless Flights: Appalachian Women in Fiction (1996) by Danny L. Miller

Birth of Ida B. Wells: with its joys and sorrows

Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862. Before she was even a year old, however, she was emancipated by Abraham Lincoln. Her parents, who were also freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, encouraged education in their children (her father was a trustee of what is now Rust College). However, her parents died when she was a teenager, and young Ida dropped out of college to became a schoolteacher in order to earn enough money to support her siblings.

Wells eventually moved the family to Tennessee, and there experienced segregation and the effects of racism stronger than before. In September 1883, she refused to move from the first class cabin of the train to the smokers' cabin. Though she won a lawsuit against the company, she lost on a later appeal. She sued again after a similar incident and again won initially but, this time, it was the state's supreme court that overturned the verdict.

The incidents fueled her desire to do something to attack the problem of racism and she soon switched careers from educator to journalist. She wrote for newspapers in Tennessee, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and others, writing directly about racial problems including poor funding for black schools and the horror of lynchings. She was soon labeled a troublemaker; others, however, called her "Princess of the Press." Eventually, she was owner and editor of her own newspaper, Free Speech. Once, in 1892, while away from the office, her building was ransacked by her enemies. She was undeterred, and Ida B. Wells had a lengthy career as a journalist, author, and public speaker.

An entry from her diary on her 25th birthday, July 16, 1887, shows the high standards she set for herself even at that young age:

This morning I stand face to face with twenty five years of life, that ere the day is gone will have passed me by forever. The experiences of a quarter of a century of life are my own, beginning with this, for me, new year... Within the last ten [years] I have suffered more, learned more, lost more than I ever expect to, again. In the last decade, I've only begun to live — to know life as a whole with its joys and sorrows. Today I write these lines with a heart overflowing with thankfulness to My Heavenly Father for His wonderful love & kindness... When I turn to sum up my own accomplishments I am not so well pleased. I have not used the opportunities I had to my best advantage and find myself intellectually lacking... Twenty-five years old today! May another 10 years find me increased in honesty & purity of purpose & motive!

*Information, including the passage above, comes from The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1994 edition), edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis.

Warfield: Such was Destiny's decree!

Catherine Anne Warfield, born in Missisippi in 1816, was popular in her native South as both a poet and writer of fiction. After her marriage, she moved to Kentucky and there lived through the Civil War. From her home of Beechmore, she wrote her poem "Drowned, Drowned" on June 15, 1867 (the title references a line in Shakespeare's Hamlet). The poem compares the struggle of the Confederate Army with diving for pearls and, like much of the Southern poetry of the period, elevates these veterans to angelic status in sentimental, patriotic verse:

In the dark Confederate sea
Rest the heroes of our race;
O'er them waves are sweeping free,
And the pearls of ocean trace
Temples, where the helm should be,
Worn with high heroic grace.
'Twas a desperate strife at best,
And they perished—let them rest
In their silent burial place!—

When our divers, dreading nought,
Plunged to depths, through ocean whirls,
It was all their hope and thought,
To bear back those precious pearls,
Passion freighted, Beauty fraught,
Such as gleam 'mid glowing curls,
Or on baldrick and on banner,
In the old heroic manner,
Broidered all, by high-born girls.

But the divers came no more
From that dark Confederate sea,
With its ceaseless muffled roar,
And its billows sweeping free,
And the pearls were never gathered,
And the storms were never weathered.
Such was Destiny's decree!—
Quench the tear, and stay the sigh,
Nothing now can these avail;

They who nobly strive and die,
Over Fate itself prevail.
Give to those, who on the shore
Wait for sires who come no more,
Shelter from the surf and gale.
Spread the board and trim the hearth,
For the orphans of our race,
Lift from weariness and dearth,
Each young drooping form and face,
Light anew the olden fires
Won from high heroic sires,
And may God bestow his grace!

Death of Rand: never will smile again

The Philadelphia-born poet Marion H. Rand died on Grahamville, South Carolina on June 9, 1849. She was about 25 years old. Rand began publishing her poetry as early as 14 years old, encouraged no doubt by her father, the author of several books of penmanship. By the end of her life, she had contributed to most of the major magazines of the day, including Graham's Magazine and Godey's Magazine in her native Philadelphia. She was collected in several anthologies of women's poetry, including those by Caroline May and Thomas Buchanan Read. Most of what is known about Rand comes from the short listings in these collections (such as the one pictured).

Her poem, "The Early Called," reflects a very real understanding of the reality of death, yet the speaker is reassured by their religious conviction. The poem was first published in Graham's in May 1844:

How lovely she lies in her long, last sleep—
While the eyes that may never more smile or weep
Are veiled in their fringed lids so close
That it seems but a slumber of deep repose.
She hath gone — as the rose-tinted cloud at even
Melts slowly away in the depths of heaven;
As the bud that rises from earth to bless
Our eyes in its innocent loveliness,
But with a worm in its heart unseen,
Droops in its bower of living green,
And ere the destroyer is yet revealed,
Its petals are withered — its doom is sealed.
So the hands that cherished her opening bloom,
Must lay her low in the silent tomb,
And the eyes that were wont in pride to dwell
On the beautiful form they loved so well,
Must sadly and mournfully turn away
From the cold, cold image of senseless clay.
Oh! 'tis a bitter thing to prove.
This hopeless yearning for one we love;
To look on the face, the cheek and brow,
In their marble purity, fairer now,
To wait for one smile, and wait in vain,
From lips that never will smile again.
Oh! what in this fleeting world hath power
To stem the agony of that hour?
Alas! with a shuddering heart and stern,
From all earth's comforts and gifts we turn,
And some might think that all is dark
In the dwelling where death has set his mark;
But praised be He who alone can bless,
For He doth not leave us comfortless.
When grief lies heaviest round our home,
And a blight on our fairest hopes has come,
When we scarce can lift our heavy eyes
To our lost one's dwelling beyond the skies—
He whom we sought when our day was bright
Will tenderly guide through this dark night;
Will lighten our burdens — charm our pain,
Till our hearts are almost glad again —
And the earth-stained love we bore to Him,
'Mid snares and temptations burning dim,
So often wearied — so often cold,
He will repay it a thousand fold.

Death of Augusta Evans Wilson: at best a struggle

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson died of a heart attack in Mobile, Alabama on May 9, 1909. The author of multiple novels, she was best remembered for her book St. Elmo. Published in 1866, the novel was considered the Southern best-seller equal in popularity as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the North. Various towns, hotels, and even steamboats were named in honor of the author or her characters.

Born in Georgia and raised partly in Texas, young Augusta showed an early interest in literature (despite no formal schooling) and began writing her first novel while still a teenager. Ultimately, she published some nine novels over about 50 years. Many of Wilson's books were popular because of perceived simplicity and domestic or sentimental themes. Immediately after her death, even her obituaries claimed her work already seemed like something from an different time — already old-fashioned, in other words. More modern scholars, however, have found that her female characters were a bit more modern and shared equal power, intellect, and agency as the male characters. In the political world, oddly enough, Wilson was a bit conservative and opposed women's suffrage in the growing movement.

An avid secessionist, Wilson (then still Miss Evans) volunteered to nurse Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. She used her experience as an inspiration for her 1864 book Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice. From that book, here is a scene in which a character named Russell witnesses the death of his elder mother:

"If I could look upon your face once more, my son, it would not be hard to die. Let me see you in heaven, my dear, dear boy." These were the last words, and soon after a stupor fell upon her. Hour after hour passed; Mrs. Campbell came and sat beside the bed, and the three remained silent, now and then lifting bowed heads to look at the sleeper. Not a sound broke the stillness save the occasional chirp of a cricket, and a shy mouse crept twice across the floor, wondering at the silence, fixing its twinkling bright eyes on the motionless figures. The autumn day died slowly as the widow, and when the clock dirged out the sunset hour Russell rose, and, putting back the window-curtains, stooped and laid his face close to his mother's. Life is at best a struggle, and such perfect repose as greeted him is found only when the marble hands of Death transfer the soul to its guardian angel. No pulsation stirred the folds over the heart, or the soft bands of hair on the blue-veined temples; the still mouth had breathed its last sigh, and the meek brown eyes had opened in eternity. The long, fierce ordeal had ended, the flames died out, and from smouldering ashes the purified spirit that had toiled and fainted not, that had been faithful to the end, patiently bearing many crosses, heard the voice of the Great Shepherd, and soared joyfully to the pearly gates of the Everlasting Home. The day bore her away on its wings, and as Russell touched the icy cheek a despairing cry rolled through the silent cottage.

Dunbar: the ability to manage dialect

You ask my opinion about Negro dialect in literature. Well, I frankly believe in everyone following his bent. If it be so that one has a special aptitude for dialect work, why it is only right that dialect should be made a specialty. But if one should be like me — absolutely devoid of the ability to manage dialect — I don't see the necessity of ramming and forcing oneself into that plane because one is a Negro or a Southerner.

So wrote Alice Ruth Moore to her future husband Paul Laurence Dunbar on May 7, 1895. Moore was herself a poet, and the letter clearly implies that Dunbar felt uncomfortable taking advantage of his status as an up-and-coming black poet by writing in a stereotypical black dialect. He was correct to be concerned. Though he also wrote in traditional poetic language, it was his dialect poetry that soon launched his popularity. He was not a Southerner, having been born in Dayton, Ohio; Moore, on the other hand, was from New Orleans. One of Dunbar's boosters was William Dean Howells, who particularly enjoyed the dialect work. Two years after his letter to Moore, Dunbar admitted that Howells had done him "irrevocable harm"; the public came to expect a black dialect from the pen of Paul Laurence Dunbar, and was less likely to accept his more traditional work.

Dunbar was then 22 years old and had published his book Oak and Ivy two years earlier. That book included only a few dialect poems. His next book, Majors and Minors (1895) included a separate section for "Humor and Dialect." The same year, Moore published her first book, Violets and Other Tales. Though some of the prose stories in that collection had characters who spoke with Southern dialogue, her poetry used traditional language. One of Dunbar's more famous dialect poems is "A Negro Love Song":

Seen my lady home las' night,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Heahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'um huh eye,
An' a smile go flitin' by—
   Jump back honey, jump back.

Heahd de win' blow thoo de pines,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Mockin' bird was singin, fine,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
An' my hea't was beatin' so,
When I reached my lady's do',
Dat I couldn't ba' to go—
   Jump back, honey, jump back.

Put my ahm aroun' huh wais',
   Jump back, honey, jump back.
Raised huh lips an took a tase',
   Jump back, honey, jump back.
Love me honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?
An' she ansawhd: "'Cose I do"—
   Jump back, honey, jump back.

Coolbrith's San Francisco: garmented in fire

The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 began on April 18 shortly after 5 a.m. and lasted between 45 and 60 seconds, not including several aftershocks. Though its range was massive, it was labeled as a San Francisco phenomenon because of the massive fires it spawned there. Among the thousands affected was poet/librarian Ina Coolbrith, born Josephine Anne Smith, whose home was destroyed, along with all her possessions (including the manuscript for a tell-all book which is believed would have revealed her affairs with other California writers like Joaquin Miller and Bret Harte). Also among the items lost were some 3,000 books, including signed editions from her friends, as well as correspondence with literary figures like Mark Twain and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She was only able to save her pet cat.

Coolbrith's popularity in the California literary scene inspired several attempts to assist her financially. Twain offered autographed photographs of himself to sell, social clubs sponsored dinners or book sales in her honor, and some even pushed the state legislature to offer Coolbrith a pension. Years later, she was named the first poet laureate of California. The disaster somehow spurred Coolbrith to write more poetry than ever before. Among her lines from this period was a poem inspired by the earthquake and fire, "San Francisco — April 18, 1906":

In ended days, a child, I trod thy sands,
    The sands unbuilded rank with bush and brier
And blossom—chased the sea-foam on thy strands,
    Young city of my love and my desire!

I saw thy barren hills against the skies,
    I saw them topped with minaret and spire,
On plain and slope thy myriad walls arise,
    Fair city of my love and my desire!

With thee the Orient touched heart and hands:
    The world's rich argosies lay at thy feet;
Queen of the fairest land of all the lands—
    Our sunset-glory, proud and strong and sweet!

I saw thee in thine anguish! tortured, prone.
    Rent with the earth-throes, garmented in fire!
Each wound upon thy breast upon my own,
    Sad city of my love and my desire!

Gray wind-blown ashes, broken, toppling wall
    And ruined hearth—are these thy funeral pyre.
Black desolation covering as a pall—
    Is this the end, my love and my desire?

But I —shall see thee ever as of old!
    Thy wraith of pearl, wall, minaret, and spire,
Framed in the mists that veil thy Gate of Gold,
    Lost city of my love and my desire!

Birth of Anna Pierpont Siviter: such running

Francis Harrison Pierpont was known as the "Father of West Virginia" for his toil advocating for the new state split from Virginia. He served as the first provisional governor of those counties in west Virginia who did not side with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Before all that, however, he was a father. In particular, his daughter was born on April 14, 1858, in what was then Fairmont, Virginia, now part of West Virginia. After her marriage in 1886, she was known as the author Anna Pierpont Siviter (pictured here at age 8).

Young Anna went to school in southwestern Pennsylvania at the Washington Female Seminary (the same institution earlier attended by Rebecca Harding Davis). Her husband was the editor of a newspaper in Pittsburgh and an occasional humor writer; she began contributing both poetry and prose to various periodicals as well. She also edited several publications for use in Sunday schools. Possibly her most popular work in her lifetime was the book Nehe, a Tale of the Times of Artaxerxes (1901), a tale set in Persia inspired by the Biblical Nehemiah, and dedicated to her famous father. Several years later, when her father was honored with a statue in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (pictured at left), she wrote a poem for its unveiling which was presented by her daughter. The poem was less of a highlight of her father the governor, and more of an ode to West Virginia itself, including this stanza:

In the shout and din of battle, she was born, the brave, free State;
Humble men stood sponsor for her, but their every deed was great—
West Virginia, child of Freedom, lift your happy head on high;
Truth and Justice are your birthright; you were born to Liberty.

In Pittsburgh, Siviter also worked with several local Red Cross chapters, founded a kindergarten association, was a founding board member of the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital, joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, and various other civic organizations. Among her published books are The Sculptor, and Other Verses, Songs of Hope, Songs Sung Along the Way, and, posthumously, Recollections of War and Peace. She also contributed two recipes for a cook book. Her poem "Doggie and the Burglars" was found in a Wichita newspaper in 1899:

The house was dark and silent
    When Mr. Doggie woke.
"I thought," said Mr. Doggie,
    "For sure that some one spoke.

"I think," said Mr. Doggie,
    "That I will take a walk.
It's very trying in the night
    To think that you hear talk.

"Let's see," said Mr. Doggie;
    "My master's gun I'll take.
I do not mean to use it,
    But for appearance sake."

So forth went Mr. Doggie,
    And how he bowwowed when,
Just getting in the window,
    He found two robber men.

And when the thieves saw coming
    That big dog and his gun
You never saw such running
    As those scared men did run.

*Note: I had difficulty confirming the birth date of Anna Siviter; some sources list her birth year as 1859, only one offered the April 14 date. The image of young Anna comes from a booklet produced by Pierpont Community and Technical College.

Caroline Kirkland: I make my humble curtsey

Caroline Mathilda Stansbury Kirkland died on April 6, 1864, with a cause of death reported as apoplexy. She was perfectly healthy only a few days earlier, and her death was a surprise to many.

Born in New York, Kirkland moved west to Michigan with her family in 1837 where they founded a town. The project was financially unsuccessful and they returned to New York by the mid 1840s. The experience, however, inspired her first two books:  A New Home—Who'll Follow? (under the pseudonym Mary Clavers) and Forest Life. Her view of the experience in her books was quite negative, as she depicted Michigan as a blighted Eden. The first book in particular stirred controversy when locals in Michigan recognized themselves lampooned in the book. From her preface:

I claim for these straggling and cloudy crayon sketches of life and manners in the remoter parts of Michigan the merit of general truth of outline. Beyond this I venture not to aspire. I felt somewhat tempted to set forth my little book as being entirely—what it is very nearly—a veritable history; an unimpeachable transcript of reality; a rough picture, in detached parts, but pentagraphed from the life; a sort of 'Emigrant's Guide;'—considering with myself that these my adventurous journeyings and tarryings beyond the confines of civilization might fairly be held to confer the traveller's privilege. But conscience prevailed, and I must honestly confess, that there be glosses, and colorings, and lights, if not shadows, for which the author is alone accountable. Journals, published entire and unaltered, should be Parthian darts, sent abroad only when one's back is turned. To throw them in the teeth of one's everyday associates might diminish one's popularity rather inconveniently. I would desire the courteous reader to bear in mind, however, that whatever is quite unnatural, or absolutely incredible, in the few incidents which diversify the following pages, is to be received as literally true. It is only in the most common-place parts (if there be comparisons) that I have any leasing-making to answer for... And with such brief salvo, I make my humble curtsey. 

Back in New York, Kirkland founded a school for girls and joined the local literary community. Her home often hosted various gatherings of literary figures.

Kirkland was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, alongside her husband, William Kirkland, a former professor at Hamilton College and assistant editor of the New York Evening Mirror. After his death in 1846, her writing became a main source of income.

Birth of Emily Hawthorn: no idle dreamer

Though she sometimes wrote under the pen name "Emily Hawthorn," she was born Emily Thornton on March 21, 1845 in Lafayette, Indiana. After her marriage, she became Emily Thornton Charles. As a teenager, she had been a teacher but, after her husband died in 1874, as often happened among women in the 19th century, she needed to find a way to support herself. As a 24-year old widow and mother of two, she turned to writing.

Charles began writing for publications in Indianapolis and published her first book of poetry, Hawthorn Blossoms, in 1876. She also became a public speaker, often for the cause of woman's suffrage. In 1881, she became managing editor of a Washington D.C.-based newspaper and soon founded The National Veteran in the nation's capital. She became an officer for the National Woman's Press Association and was chosen as a speaker for the World's Fair in 1893. She collapsed at about that time and was bedridden for a year. She took the opportunity to revise her poetry and published Lyrical Poems in 1886.

In the preface to her first book, Charles explained her rewards for writing: touching the emotions of others. If, she wrote, an "expression to the thoughts that throng my mind and the emotions that swell within my heart" met sympathy in a single reader, it would be like "giving voice to those who were dumb." Perhaps her August 1873 poem, "The Poet," offers more on the subject:

My life may scatter sunbeams,
My face be smiling bright;
Yet in my heart there's sadness
That never seeks the light.

My life hath had its sorrows
Like chequered shadows cast;
They ever crossed my pathway,
And will while life shall last.

Some joys erstwhile come to me,
But pleasures never last;
Except in thought they linger—
In memories of the past.

I am no idle dreamer;
I work, I think, I feel.
Who chides me if, in rhyming,
I may my thoughts reveal?

Some heavy-laden mortal,
Who bows beneath his load,
Perhaps in reading my thoughts
May firmer tread the road.

'Tis idle all repining;
Look up, be brave, be true:
Who knows but in the future
Some brightness beams for you?

Thus, while on earth I linger,
I'll send forth words of cheer;
For this, who knows, but may be
My destined life-work here.

Stowe: what sort of woman I am!

"So you want to know what sort of woman I am!" wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe with obvious surprise. The letter, dated from Andover, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1853, was written in response to that request and Stowe happily complied. She described herself as, "To begin with... I am a little bit of a woman, — somewhat more than forty, about as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very much to look at in my best days, and looking like a used-up article now."

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had been published in book form slightly less than a year earlier. Considering the recipient of Stowe's letter was a stranger to her, she was quite open, describing that Uncle Tom's Cabin was inspired in part by her own poor state and "awful scenes and bitter sorrows" of her own life, including the "peculiar bitterness" and "almost cruel suffering" of the death of one of her children. She was equally forthcoming about her poverty, even noting she did not own enough teacups for a family visit to her home. "But then I was abundantly enriched with wealth of another sort," she wrote. Her first payments from publishing stories, she said, was used to purchase a feather-bed, "the most profitable investment" she could think of at the time — she compared it to the philosopher's stone.

Now, Stowe noted, she was working on a follow-up to her novel: "It will contain all the facts and documents on which that story was founded, and an immense body of facts, reports of trials, legal documents, and testimony of people now living South, which will more than confirm every statement in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'..." The book, which would be published later that year as A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, was causing her difficulty because of the subject matter. "This horror, this nightmare abomination!" she wrote of slavery, "can it be in my country? It lies like lead on my heart, it shadows my life with sorrow."

Stowe's letter was addressed to Eliza Lee Follen, herself a published author, which may explain why Stowe was so forthcoming about personal details. She admitted to having felt already acquainted since her girlhood, having made "daily use of your poems for children." In fact, years ago, Stowe had considered writing to Follen to introduce herself and thank her for her work. In her first book, published 1839, Follen included an anti-slavery poem, "Remember the Slave," which Stowe almost certainly admired:

Mother, whene'er around your child
      You clasp your arms in love;
And when, with grateful joy, you raise
      Your eyes to God above, —

Think of the negro mother, when
      Her child is torn away,
Sold for a little slave — O, then,
      For that poor mother pray...

Ye Christians! ministers of Him
      Who came to make men free,

When, at the Almighty Maker’s throne
      You bend the suppliant knee,—

From the deep fountains of your soul
      Then let your prayers ascend

For the poor slave, who hardly knows
      That God is still his friend.

Let all who know that God is just,
      That Jesus came to save,

Unite in the most holy cause
      Of the forsaken slave.

Constance Latimer: perfect contentment

Emma C. Embury, then a popular magazine contributor, intended to write a short novella to help raise funds for the establishment of a school for the blind in Brooklyn, New York. She didn't think her efforts were good enough, however, so she opted to write a full-length collection which would raise funds after the school was already established. In her preface, dated December 18, 1837, she apologized for the delay but made it clear her aim was not fame for herself but money for the institution:

It is now published to aid the funds of one of the most valuable institutions ever founded; and though the author's ability be far from equalling her will, she can only hope that, by thus contributing her mite, she may induce others to give of their abundance.

The book, Constance Latimer; or, The Blind Girl, with Other Tales, appeared in early 1838. On its title page, its dedication page, and in its preface, Embury made it clear it was written for the benefit of the New-York Institution for the Instruction of the Blind.

The title character of Embury's story, Constance Latimer, is herself blind. She lost her vision as a young child due to scarlet fever after seeing her brother's body when the same disease killed him. It was the last scene she ever saw. Despite her physical limitations, however, Constance is spiritually pure. The image of a perfectly moral and beautiful girl, happy with her life (even when a friend regains her lost eyesight), was an image Embury wanted to cultivate to arouse sympathy. The character's father is a wealthy man who inherited the family business — and noting his wealth is important as the book was publishing during the Panic of 1837 and that Embury solicited funds for the Brooklyn school specifically from wealthy families. Constance seems to have an enhanced emotional awareness to make up for her lack of vision, and she ultimately represents a perfect, unchallenging figure of antebellum femininity.

Her father, however, comes down with an illness and sacrifices the family fortune. He travels to England to protect what assets he can, leaving his wife and daughter behind. To raise enough income for them to survive, Constance becomes a music teacher at the Brooklyn School for the Blind. Her father could not be more proud:

Once more contentment smiled upon the longtried family. Adversity had awakened the noble feelings which had slumbered in the hearts of all, and the voice of prosperity could not again lull them to sleep. To a mind filled with knowledge, and a heart pure as the dream of infancy, Constance now added a consciousness of mental power, a reliance on her own resources, and a piety which taught her that the shorn lamb, which had been sheltered from the pelting of the pitiless storm, would find the wind of future years tempered by the same benevolent hand. Her days are still gliding on so calmly, that she scarcely feels their current; and though the silver blossoms of the grave are strewn upon the temples of her parents, she still wears the garland of youth upon her sunny brow. The absence of all tumultuous passions has preserved the childlike purity of her countenance; and if ever perfect contentment dwelt in the breast of mortal, her home may be found in the heart of the blind Constance Latimer.

Evils oppressing themselves or others

Elizabeth Oakes Smith was angry. Women had recently been gathering at public conventions to demand their rights. They were met with ridicule, hecklers, and laughter, "as if it were the funniest thing in the world for human beings to feel the evils oppressing themselves or others, and to look round for redress." With those words, she opened the first of her series "Woman and Her Needs," published November 21, 1850 in the New York Tribune.

She was further annoyed that some who ridiculed these women's rights conventions who were themselves women, so "well cared for" that they remained unaware of the suffering of others. Oakes Smith argues part of their problem is that they lack "comprehensiveness of thought." Others, who themselves suffer from their subjugation, simply know no better. She writes, "These are the kind over whom infinite Pity would weep as it were drops of blood. These may scoff at reform, but it is the scoffing of a lost spirit, or that of despair." Still, she says, there are women who have become aware of their problematic role in society:

They are not content to be the creatures of luxury, the toys of the drawing room, however well they grace it — they are too true, too earnest in life to trifle with its realities. They are capable of thinking, it may be far more capable of it, than those of their own household who help to sway the destinies of the country through the ballot box. They are capable of feeling, and analyzing too, the evils that surround themselves and others — they have individuality, resources, and that antagonism which weak men ridicule, because it shames their own imbecility; which makes them obnoxious to those of less earnestness of character, and helps them to an eclectic power, at once their crown of glory.

Prior to these movements, Oakes Smith writes, there were individual women who spoke up. Now, however, they are gathering in larger groups and calling with a unified voice. Certainly, they will make missteps, but the movement is new and the people are learning. She argues in particular that women simply must have a voice in the world because they are already part of it, that they must be a part of lawmaking because they are impacted by law.

They are the mothers and wives and sisters of the Republic, and their interests cannot be separated from the fathers and husbands and brothers of the Republic. It is folly to meet them with contempt and ridicule, for the period for such weapons is passing away.

Ultimately, Elizabeth Oakes Smith contributed 10 articles in this series on "Woman and Her Needs." The final installment was published nearly seven months after the first.

Birth of John Adams: Herculean President

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735. On his birthday in 1799, Adams was sitting as the second President of the United States in Philadelphia when playwright, actress, and author Susanna Rowson wrote an ode in his honor. Rowson, though born in England, spent most of her life in Massachusetts, Adams's home state.

Rowson's long poem first tells the legend of Alcides (an alternate name for the demigod Hercules), and how both Virtue and Vice sought him in his childhood to fight for his soul. Alcides, however, was not tempted by Vice's deceit, however, and even picks an entire oak tree to use as a spear against her. The reader of the legend is also the narrator or speaker in the poem and, so moved by the legend, she wonders if it would be possible for a mortal to have a soul so pure. Right on cue, a vision appears to her of an angelic figure with the word "Independence" on her belt and "Unity" and "Heaven" on her bracelets.

"And who art thou, bright vision?" I enquired;
    "My name," she smiling cried, "is Liberty;"
"Oh nymph, by all beloved, by all desired,
    "And art thou come," I cried, "to dwell with me?"
"No," said the goddess, "I am come to chide."
    "Why dost thou wonder at Alcides' worth?
"Columbia boasts, and she may boast with pride,
        "An equal hero's birth.
"The morn which dapples in the east,
    "And makes all nature gay,
"Speaks what should be by all exprest;
"Let every face in smiles be drest,
    "For 'tis his natal day."

The spirit of Liberty acknowledges that Alcides accomplished great things, but that Adams (named in the poem) is greater, "soaring on superior worth." She then commands the speaker (now, presumably, Rowson herself) to honor him on his birthday by writing a poem:

"Then rise, and tune the vocal lay,
    "Invoke the Muse's aid;
"Small is the tribute thou canst pay,
    "Yet be that tribute paid,
"And thousands in that tribute will bear part,
    "For all conspire to raise the festive lay,
    "And as they joyful hail his natal day,
"Pour forth the offerings of a grateful heart."

Birth of Elizabeth Akers Allen

Elizabeth Anne Chase was born on October 9, 1832, in small town called Strong, Maine. Her mother died when she was young and her father moved the family to Farmington, Maine. It was there that young Elizabeth began writing poetry as a teenager under the pseudonym Florence Percy. Her most famous poem, "Rock Me To Sleep, Mother," was published under that name in 1859. One editor claimed the poem had been set to music at least 30 times by the turn of the century. She had married Marshall Taylor, but the marriage ended in divorce within a few years. With him she had at least one daughter, who later became an editor in California under the name Florence Percy.

Traveling in Rome, she met the sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers, also from Maine. It was in Italy that she wrote her most famous poem and sent it to be published in the Saturday Evening Post. Her absence from the country during its publication caused some confusion over its authorship; at least one other claimed to have written the poem. In 1860, she and Akers were married, though he died within a year. She later married a New Yorker named E. M. Allen in 1865.

Elizabeth Akers Allen published several books of poetry and was frequently included in prominent literary magazines of the day, including the Atlantic Monthly. One critic noted her poems were popular because they are "full of tender feeling, without any tinge of morbidness." Indeed, most of her work features an uplifting moral message, triumphant faith, and domestic tranquility. Her poem "O Cricket, Hush!" (c. 1891) alludes to the belief that a chirping cricket signifies the coming of winter:

O cricket! hush your boding song!
   I know the truth it makes so plain;
You say that autumn dies ere long,
And soon the winter's wrath and wrong
   Will chill the pallid world again.

O mournful winds of midnight, cease
   To breathe your low, prophetic sigh;
Too clearly for my spirit's peace
I see the mellow days decrease,
   And feel December drawing nigh.

Fall silently, October rain,
   Nor take that wailing undertone,
Nor beat so loudly on the pane
The sad, monotonous refrain
   Which tells me summer-time has flown.

Be charier of your golden days,
   O goldenest month of all the throng!
Oh, pour less lavishly your rays!
Hoard carefully your purple haze,
   So haply it may last more long!

Spendthrift October, art thou wise,
   Who wastest, in thy plenteous prime,
More beauty on the earth and skies,
More hue and glow, than would suffice
   To brighten all the winter-time?

Yes, better autumn all delight,
   And then a winter all unblest,
Than months of mingled dark and bright,
Of faded tints and pallid light,
   Imperfect dreams and broken rest.

Ah, better if our life could know
   One wholly happy, perfect year,
One time of cloudless joy and glow,
And then its days of rayless woe,
   Than this commingled hope and fear;

This doubt and dread which naught consoles,
   Which mark our brows ere manhood's prime;
The dread uncertainty that rolls
Like chariot-wheels across our souls,
   And makes us old before our time.

So pour your light, October skies!
   O fairest skies which ever are!
Put on, O earth, your bravest dyes,
And smile, although the cricket cries,
   And winter threatens from afar!

Execution of John André: not the fear of death

Major John André was a British army officer hanged as a spy on October 2, 1780 after conspiring with Benedict Arnold over the fate of West Point during the American Revolution. André pleaded with George Washington that he die honorably via firing squad; instead, he was ordered to be hanged, the traditional execution method for a spy.

The drama of the conspiracy, as well as the capture of André, his trial, and his execution all unfolded in the Hudson River Valley area of New York. Nathaniel Parker Willis would eventually settle in that area but he was, in fact, living in England at the time that he composed his poem "André's Request to Washington" (1835):

It is not the fear of death
     That damps my brow;
It is not for another breath
     I ask thee now;
I can die with lip unstirr'd
     And a quiet heart—
Let but this prayer be heard
     Ere I depart.

I can give up my mother's look—
     My sister's kiss;
I can think of love—yet brook
     A death like this!
I can give up the young fame
     I burn'd to win—
All—but the spotless name
     I glory in!

Thine is the power to give,
     Thine to deny,
Joy for the hour I live—
     Calmness to die.
By all the brave should cherish,
     By my dying breath,
I ask that I may perish
     By a soldier's death.

Some 40 years after Willis's poem, just about 100 years after André's execution, Charlotte Fiske Bates offered her own poem to the executed Major. Like Willis, Bates is mostly sympathetic, though her narrator here is not André himself but a visitor to the place of his death:

This is the place where André met that death
Whose infamy was keenest of its throes,
And in this place of bravely yielded breath
His ashes found a fifty years' repose;

And then, at last, a transatlantic grave,
With those who have been kings in blood or
fame. As Honor here some compensation gave
For that once forfeit to a hero's name.

But whether in the Abbey's glory laid,
Or on so fair but fatal Tappan's shore.
Still at his grave have noble hearts betrayed
The loving pity and regret they bore.

In view of all he lost, — his youth, his love,
And possibilities that wait the brave,
Inward and outward bound, dim visions move
Like passing sails upon the Hudson's wave.

The country's Father! how do we revere
His justice, — Brutus-like in its decree, —
With André-sparing mercy, still more dear
Had been his name, — if that, indeed, could be!

Hentz: where the joyous throng

Though born in Massachusetts and later a resident of North Carolina and Ohio, Caroline Lee Hentz would become best associated with Alabama as a novelist. She lived in Florence for about eight years with her family before moving to Tuscaloosa in 1843. They later moved to Georgia and, later still, to Florida. Her time in Florence was relatively quiet and out of the public eye; as one earlier biographer of her noted, this period only saw a few "fugitive poems, hurriedly written as occasion called for or suggested them." One such work was her poem "O, Come With Me," which Hentz noted was written in Florence on July 2, 1837. It was published in the February 1838 issue of the Lady's Book:

Oh! come with me to the stately halls,
Where fashion her airy votaries calls—
Thine eye would scorn such rural bowers,
Couldst thou gaze on luxury's glittering towers,
And thy hand would scatter the flowers we wear
To gather the gems that are glowing there.

Away, if thou wilt, but not for me,
Those heartless scenes—I had rather be
The humblest of the maids who dwell
On the sun-bright slope, or the shady dell,
Than one who has made her cold, bright home
In marble hall, or ancestral dome.
Oh! follow me, where the joyous throng,


To music's strains, are gliding along—
Let us there our useless garlands spread,
They will not fade 'neath so light a tread—
Time never will leave a print of care
On hearts so light, or brows so fair.

I may not go. The serpent leaves
Its track o'er the blossom that luxury weaves—
And thorns are rankling beneath the lig
That gilds like a glory, the brow of night—
The lamps are dim where those gay forms flit,
To yon lamp that nature's God has lit.

And is it so? Does the secret thorn
Lurk 'mid the scenes that such gems adorn?
Does the heart immersed in the joys of earth,
Though covered with smiles, feel an aching dearth?
Does the soul, that immortal cravings fill,
Still I sigh when the notes of the banquet thrill!

'Tis-Nature speaks through those saddening tones—
Thy inmost spirit her triumph owns.
Then come to her altar—with incense come—
Bring the soul's pure vows, and the heart's young bloom.
They are God's own temples—the fields and bowers—
Their curtains, the skies—their garlands, the flowers.

Adieu to the pomp and the splendour of Art—
Thou hast touched the living springs of the heart,
The rock is broken—the waters gleam,
The rays of truth on its pure waves beam,
The flower returns to its native wild—
Receive oh! Nature, thy erring child. 

Oakes Smith: Unless we can do, as well as talk

The final installment of Elizabeth Oakes Smith's 10-part essay on "Woman and Her Needs" was published on June 19, 1851 in the New York Tribune. In it, she offers a passionate plea for the advancement of women's roles in society. The series was published in part by recent critics, politicians, and journalists mocking the movement for women's rights. Women, Oakes Smith says, should not merely be the "other" type of human that is not man, but a person in her own right and with her own agency: "I have insisted... upon the recognition of the entire individuality of Woman, her claims as a creation distinct, and one; not as a half — a supremacy — an appendage."

Oakes Smith, who was also a poet, believes that the suppression of women has not been intentional on the part of men (or mankind): "He has been too busy in war; in toil and legislation, in bloodshed, and persecution and sensuality, to look into the soul of things." Yet the current system was mutually oppressive to all of humanity, she suggests. Women, if given the opportunity, can come up from this system and lead in inspiring positive change. She can, after all, be more than a symbol of beauty or a wife who has no further role than serving her husband. "Look at the pale faces, the feeble step, the uncertain and disaffected faces of half the married women that you see, and contrast them with the firm, upward, joyous look of the few — whether married or single — whose whole being has been recognized, and then say which realizes best the intents of the Creator."

That she had to say this at all was "something humiliating" to her. But, more importantly, she says that those who are discussing women's rights must also take the next step and take action: "Unless we can do, as well as talk, it were better to be silent." It is wrong, she says, to disobey that instinct to do something, even if the result is failure:

Mistakes, failures must and will ensue — what then? it is something to have attempted great things — if the motive be pure, it is godlike, and good will come of it. Vanity, pretension, soon find their level, but the great and holy aim is in God's keeping, and must go onward conquering and to conquer. I care not that a woman sometimes fails in her attempts, as thousands of the other sex do, — it will not lessen her, provided there is any magnitude in her nature; but I reverence the sentiment in her soul that dictate the movement. I feel there must have been deep need within her which she was bound to recognize, and that the mantle that perhaps slipped from her too delicate shoulders may be broadcast upon others more nobly proportioned.

The essay also offers a more positive view of the world in general. Improving all  humanity, regardless of gender, she says, will allow the world to prosper and become more positive. Laws will not long focus on "do not" but instead promote good things people can do for one another. She makes the connection that this system is a religious promise which will be ushered in by women: "Here is to be the great birth of a purer humanity, that of peace and love and good will; the embodied new testimony of love, when the law shall not life in the prohibition but in the enactment."

Death of Jordan: my heart o'erflowed

Though born in New York, Dulcina Mason Jordan was much longer associated with the state of Indiana, where her family moved when she was 10. She was educated in a log cabin schoolhouse as a child in the town of Mexico before settling in Richmond, Indiana. It was there that she died on April 25, 1895. She was a published poet, columnist, one-time vice president of the Western Writers Association, and earned the admiration of, among others, fellow Hoosier James Whitcomb Riley (who wrote a tribute poem on her death).

Many of Jordan's poems focus on nature and flowers in particular. Her poem "April" might make the best tribute on the anniversary of her own death:

The tearful sky wept all day long
   In token of the April weather,
And something in my heart o'erflowed—
   The clouds and I were sad together.
But when the day was near its close,
   The sun set all the earth a-shining,
And in my heart the heavy cloud
   Unfolded all its silver lining.

The rain had brightened all the slopes,
   Where tender leaves of green were springing,
And from each jewel-spangled bough
   The happy troops of birds were singing;
And arching o'er the shining earth,
   The radiant bow unveiled its glory,
Repeating to the world below,
   The promise, and the wondrous story.

The day that wept in rain and tears,
   Went smiling thro' the gate of even,
And on the bridge that spanned the sky
   My heart went to the door of heaven—
Went up in songs of happy praise,
   For all the beauty and the sweetness
That crowned the changeful April day,
   And filled my soul with such completeness.