Nawsaw Subject File Train, George F. 1 Revolution, 1868 1st no. of Revolution, E. C. Stanton & Parker Pillsbury, editors, Susan B. Anthony, proprietor and manager, says over signature E.C.S., in editorial on Kansas, after enumerating influences adverse to the suffrage amendment, says: Jan. 8, 68 “All combined might have made our vote comparatively a small one, had not George Francis Train gone into the State two weeks before the election and galvanized the Democrats into their duty, thus securing 9000 votes for women’s suffrage.” Same no., report (from N.Y. World) of lecture given by L.S. at Brooklyn Academy, Dec. 26. Same no. Editorial disparaging Grant, and saying: “The Democrats have no candidate. The Republicans come so near that as to remind one of the man who did not believe in ministers and yet sent for one to bury his wife. ‘I thought,’ said the minister, ‘you did not believe in having anything at a funeral.’ ‘True,’ replied the other, ‘and I called you in as the nearest to that as possible.’” [*2*] Same no., long account of [joint] meeting addressed by Miss Anthony & Mr. Train at Rahway, N.J. Miss Anthony reports that she asked President Johnson to subscribe for the Revolution, & [told him] said: “You recognize, Mr. J., that Mrs. Stanton & myself for two years have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to women as well as negroes, & by means of the Revolution we are bound to drive the party to logical conclusions, or break it into a thousand pieces, as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights.” Report of same meeting mentions Mr. Train’s asking Miss Anthony, “When do you return ["] (to Washington)”? Miss Anthony: “After the holidays, when you, Mr. Train, & Mrs. Stanton, are both invited to speak before the Woman’s Suffrage Association at Washington.” Same no. contains various [selected] articles laudatory of Train, & a long one by Train challenging Wendell Phillips to a debate. [I] Under a subhead “Challenging the Mutual Admiration Society”, he [said] says: “Phillips, Greeley, [*3*] Beecher, Curtis & Tilton got Studwell of the Equal Rights Association to come out ignoring Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, & myself. We happen to be plaintiff in this case, & as these gentlemen are polished debaters, perhaps they will enter the debating arena before a N. Y. audience, & explain why, after 20 years of devotion to the cause of women, they left her the moment the actual battle commenced in Kansas, considering absence of body better than presence of mind,” etc. [*commenting on in [comment] N.Y Cotegine, wh. said train was about starting a new weekly, the Revolution] Same no., editorial statement in commenting on N.Y. Citizen, wh. said Train was about starting a new weekly, the Revolution, that the Revolution is not “G. F. Train’s paper, although we shall always welcome him or any other live writer as a contributor.” Same no.: “While over one hundred columns of reports of the great meetings held by Mrs. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Geo. Francis Train [have] in the great cities of the country during the last 30 days have been laid 4 before their readers by the enterprising newspapers of Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester & Syracuse, the anti-women, old fogey cities of Albany, Boston, & N. Y. have generally dismissed the subject with a few lines of ridicule. Same no. “Female Suffrage in Boston. The Banner of Light reports Music Hall well filled on Monday evening, Dec. 9, to listen to remarks from George Francis Train, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Miss Susan B. Anthony, on Female Suffrage. Mr. Train was very severe on politicians of all parties. He announced himself as an independent candidate for presidential honors.” Same no. Official vote of Kansas on suffrage amendment (lacking 3 counties), yes, 9,070: no, 19,857. Same no. Advocates greenbacks, & an educational qualification for both men & [wome] women. 5 Same no. Mentions formation of a State Impartial Suf. Ass'n At Janesville, Wis. Same no. Announcement at head of Page 1. “The Revolution: the organ of the national party of New America.” [First three planks of its platform, [equal] suffra] The Revolution will advocate 1. In politics, educated Suffrage, irrespective of sex or color; equal pay to women for equal work; eight hours labor; abolition of standing armies & party despotisms. Down with Politicians-- Up with the People! 2. In religion: Deeper Thought; Broader Idea; Science not Superstition; Personal Purity; Love To Man as well as God. 3. In Social Life--Morality and Reform; Practical Education, not Theoretical; Facts not Fiction; Virtue not Vice; Cold Water, not Alcoholic Drinks or Medicines. It will indulge in no Gross Personalities & insert no Quack or Immoral Advertisements, so common even in Religious Newspapers. 6 4. The Revolution proposes a new comme[ ]cial and financial policy. America no longer led by Europe. Gold like our Cotton & Corn for sale. Greenbacks for money. An American System of Finance. American Products & Labor free. Foreign Manufactures Prohibited. Open doors to artisans & immigrants. Atlantic & Pacific Oceans for American Steamships & Shipping; or American goods in American bottoms. New York the Financial Centre of the World. Wall St. Emancipated from Bank of England, or American cash for American bills. The Credit Foncier & Credit Mobilier System, or Capital Mobilized to Resuscitate the South & our Mining Interests, & to People the Country from Ocean to Ocean, from Omaha to San Francisco. More organized Labor, more Cotton, more Gold & Silver Bullion to sell foreigners at the highest prices. Ten millions of naturalized Citizens demand a penny Ocean postage, to Strengthen the Brotherhood of Labor; & if Congress 7 Vote $125 000 000 for a Standing Army & Freedman’s Bureau, cannot they spare $1 000 000 to Educate Europe & to keep bright the chain of acquaintance & friendship between those millions & their fatherland? Send in your subscription. The Revolution, published weekly, will be the Great Organ of the Age. Terms, $2. per year in advance. Revolution, Jan. 15, 1868: Long egotistical letter fr. Train in advocacy of his candidacy [as] for presidency: “Destiny, not ambition, leads me towards the White House”, &c. &c. Same numbers, 4 column report of wild address of Train to N.Y. Board of Brokers Same no., letter fr. Train to Editor Revolution, ending: “As Beecher publishes his own sermons in the Independent, as Phillips puts his own anathemas in the Standard, as Dickens reads his own books, as Greeley puts his own biography in the Ledger, as Thurlow Weed 8 bought the Advertiser to relate his personal reminiscinces. I accept your suggestion, & you shall hear from me in the Revolution." Same no. Leading editorial entitled "Who are our Friends?": "Since turning our faces eastward from Kansas, we have been asked many times why we affiliated with Democrats there, & why Mr. Train was on our platform. Mr. Train is there for the same reason that, when invited by the Women's Suffrage Association of St. Louis, he went to Kansas, because he believes in the enfranchisment of woman, not as a sentimental theory, a mere utopia for smooth speech & a golden age, but a practical idea, to be pushed & realized to-day. Mr. Train is a business man, builds houses, hotels, railroads, [&] cities, & accomplishes whatever he undertakes. When he proposes to build up a national party on educated suffrage, paid labor, American industry & greenbacks, those who know his moral probity of character & great 9 executive ability, believe he will do all that is possible towards its accomplishment. xx When it was proposed in Congress to amend the Federal Constitution by introducing the word "male", a protest was sent to Charles Sumner from the strong-minded women of the nation, headed by Lydia Maria Child. He rose in his place & said 'I present this petition because it is my duty, but I consider it most inopportune'." Same no. "To the Southern Press: George Francis Train, Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony propose to speak on 'educated suffrage' in all the chief cities of the Southern States. xx Before starting, they would like the opinion of the Southern press as to the probable interest of the people in such a series of conventions from Washington to New Orleans." 10 Revolution, Jan. 29, 1868. Letter from Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Jan. 4. Dear Miss Anthony: xx In all friendliness, & with the highest regard for the Women's Rights movement, I cannot refrain from expressing my regret & astonishment that you & Mrs. Stanton should have taken such leave of good sense & departed so far from true self-respect, as to be travelling companions & associate lecturers with that crack-brained harlequin & semi-lunatic, George Francis Train. You may, if you choose, denounce Henry Ward Beecher & Wendell Phillips (the two ablest advocates of Woman's Rights on this side of the Atlantic), & swap them off for the non-descript Train; but, in thus doing, you will only subject yourselves to merited ridicule & condemnation, & turn the movement which you aim to promote into unnecessary contempt. The nomination of this ranting egotist & low blackguard for the Presidency, by your 11 audiences, shows that he is regarded by those who listen to him as on a par with the poor demented Mellen & "Daniel Pratt", the Great American Traveller." The colored people & their advocates have not a more abusive assailant than this same Train; especially when he has an Irish audience before him, to whom he delights to ring the changes upon the "nigger", "nigger", "nigger", ad nauseam. He is as destitute of principle as he is of sense, & is fast gravitating towards a lunatic asylum. He may be of use in drawing an audience; but so would a kangaroo, a gorilla, or a hippopotamus. It seems you are looking to the Democratic party, & not to the Republican, to give success politically to your movement! I should as soon think of looking to the Great Adversary to espouse the cause of righteousness. The Democratic party is the "anti-nigger" party, & composed of all that is vile & brutal in the land, with very 12 little that is decent & commendable. Everything that has been done, politically, for the cause of impartial freedom has been done by the Republican party. And yet your dependence is upon the former rather than upon the latter party! This is infatuation. Your old & outspoken friend, William Lloyd Garrison. We publish the above letter as a fair type of a few we have received from leading abolitionists during the last two months. As we have not time to answer all the letters we receive, we shall group our correspondents according to their subjects, & thus answer the many in one. We select Mr. Garrison's because it is short, spicy & severe, & will remind our eaders of that column in the Liberator called "The Refuge of Oppression", where the slave-holding press &, with their defenders, were impaled. 13 We never expected to be one of the victims to be seized by Mr. Garrison's metaphysical tweezers & held up midway between earth & heaven, a spectacle to men & angels; but, in the progress of human events, here we are: & our only regret in showing the strength of our position is, the necessity it involves of unmasking the character of our friends. The analytical reader will find in this letter the following propositions: That the Republican party is "the party of freedom"; That the Democratic party is the anti-nigger party, composed of all that is low, brutal & vile; That the Proprietor & Editors of the Revolution have foolishly swapped Mr. Beecher & Mr. Phillips for Geo. Francis Train; & that in affiliating with him & the Democratic party they have sacrificed their self-respect and the cause they would serve. To these propositions we demur. 14 Mr. Garrison has watched & criticised all political parties during the last 30 years solely with reference to their action on the question of African Slavery. He has taken no note of what they said or did on commerce or finance, homestead laws or protection, prison discipline, temperance [&] woman's rights.— Whatever their action on all these questions, he has ever praised Republicans & Democrats alike for every true word & legislative act in favor of the black race. If Mr. Garrison may judge parties by their action on slavery alone, is it not equally fair for us to judge them by their action on woman alone? Applying this test to the Republican party of to-day, where does it stand? It is the first party in American history that ever proposed to introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution; that ever insulted the 15 women of the republic as petitioners, by apologizing for their presentation, & so garbling the petitions that no one could tell who petitioned, or what they asked. It has blocked the discussion of this question in every possible way; shut us out from its journals, & denied us a hearing in the House of Representatives, the only time we have ever asked for its use. In the Constitutional Convention of N. Y., it gave us a sham hearing, having decided in caucus, beforehand, that it would report against our rights. In Kansas, it ignored our question in the State Convention; yet leading Republican politicians, with black men, stumped the State against striking the word "male" from its constitution. The Democratic party, on the contrary, has done all it could to keep our question alive in the State & national councils, by pressing Republicans, in their debates on negro suffrage, to logical 16 conclusions. They have respectfully presented our petitions, & called attention to them in every possible way. They have franked our documents from one end of the Union to the other, made us liberal donations, helped us to secure 9000 votes in Kansas, & to establish a journal through which we can speak. With their motives for such action we have no more to do with the motives of Republicans in pressing negro suffrage while they ignore woman’s suffrage. Moreover, we would call Mr. Garrison’s attention to the fact that when “the party of freedom,” in ’61, mobbed antislavery meetings through this State, from Buffalo to New York, leading Democrats in every town & city gave them protection. It was through the influence of Sanford E. Church, a distinguished Democrat, that a place was secured for a meeting in Albion. Mayor 17 Thatcher, a Democrat, with his police force, protected an antislavery convention through two days in Albany, carrying every man out of the hall who dared to disturb the peace, the Mayor, with pistol[s] in pocket, sitting on the platform through four long sessions. The ablest speech in favor of extending suffrage to black men, [was] made in the Constitutional Convention of New York in '21 was by Martin Van Buren, the leader of the Northern Democracy. We mention these instances merely to show in both parties; that there are Democrats as well as Republicans with whom a lady may associate without losing her "good sense or self-respect." Again, in fighting the battles of slavery, Mr. Garrison enrolled in his army every man & woman who believed 18 in his idea; & a motley-minded class they were who wheeled into the antislavery ranks thirty years ago! Who can recall those early gatherings in Boston without laughing at the sights & [sceen] scenes witnessed there? Our present coadjutor now a target for the jibes & jeers of abolitionists, would compare most favorably with many of those personages who once graced the antislavery stage! Recall their fantastic tricks, their invective & denunciation, the anathemas from men with tattered coat-tails, black eyes, besmeared with rotten eggs, & see what "nondescripts" they were? Placid conservatism still wonders at the wild, unaccountable things they did in every part of the country—Mr. Garrison himself burning the Federal Constitution on the 4th of July, in the presence of the multitude. 19 Behold them stirring up mobs, dragged through the streets with ropes around their necks, breaking up Sunday meetings by rushing into the midst of congregations, & pouring out their vials of wrath on the heads of a sleeping people. Behold them imprisoned as disturbers of the peace; shot down in the streets; arraigned at the bar of justice; [leave] hung on the gallows; a target for the civilized world; denounced, ridiculed, hissed at by the press[,] as idiots, lunatics, fanatics; & yet Mr. Garrison affiliated with all these. Polished colonizationists, who felt they had the negro in their care & keeping, thought Mr. Garrison was "injuring his cause," "putting back the day of emancipation 50 years"; but he, knowing better, denounced the colonization policy in the Liberator; put its leaders in the "refuge of oppression," & went on with his work, while the "idiots," 20 "lunatics" & "fanatics" proved to be the statesmen of that hour. When a gentleman, whom we meet in good society, of wealth & position, of spotless moral character, of genius & rare gifts, is denounced as a "kangaroo," a "gorilla", a "hippopotamus", a low blackguard, a ranting egotist, a "crack-brained harlequin" & "semi-lunatic," the accuser covers too much ground for a reply. We have not been looking to the "Great Adversary to espouse our cause," but if he has come to us in the pleasant guise of Mr. Train, we admit him a most efficient worker. We recall with gratitude his ancient service in Eden in revealing to Eve the situation; for had man been first to eat the forbidden fruit, judging from his record, he would have kept his knowledge to himself, & women 21 would have been none the wiser. It is a remarkable fact that all history, both sacred & profane, [is] alike show that whenever woman has been in great straits, deserted by all human powers, some good devil has stood at her elbow. In regard to swapping Mr. Beecher & Mr. Phillips for Mr. Train, we would say that these gentlemen should not be mentioned together on his question, for their position has been widely different. Mr. Beecher demands that, in the reconstruction of the government, our democratic theory be realized – that all the citizens of the republic, irrespective of sex or color, stand equal before the law. Mr. Phillips, on the contrary, accepts reconstruction on the old basis of caste & class, substituting an aristocracy of sex for that of color. While one proposes a new principle, the other proposes an extension of the old one, that 22 has been tried again & again, & uniformly failed. We have not swapped Mr. Phillips for Mr. Train, & for the best of reasons, that he has not been within arm's length of us since the war closed. We used every argument in our favor to convince Mr. Phillips that the time had come for him to pass from the abolitionist to the statesman. That as the greater includes the less, in demanding the rights of all the citizens of the nation, he would do the most effectual work for the black man. Every sound argument for his right of suffrage is based on our American idea of "individual” rights". Hence the fraud of both Republicans & abolitionists in making the partial demand of "negro suffrage" on the basis of fundamental principles, thus sacrificing to party policy & personal consistency the great onward step for the hour. Every thinking man to-day sees the necessity of education at the polls. 23 It is a danger one need but state to the perceived, that to trust the lowest stratum of manhood to legislate on the political, moral & social interests of the nation, is suicidal to our free institutions. Universal suffrage is safe because you have then the wealth, the virtue, the education of woman, to outweigh ignorance, poverty & vice. You have, too, that peculiar elevating & civilizing power found in the difference of sex. But to extend suffrage to ignorant manhood is to invert the natural order of things; it is to dethrone the Queen of the moral universe, & subjugate royalty to brute force. Every far-seeing woman who has a proper self-respect or an intelligent love of country will protest against the enfranchisement of another man, either black or white, until the women of this nation are crowned with all the rights of citizenship. It is infinitely 24 more important at this hour to secure the rights of 15 000 000 women, black & white, Saxon & Celt, than to bring 2 000 000 more men to the polls. And this is the reason, Mr. Garrison, why we affiliate to-day with those who believe that our idea is the more important of the two. We are living under a dynasty of force— the masculine element everywhere over-showering the feminine. Hence come discord, violence, war, slavery, misery & death; & until we restore the equilibrium of sex we cannot enter the golden age of harmony, & peace, & love. Some friends write us: "Your deflection from the antislavery faith is the most lamentable since the fall of Mr. Garrison;" & they are the very persons who rally around Mr. Phillips, who at the end of the war threw one half his clients overboard in demanding suffrage for men alone, while declaring the emancipation a 25 mockery without enfranchisement. We claim, with Mr. Garrison, to have "the highest regard for the woman's rights movement, "which we have abundantly shown by the devotion of our lives. Had all our professed friends been as true through this last year, we might have amended the constitutions of two States in the Union. We also claim to have given evidence of our "good sense & self-respect, in accepting the services of the only man in N.Y. who laid them at our feet. So long as Mr. Train speaks nobly for woman, why should we repudiate his services, even if he does ring the charges "nigger, nigger, nigger"? though we travelled with him through nine States, & never heard him in public or private ignore the black man's rights. On the contrary, he always demanded educated [sit] suffrage, 26 without regard to sex or color. Abolitionists do not refuse to fraternize with those who ignore woman's claims. Colored men have denied women a place in their conventions in N. Y., while we have ever welcomed them to our platform. Chas. Langston repudiated women's claim to the ballot in Kansas, & Frederick Douglass refused to plead for us in the Constitutional Convention of N. Y., & worse than all, in an annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society, when someone offered a resolution saying that it was the duty of abolitionists to labor to get the word "white" out of the constitution of N. Y., & we moved an amendment to add the word "male," Mr. Phillips (President) ruled the amendment out of order. Yet there are educated black women in N.Y . who hold property and pay taxes. After that, though attacked in the Standard, our [*Phillips was editor of the Antislavery Standard*] 27 reply was refused. The Standard refused, also, to publish an advertisement of the Revolution, the only paper in the country demanding suffrage for woman in the reconstruction, while at that very hour women were holding a festival to pay for its publication. Such Mr. Garrison considers our only reliable friends. The radical error in Mr. Garrison's letter is that he presumes to test a man's soundness, honesty & usefulness on current reforms, by his course on the negro question. This is a natural infirmity, an amiable weakness in one who bore so conspicuous a part in the late struggle for the overthrow of slavery. But we must remind Mr. Garrison that that question has disappeared from view, & that in this rapid age it has already floated far away into the nest; for are not black men already making laws and constitutions? He might as well deduce his test from imprisonment for debt, or hanging for larceny, or, 28 we had almost said, from the stamp act. The work of reconstruction will be completed by midsummer, & this will have barely enough of the negro to round a few periods in presidential stump speeches, & perhaps eke out the salary of a cheap local editor of the National Antislavery Standard for the passing year. For a third of a century slavery was one of the most important subjects on the theatre of American affairs. In that great drama, Mr. Garrison acted a leading part. This letter shows that he, full of the illusions as well as of the actualities of the scene, lags superfluous on the stage, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the curtain has fallen upon the last act, that the lights are extinguished, & the audience gone to their homes. 29 In respect even to the debris of negro agitation, Mr. Garrison is as dead as the "royal Dane." We suspect he thinks so himself; for we have not heard of him for years at any of these antislavery convocations where he used to forge thunderbolts & gather laurels. He should be content to remain in his sepulchre, & not "revisit the glimpses of the moon", & by disturbed like the above endeavor to frighten live people from their appropriate sphere. "Rest! rest, perturbed spirit!" E.C.S. Ed. Jan 29, '68, quotes advise from Liberal Christian to "cut loose at once from G T Train," & says: "According to principles of natural philosophy, a 'gasbag' & a "kite-flyer,' as most people call Train, will help to keep our heads above water. 30 Ed. Jan 29, [8] 68, denounces Grant as worse than Andrew Johnson, "for the dissipations & debaucheries of Johnson are in part atoned for by a decent degree of talent, however badly applied, when he is sober; but what virtue in The [sc] scanty catalogue of human goodness does Grant possess?" [F] Feb. 5, '68, Letter from Gov. Robinson x showing how injurious Train was in Kansas. Same no. mentions that Phillips' paper, Antislavery Standard, will not advertise Revolution "for love of the cause, nor yet for money." March 5, '68, quotes protest of "Ambassador" against ["sad mistake"] "All good men see & deplore that the worthy & accomplished women who control the Revolution have 31 made a sad mistake in making their paper a mouthpiece for that buffoon; G F T." & says editorially: "It would have been a sadder mistake if we had chosen to have had neither Train nor the Revolution, & thus been without a mouth piece." Same no., quotes from American Presbyterian as saying "The R", Miss Anthony's new paper, smacks too strongly of Train oil, " & answers, "A Free [use] use of oil is necessary to safe revolution of all kinds of machinery xx We are using Train oil just now because that is cheaper than any other, even though we import it at our own expense. " Same no, letter from Frances Power Cobbe protesting against complication of w s with other issues, & especially with Train and Fenianism. March 12, expression of regret about train from Gerrit Smith: "Train is a heavy load for you to carry." -Sorry you treated Garrison as you did." 32 April 2, 1868 editorial comment on "Chimney Corner" by H.B. Stowe: "No abler argument for w s has been given than Mrs. Stowe's in these volumes." May 7, praises Train's daughter & her father. E.C.S. "To Our Radical Friends" May 14, ed. depending course in accepting money of Train & Democrats to start Revolution: "So long as we are enabled to proclaim [or] our principles it matters not who helps us to do it. We regard enfranchisement of women as most important question of age, & we are determined to keep it before nation, and to this end we will accept aid from any quarter, affiliate with any man, black or white, Jew or Gentile, saint or sinner, democrat or republican. As the mass of our women are republicans and abolitionists, some may be used as a cat's paw to pull the radical chestnuts out of the fire, 33 & sacrifice themselves to false notions of magnanimity. All this hue & cry about Train is a mere cover, a sham. The real trouble is, he had made it possible for us to utter the thoughts that radicals wish to hold in abeyance until the black man is safe beyond a peradventure, & Grant is enthroned in the White House. Same ed. says [t] they could not get an article into either Tribune, Independent or Standard. "Thus ostracized, we tried to establish a paper of our own. Lucy Stone made appeals in person [or] & by letter to leading republicans & abolitionists, but with her utmost efforts even she could not get pledges to the amount of $10,000, though it was understood that she would edit the paper herself, wholly unencumbered by any G F Train or other democratic bugbear." Praise of Train, June 11, '68 34 Sept. 18, '68, mentions Parker Pillsbury is absent; and says editorially to a correspondent: "We fully agree with you that G. F. T. is worthy the consideration of his government. Never was a noble man so abused both at home and abroad." [S?] Sept. 24, '68 E C S describes visit at Lucretia Mott's, who said "Now, Susan, immediately after dinner the must tell us all about Train. I want to see what thee can say in extenuation of such disloyal affiliations." Oct. 1, '68, E C S in letters fr N. J. mentions that "L S" has published your (N. J.'s) laws in tract forum & scattered them through the State, doing all she could for the last five years to stir up your women to rebellion." 35 [A] Oct. 15, '68, ed. greatly praising Train & advocating him for Congress, as "eminently fit" — extremely eulogistic. Oct. 22 ed "As to Train, please remember that he was the only man in the nation generous enough to help us to establish a woman's paper. Shall we not grant him the privilege of saying his say, in his own way, in our columns?" Nov. 5, '68 call [of the] for W E Suf. Convention, to form NA W S A — held Nov. 18 & 19. Nov. 12, '68 sarcastic editorial by E C S on "The Boston W S Convention," [which proposed] [says on] mentioning that S B A & [others] Pillsbury & Mrs. Rose were not invited but E C S was, after much cogitation, & the invitation was afterwards withdrawn. "From the Biblical tone of the Call, with the reverend & highly 36 literary names appended thereto, it is evident that this is intended to be a very religiously conservative & aristocratic convention, drawn from the very cream of society, with all the rag, tag & bobtail, the publicans & sinners, left out. Then they propose that in future the work shall be carried on "in a wise, systematic & efficient way," & pokes fun. xx "It was feared that inviting us would be endorsing Seymour, Blair, Tammany, the N. Y. World & the Revolution." Nov. 26, '68 gives longer & friendlier account of N. E. Convention. Says: "The press, both of N. Y. & Boston, appear to have been in the main very just & liberal toward the convention, furnishing extended reports of proceedings.["] The best 37 we have seen were in The Boston [P] Post & N Y World." Henry Wilson at N E Convention said [L S] & L M [Chiles?] & L S converted him. Dec. 10, 68: "Had Mrs. Foster held, with [M] Lucy Stone, Mrs. Stanton & others, that this is the hour for all the disenfranchised, irrespective of sex as well as color," &c. At the close of the Kansas campaign, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony held a series of public meetings with Mr. Train through the principal cities of the United States, they advocating woman suffrage and he advocating his own election as President of the United States Mr. Train and David M. Lelis, the financial editor of the Democratic New York World, furnished the money to start "The Revolution," in January 1868, with Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as editors, and Miss Anthony as owner and business manager. It was agreed that "Mr. Train and Mr. Meliss were to use such space as they desired for expressing their financial and other opinions." (Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol. 1, p. 295). In the Revolution, the often excellent and brilliant editorials of Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury on woman's rights came out side by side with the insane ravings of Mr. Train, his presentations of his claim to be elected President of the United States, etc. At this time, at the close of the Civil War, the Republican party was all powerful, the Democrats very few and intensely unpopular. The Revolution constantly and vehemently assailed the Republican party, to which the vast majority of the suffragists belonged, and which at that time was really the party of progress. The Revolution also advocated an inconvertible paper currency, the prohibition of foreign manufactures, "America against Europe," and other peculiar theories. A woman suffrage paper was needed, but many of the suffragists thought it would have been better to wait than to start one so loaded down with extraneous issues. Wendell Phillips felt so strongly on the subject that he would not allow an advertisement of the Revolution to appear in his paper, the Antislavery Standard, "for love or money," (See Revolution, Feb. 5, 1868). Miss Anthony said if the devil offered her money to use for woman suffrage, she would take it. Mrs. Stone said so would she but not if she had to take the devil with his money. Mr. Train was a man of great vanity. Taking his money involved the necessity of taking him as a prominent coadjutor, both on the platform and in the columns of the Revolution. The general public looked upon woman suffrage as ridiculous; and it was highly undesirable to associate it with anything that was really ridiculous, like Mr. Train and his aspirations to the presidency. Mid Anthony wrote in her diary on Jan. 1, 1868; as quoted by Mrs. Harper; in regard to the alliance with Mr. Train " All the old friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can tell, but I believe we are right." The early issues of the Revolution are full of letters protesting against the Train alliance. The following from Wiliam Lloyd Garrison expressed the general sentiment: [At this time, at the close of the war, the Republican party was all powerful, the Democrats few and intensely unpopular. The Revolution constantly and vehemently assailed the Republican party, to which the vast majority of the suffragists belonged, and which at that time whatever it may become since, was really the party of progress] This action had not been authorized by the Executive Committee of the American Equal Rights Association While meant for the best, this was a disastrous mistake. Mr. Train was a man of wealth, but so erratic that he was for a time shut up in a lunatic asylum as actually insane. His egotism and his excessive eccentricities had led him into all sorts of extravagant absurdities and had made him an object of general ridicule. He had nominated himself for President of the United States, and urged his claims to election on all occasions. In addition, He was a virulent copperhead, and represented in his own person everything against which progressive elements in Kansas had been waging bloody war. When the Eastern papers announced that this fantastic personage was speaking for woman suffrage in Kansas, Mrs. Stone at first could not believe it. She thought it must be a monstrous hoax invented by the enemy. When she found that his meetings were actually being advertised as held under the auspices of the American Equal Rights Association, also felt constrained to publish a card explaining that the Equal Rights Association was not responsible. Mr. Train drew large crowds, and his buffoonery tickled the rabble, but disgusted persons of sense. In a vote of about 30,000, Negro suffrage got 10,000 votes, and woman suffrage 9,500. A card afterwards published, praising Mr. Train's services in Kansas, and the names of Mrs. Stone and other officers of the American Equal Rights Association who had entirely disapproved of him were signed to it. When Mrs. Stone remonstrated, Miss Anthony answered, "I am the American Equal Rights Association." When reminded that at any rate she was no the persons whose names had been signed to this document without their knowledge and against their will, and she made a very angry answer. No ¶ insert In the opinion of the best friends of the cause in Kansas, he did much more harm than good. Botti amendements were heavily defeated. No ¶ [* From jacket by Seymour Chwast for "Coup de Grace." *] A Baltic Soldier COUP DE GRACE. By Marguerite Yourcenar. Translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author. 151 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. $3. By CARLOS BAKER THIS strange short novel, cast in the form of a monologue by a middle-aged man looking back upon the strifetorn period of his youth, is in essence the story of a bad European. The second of Marguerite Yourcenar's novels to be published in this country, it recalls the first, "Hadrian's Memoirs," in being both a complex self-portrait of the narrator and also a sidelong meditation on history, where the leading qualities of the protagonist represent the nation from which he stems. Erick von Lhomond, writes Mme. Yourcenar, "was one of those who were transformed into soldiers of fortune" during the disorders that followed World War I. "Neither by birth nor by inclination was Erick disposed to the leftist side." His earliest passage at war came in the Baltic provinces, when he fought under the German generals who led the White Russians in a struggle against bolshevism. Later, he took part in various Central European movements "which culminated in the rise of Hitler," served on the wrong side in Manchuria, and accepted a minor command under General Franco in Spain. At 40, he shows still a "hard youthful elegance," which his pale blue eyes, tall stature, arrogant smile and heel-clicking bows only serve to emphasize. We need hardly to be told that Erick is a Prussian. Nor are we surprised to learn from the author's foreword that this novel was written in 1939, about the time when Prussianism was about to be unleased once more. The tale concerns those ten [* Mr. Baker is a chairman of Princeton's English Department. *] 4 months Erick spent in and around the manorial estate of Kratovitsy, "in a backwoods region of Kurland, near what used to be the old frontier between Russia and Germany." Civil war here dwindled to guerrilla potshooting in a swampy land of lakes, birch forest, beet fields and lice-ridden villages. On the walls of the ancient manor-houses are the pox-marks, some four feet from the ground, where the former owners and their families had been lined up and executed. But the young mater and mistress of Kratovitsy, Conrad and his sister Sophie, have survived execution for worse torments, many of them growing out of the qualities with which their old friend Erick is so unhappily endowed. MME. YOURCENAR specifically denies a political intention: she means instead to portray "a group of young people surrounded by violence and danger and struggling with destitution and solitude, but involved even more in the ardors and upheavals of youth itself." Taken as such, the story is scarcely credible. The motivations that govern Sophie's love for Erick are obscure; his own egocentricity is as malignant as paresis; Conrad is a shadowy figure half-merged already with the encroaching dark. If this is indeed a "psychological novel" in the usual sense, it must be judged an interesting failure - despite the Thomas Mann-like prose and the lucid translation. Judged, on the other hand, as the political fable it seems basically to be, with Erick as the veritable Judas-goat of a stricken continent, a bad European leading his confrères toward the coup de grace, the novel takes on the dimensions of a parable. Its internal meaning will be lost on no one who has lived through the wars of our time and has paused to meditate on that cold indifference to human values their perpetrators have displayed. Children of War NATALIE. By Alexandra Orme. 337 pp. New York: Simon and Schuster. $3.95. By VIRGILIA PETERSON "NATALIE," by the Polish writer, Alexandra Orme, whose "Comes the Comrade," (a non-fiction account of the arrival of the Russians in Hungary in 1944) was a Book of the Month, is her second novel and the first book she has written in English. It is a story of refugees clawing at the shreds of their lives in a ramshackle, sordid Hungarian boarding house; the time is the period in World War II leading up to the clash between Nazis and Russians that brought Budapest to its knees. But it is more than a story of exile. Not since the famous "High Wind in Jamaica," have there appeared on the literary scene two such frightening and frightened, moving and implacable children as Miss Orme's 14-year-old Polish Natalie and 12-year-old Russian Nicholas. In "High Wind in Jamaica," it was a sudden act of God, a storm of nature, that precipitated normal children into abnormality. In "Natalie," the pressures upon the children - war, penury, adult demoralization - come from the hand of man. At the Regina Pensio, the food was flimsy, there were bedbugs, the German maid exuded spite, and most of the boarders were broke. Natalie, her mother, and her grandmother (who was a princess) lived, washed, ate and quarreled in one room, drawing a small pension from the Hungarian Government. Across the hall lived Nicholas, with a mother who had been depending for years upon the generosity of chance suitors for livelihood. Nicholas also had a grandmother of the old regime, but she had another room. Down the hall lived a "rich" old man who gave food his ulcers kept him from eating to Nicholas; a Jewish mother and daughter, escaped from the gas-chamber, made powder puffs day and night; and a bulgy, unmarried Polish woman forever typed sheet after sheet of mysterious numbers and entertained young men in her room when she could scourge the liquor to lure them there. NEEDLESS to say, the Regina offered little privacy. Even if there had been thicker walls, more than one bathroom, and a telephone more discreetly located than in the hall; even if the boarders had been self-sufficient and not continually preying on one another for their needs and for sympathy, there would have been no privacy from Natalie and Nicholas. Neither the rude and predatory Natalie nor the polite and lost Nicholas had any other outlet for the tireless energy and curiosity of youth than the dramas they created [* Author and critic, Miss Peterson wrote "Polish Profile," a personal history. *] or observed between those shabby walls. "Children don't exist," Natalie explained to the Hungarian hussar whom she hoped would fall in love with her; "the grown-ups invented them. A child is a persecuted grown-up, because it can't fight back." Natalie herself, however, fought back - with an arsenal of weapons ranging from rage to theft to pretended suicide. She won most of her individual battles against grown-ups, but inevitably, in an adult world, she lost her war. Against a background of narrow, embittered egos threatened by an impending doom they cannot grasp, real love and real loyalty erupt at intervals from the two children like flowers in bombed-out rubble. Tenderness, Miss Orme is saying, cannot die. If Natalie hated everyone except Nicholas (and even upon occasion hated Nicholas, too) she still felt beneath the boil and bubble of continual mutiny that thirst for love and trust which is the source of most pain and all redemption. This need is presented in many ways, as the child who grew up without a childhood reacts to her environment and its constant threats. "'I AM Natalie,' she tells herself, in one of her soliloquies, 'and nobody knows it. Mother does not, anyway, not even Grand'mere. Nobody knows. Only I know who I am. Roman, though in love, does not know, and Kitty does not know, and Fritzi Gero, and Mademoiselle Krishya and stupid old Miss Biro.' Nicholas, she told herself, at least knows that he does not know. he knows I am mysterious. * * * She tried to remember the other word Roman had used to describe her, but could not. Only much later, she thought, will I meet people who'll understand." And, later, when she has been almost, but not quite, seduced by an elderly lecher: " * * * she leaned out of the windows and breathed deep * * * what a pity he was so old: he was probably what they called a sadist. * * * 'Horrid, simply disgusting,' she whispered. Then she recalled how he had kissed her, and she giggled. * * * 'They're all after me,' she said half aloud, though whom she meant by 'all' she did not quite know herself. The thought comforted her." Books have been written before about diabolic, or lost and confused, children. Most of them have proved how hard it is to render such childhood whole and true. In the creation of Natalie above all, but also of Nicholas, Miss Orme has outstripped herself to accomplish a tour de force. [* Attack THE whole household gathered on the lawn in front of the house, their heads thrown back. * * * Like a small school of minnows, the glittering planes sailed through the silky blue space toward the city. They were so tiny they could hardly be spotted unless they caught the sunlight, and for an instant shone like fish trapped by the receding tide. -"Natalie." *] [* From jacket by Robert Shore for "Natalie." *] THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Delia Bacon. John Peter Altgeld. Ignatius Donnelly. George Frances Train. Carrie Nation. Eccentrics, Originals, and Still Others Ahead of Their Times THE LUNATIC FRINGE. By Gerald W. Johnson. 248 pp. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company. $3.95. THE SQUARE PEGS: Some Americans Who Dared to Be Different. By Irving Wallace. 315 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $5. By LOUIS B. WRIGHT IN an age when the organization man, the man in the gray flannel suit, has become the ideal of our conforming society, we may find instruction in the contemplation of certain eccentrics who made a stir in their times. By coincidence Gerald Johnson and Irving Wallace have both addressed themselves to the problem of analyzing the lives of notable eccentrics in American history. So rich is the material that they have duplicated subjects only in the biography of that spectacular courtesan and candidate for President, Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Both books are enormously entertaining, though neither author attempts to capitalize for amusement's sake on the odd quirks of his subjects. With considerable sympathy, Mr. Johnson, whose previous books include "Incredible Tale" and "This American People," uses his gallery of eccentrics as the theme for a running commentary on American social history. His is the treatment of a philosopher. Mr. Wallace, author of "The Fabulous Originals," deals with his subjects like a naturalist and a taxonomist. He describes and classifies them and provides all the pertinent information about their habitats and characteristics. Mr. Johnson gets the title for his book, "The Lunatic Fringe," from Theodore Roosevelt's "Autobiography" in a passage describing "the foolish fanatics * * * who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements." Ironically, Mr. Johnson finds some of the qualities of the lunatic fringe in this man whom he designates "Roosevelt the Furious." Roosevelt's enemies called him a lunatic when he insisted that the irresponsibility of men of wealth threatened to bring the whole capitalist house of cards tumbling about their ears. Mr. Johnson remarks that he was depicted as "a madman for harboring such opinions, but time has shown that his supposed madness was in reality an unusually clear perception of basic truth." In a period when the intellectual has had a bad time of it in high quarters, many will read with special interest Mr. Johnson's comment that Theodore Roosevelt "did more than any President since the Virginia Dynasty to make it respectable to admit having read a book." Both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Wallace emphasize the irony in the fact that some of their gallery of cranks were merely ahead of their time. For example, Ignatius Donnelly was abused as an enemy of society because he wrote for the Populist party in 1892 a platform advocating an elastic currency, a subtreasury system, a graduated income tax, restriction of immigration, a shorter work week, election of Senators by popular vote and Government ownership of railroads and communications. Now all except the last have the approval of even the most orthodox conservatives. Donnelly liked to poke at hornets' nests and did not come a cropper until he published "The Great Cyptogram" to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. This book was a dismal failure and a bitter disappointment to its author. Like many self-educated men without benefit of profound learning themselves, Donnelly had an exaggerated notion of the erudition of Shakespeare's plays and believed that only Bacon had the kind of learning Donnelly thought he saw reflected in the plays. "Not even Ignatius Donnelly could make any but scholars believe that lack of formal schooling entails blank ignorance," Mr. Johnson wryly observes. VICTORIA CLAFLIN WOODHULL is a subject of such color and fascination it is not surprising that both authors lavish some of their best pages on her. Victoria proved an embarrassment to some of the most sanctimonious reputations of the Gilded Age. After a lurid apprenticeship in a family medicine show, she at length became a combination of mistress and nurse to old Commodore Vanderbilt while living with two husbands who shared the same room with her. She gave lectures advocating free love as part of her doctrine of the inalienable rights of women, and in 1872, despite the opposition of Susan B. Anthony, she won the nomination for the Presidency of the United States on the Equal Rights party ticket. To get the full flavor of the campaign, one must read Mr. Wallace's sketch of her. Few women even in the Gilded Age would have had the versatility and the peculiar talents to be the mistress not only of Commodore Vanderbilt but of that prince of pious frauds, Henry Ward Beecher, and of his cuckold, Theodore Tilton. Victoria Claflin Woodhull achieved that high eminence. She wangled a large sum of money from the Commodore's estate and, with her free-loving sister Tennessee, went to live in London, where she made a good marriage with rich and aristocratic John Martin. She died in the odor of sanctity on June 20, 1927, just three months short of her ninetieth birthday. Her sister Tennessee, whose love life was even more sensational, married a rich merchant of London, who later became Sir Francis Cook, and as Lady Cook she spent her husband's fortune of millions with happy abandon. Mr. Johnson's sardonic comment on this history of one of the stout advocates of the rights of women is that "the Claflin story has a very obvious moral, but it just won't do. The obvious moral is that crime does pay, and in the American scheme of things that is unconstitutional, so the story has been carefully forgotten by all true believers in the Uplift." Thanks to these two books, the lady will be remembered for some time to come—as vividly, in fact, as those well-known square pegs, Carrie Nation and John Peter Altgeld, to whom Mr. Johnson has devoted perceptive chapters. Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Wallace treats his subjects with a kind of amused and gentle affection. His initial essay is "In Defense of the Square Peg," and from then onward he treats a curious company, beginning with Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who believed that the world was flat, to Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, who in "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones" anticipated the style and technique of some of the more rarefied brethren of the avant-garde. HIS other square pegs include Baron James A. Harden-Hickey, who married the daughter of John H. Flagler and made himself King of Trinidad, a barren island off Brazil; George Francis Train, a millionaire, who became an advocate of revolution in France and was the first to travel around the world in eighty days; Joshua Norton, a Forty-niner, who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States; Delia Bacon, a frustrated spinster from Hartford, who tried to open Shakespeare's grave and believed that Bacon and others wrote the plays; Anne Royall, a newspaper woman, who surprised President John Quincy Adams taking a swim in the nude in the Potomac and sat on his clothes until he had given her an interview about the controvery over the Bank of the United States; and John Cleves Symmes, who convinced Congress that it ought to support an expedition to the center of the earth, via tunnels bored at the two Poles. In these two books the reader will find not only entertainment but much food for thought. Both provide material for a commentary on present-day society, sometimes implied, sometimes explicit. Both authors are aware of the irony, the pathos and the pity called forth in their sketches of these square pegs. For the knowing ones, as Timothy Dexter would have put it, these books have a great deal of wisdom. Victoria Woodhull asserting her right to vote, from Harper's Weekly, 1871. Mr. Wright is a historian and director of the Folger Shakespeare Library. JULY 21, 1957 3 [*Aug 9 / 57*] EVENTS THREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY AGO From the Vineyard Gazette for Aug. 4, 1882: However well-disposed this community may feel toward newspaper men, it isn't doing very much to aid them in their arduous labor of making a readable paper. This eternal round of "arriving", "visiting" and "guesting" is getting to be intolerable. Cottage City correspondence. The bon-bon party at the Cottage City rink Wednesday evening proved a great success. Lawn tennis is a popular game with some Vineyard Haven summer sojourners. Blackberries are ripe. At the present writing the earth is terribly parched and dry. Bathing in the waters of Vineyard Haven Harbor west of a line drawn from Lagoon bridge to West Chop light, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, without suitable bathing dresses, is strictly forbidden by the Vineyard Haven selectmen. A cargo of brick was shipped from the brick yard Tuesday. Mrs. Lucy Stone and several adopted children are in Chilmark, occupying rooms at the house of Mrs. Jedida Stuart. The excellent hay weather last week enabled a majority of the Chilmark farmers to secure the bulk of their hay. The marsh hay, it is said, was never in better condition. Unless the rain comes soon the corn and potato crops will be injured. The growth of the latter Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.