1851

The Temperance Movement gains ground.

January: The Oatman family was headed for California when they were ambushed by Apache Indians. The mother, father and several children were massacred. Lorenzo Oatmen, a son, survived being shot and scalped. When he regained consciousness he thought he was blind. Dried blood had caked his eyes. 

His sisters, Olive and Mary Ann, were taken prisoner and abused in various ways. Often the young girls served as slaves. Later they were traded to the Mohave Indians. These people forced the girls to have their chins tattooed, a Mohave custom. Lorenzo Oatmen later spoke of the Apaches as “ferocious man-animals.” Still, Olive admitted that she was well-treated by some of the natives. She said later she regretted her “hasty judgement against all the Indian race.”

 

Olive would later explain: “We found the tribe to consist of about three hundred, living in all the extremes of filth and degradation that the most abandoned humanity ever fathomed.” “Their mode of dress (but little dress they had!) was needlessly and shockingly indecent.” Even the slightest industry would have served them well and they might “have clothed them to the dictates of comfort and modesty.”

 

Stratton speaks of the Apaches and their “mean, despicable, revengeful dispositions that burn with hellish fury within their untamed bosoms.”

 

Yet, when one young man asked her how she liked living with his people – and she replied that she did not like it – he responded, “you Americanos (a term also learned by them from the Mexicans) work hard, and it does you no good; we enjoy ourselves.”

*

Ruth Finley writes, “The first invention that relieved women in their personal, work-a-day lives was the sewing machine. Isaac Merritt Singer was the pioneer manufacturer in this country, taking out his patents early in 1851…

 

Even greater credit may go to Elias Howe, who patented his “lock-stitch machine” five years before. “He took his model to London, sold his English rights to a tailor, and, falling on evil days, pawned his American patents for the price of his passage home. These patents after years of litigation he finally recovered.” (149)

 

*

 

Sojourner Truth spoke at a meeting of reform-minded individuals in Akron, Ohio. This is what she supposedly said: “Wall, chilern, wha dar is so much racket dar must be somethin’ out o’ kilter, I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at d Norf, all talkin’ bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ‘bout?” 

This quote seems to stress Truth’s lack of education to an extreme; and the blogger, as he sometimes does, failed to cite a source. (I think it comes from Finley’s work; but once I take notes, I often throw books away, or give them to friends who still teach.)

 

It is at Akron, however, that Truth gives her justly famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. 

That can be found online. In this version, the language seems too precise for a poorly educated, former slave. Her intent, however, is clear: 

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.

 

But what’s all this here talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

 

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

 

* 

“The Viper in the Glass.” 

June 2: Americans of this era are optimistic, and reformers believe in the continued progress of humankind. 

They would have said “mankind,” of course. But on this day, Maine becomes the first state to go “dry,” banning the manufacture or sale of alcohol. (There is a loophole: the use of alcohol in medicine.) 

Charles Coffin describes the situation that led to the push for temperance (72/273): 

In every community there were blear-eyed men with bloated or haggard faces; weeping women, starving children. On the plaza of every way-side inn were seedy loungers, running up scores on the landlord’s books, or waiting to accept the invitation of neighbors or travelers to “take a drink.” In every town or village were groggeries, where men and boys idled their time away, spending their little earnings in drink or demoralizing games.

           

Lawyers found employment in making out mortgages or writing decrees of foreclosure. Sheriffs became rich through serving writs. Men, once honored and respected, who had started in life with high hopes and grand resolves, were reeling through the streets, or found themselves and families in the poor-house. In the jails were those who, in drunken frenzy, murdered loving wife, prattling child, or dearest friend.

 

(Coffin also notes that James Russell Lowell’s grandfather wrote the Bill of Rights, by which slavery was abolished in the Bay State.) 

These examples may also be from Coffin, but I failed to cite my source: John H. W. Hawkins spoke of the “Viper in the Glass” and the “slavery of drink.” In one story he often told, Hannah, his daughter, pleads: “Papa, please don’t send me for whiskey today.” It is at that point, if memory serves, that he decides to give up the bottle. John Gough would give 9,600 talks to nine million people about the evils of drink. Neal Dow was elected mayor of Portland and later governor of Maine. One foe called him “the prince of fanatics” a man at “the head of the nigger movement” for abolition. Maine goes dry first, as mentioned above; Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont in 1852, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nebraska Territory in 1853; all backslide within twenty years. 

Governor John A. Andrews, of Massachusetts, later explains: “It is the right of every citizen to determine for himself what he will eat or drink.” 

An anti-war movement also gained limited traction in this era. Charles G. Finney stated the case: “Selfish war is wholesale murder.” “War is in truth the most dreadful species of gambling. Rulers are the gamblers. The lives and property of their subjects are the things they put to hazard in a game; and he that is most successful in doing mischief, is considered as the best gamester…” “War is a heathenish and savage custom…It is the greatest curse, and results from the grossest delusions that ever afflicted a guilty world.” 

John Philip Noyes explained his thinking in court: “In a holy community there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating and drinking should be—and there is as little reason for shame in the one case as in the other.” 

Dorothea Dix was horrified by conditions for the insane. Wardens and guards in this period charged visitors to watch them: 

It was considered good sport to watch the odd creatures, to listen to the fantasies of their ravings, even to goad them to fury by questions, or by prodding them if sullen with sticks provided for that purpose. She found individuals chained to walls, living in cages, human filth covering the floors. Abram Simmons was confined in a windowless stone cell, without light, where Dix found he had been confined for three years. The jailer assured her the thick stone walls made it hard to hear his “piercing screams.” Another woman was caged, “the contracted size of which afforded space only for the accumulation of filth, a foul spectacle.” The woman had sores all over her body, and was biting skin off her arms. “Oh, we can’t help it. Half the skin is off sometimes.” A third young man was chained by the neck to a wall. (From Coffin’s book, I believe.)

*

 

Sarah T. Bolton, the reformer Robert Dale Owen, and others work successfully to pass a law protecting women’s property rights in Indiana. Bolton later goes on to be a semi-successful poet and songwriter, although poorly compensated for her efforts. Her songs, for example, were copied and sold, without permission.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: As a young history teacher, starting my career in 1975, in college a few years before, we had been alerted to the idea that history wasn’t just about men. I remember, for example, that the Ohio History book we used in my classroom (and the same one I would have been reading as a student in 1962) mentioned seven women by name. That included five wives of Ohio governors, and Annie Oakley. For the life of me, I don’t know who the other woman would have been.

 

Reading parts of A Popular History of Indiana, written in 1891, I noted that the only woman pictured, other than the author, was Bolton.

 

Before the forests were felled, they were musical with the melody of birds, whose voices now are hushed forever. But in those early days were other singers, the echoes of whose thoughts and inspiration still reach us. Among them was Sarah T. Bolton, whose name is perhaps more widely known than that of any other Indiana verse writer. She has been aptly called the “poetess of Indiana.” She was born in Kentucky in 1814, but came to this state when a little girl, and it has been her home ever since. She spent several years abroad, accompanying her husband, the late Nathaniel Bolton, an accomplished and scholarly man, who was consul to Geneva, Switzerland, for several years. Previous to that time they had suffered many reverses, and for several years had a hard struggle with poverty. She is now in the decline of life, but her muse is young and vigorous, and still pours forth the music of her soul. Her poems have been collected and published in a finely-illustrated volume. Her poem “Indiana” is a noble tribute to a noble commonwealth. (241)

 

Mrs. Hendricks mentions a number of other women by name in her book; but dozens of men are pictured.

 

Bolton, alone, represents her sex.