As some of you know, I am working on a biography of nineteenth-century feminist Ernestine Rose, who is also the subject of my historical novel The Queen of the Platform.
An accomplished public speaker who lectured on women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, religious freethought, and other issues of the day, Ernestine Rose was a colleague and friend of Susan B. Anthony. In March 1854, the two women decided to go to Washington, D.C., together, with Ernestine lecturing and Susan (who at that time was not the famous figure she would later become) mainly doing the background work. As far as I know, it was Anthony’s first trip into slaveholding territory. Ernestine, however, had been in Washington in March 1845, and in South Carolina in 1847.
Anthony kept a diary of the women’s trip, a blend of activism, socializing, and tourism that took the women not only to Washington but to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Alexandria, Virginia. The diary has been digitzed by Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library, but only limited excerpts of it have been published and annotated. I have therefore decided to transcribe and annotate it myself. Over the summer, I will be posting entries from the diary here and in my Substack newsletter, albeit on a somewhat irregular basis.
Anthony begins her account of the women’s trip on March 20, 1854. I have followed her entries with my own notations.
March 20
Went to the Capitol, heard short speeches from Senators Butler of S.C. & Mason of Va. Butler the grossest most beastly kind of looking man.
March 21
Called on Mrs. Melvin a friend of Mrs. Rose, a member of the M.E. Church South. We talked on the Slavery question, she called the relation between master & slave, a Patriarchal one, said Slavery is a humane institution. My blood chilled in my veins at the thought of a professed Christian, thus so entirely losing sight of the great principle of love, the Golden Rule.
Called at Gerrit Smith’s about two o’clock, Mrs. Smith alone, had a very pleasant chat with her, on the right of every individual to his own belief.
To day the Nebraska Bill in the House was referred to the Com. on the Whole by a vote of 110 to 65. Thought to be virtually death to the Bill.
Miss Miner of the Colored Girls School called on us after dinner. A very interesting enthusiastic nature, expressed herself interested in the Woman’s Rights question.
Mrs. Rose spoke in Carusi’s Saloon to a small audience, not exceeding 100, 40 tickets only were sold, thus, $10. was the amount of receipts.
The smallness of the audience was attributable to the fact that the subject has never been agitated here. Lucy Stone spoke last January to a small audience, had a rainy night. Mrs. R’s subject the Educational & Social Rights of Woman.
Notes:
Senator Butler was Andrew Pickens Butler, a supporter of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which dominated the news in March 1854. Anthony’s prediction of the bill’s demise proved to be mistaken: its enactment, which allowed new states to determine whether to allow slavery within their borders, would lead to violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas, which as a result became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Butler is best remembered today for being the subject of Senator Charles Sumner’s “Crime Against Kansas” speech of 1856, in which Sumner accused him of taking “a mistress, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him . . . the harlot, Slavery.” Deeply offended, Representative Preston Brooks, a cousin of Butler, later attacked Sumner from behind with his cane, nearly killing him. Senator Mason was James Murray Mason, who introduced the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.
“M.E. Church South” refers to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, so called after a dispute over slavery caused a split within the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. It is uncertain who Mrs. Melvin was, but Eleanor Melvin (d. 1860), who was married to Josiah Melvin, a local printer, editor, and publisher, may be a possibility. Ernestine might have met the Melvins during her trip to Washington in 1845, although she seems to have had little in common with them, given that she was an outspoken atheist and an abolitionist.
Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist, was then in the House of Representatives. He was married to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, who shared his views despite having been born to a slaveholding family in Maryland. Smith was a first cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose collaboration with Anthony would make the pair the best known of the early women’s rights activists in the United States.
“Miss Miner” was Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), who encountered slavery when teaching at the Newton Female Institute in Whitesville, Mississippi. Needless to say, her proposal to teach black girls was not met with enthusiasm in the aptly named Whitesville, and Miner, who had taught in Rochester, New York, soon returned to the North. Amid considerable opposition, she opened her school in Washington, D.C. in 1851 and continued teaching until illness forced her to retire in 1857.
Carusi’s Saloon, on C Street between Tenth and Eleventh Streets, was a popular venue that hosted everything from inaugural balls to minstrel shows (as a congressman, Abraham Lincoln attended one of the latter there).
Lucy Stone, a colleague of both Susan B. Anthony and Ernestine Rose, began her speaking career at Oberlin College, where she and her classmate Antoinette Brown formed a debating society. Prominent in abolitionist circles, by the mid 1850s she was turning more of her attention to the issue of women’s rights. She was close to Anthony, but there was some friction between her and Ernestine Rose, as we shall see later.
The Evening Star of March 22, 1854, perhaps with a certain degree of satisfaction, reported that there was not “much enthusiasm evinced” by Ernestine’s small audience—“one gentlemen in a prominent position in front, quietly reposing during the lecture, and only waking up at its termination from his peaceful slumbers.”