Read Part One HERE
This is my last post on a woman named Frances Gage. She lived from 1808 - 1884.
In the fall of 1863, Frances returned north, after having spend a year in the south, and began a lecture tour, speaking to the people of her "experiences among the Freedmen."She gave a truthful portrayal of slavery and its barbarity, its demoralisation of master and man, and the intensely human character of the slave, who for two hundred years had preserved so much goodness, hope and a desire for knowledge.
She believed that by removing prejudice and inspiring confidence in the Emancipation Proclamation and by striving to unite the people on this great issue, she could do more than in any other way to end the war and relieve the soldier - such was the aim of her lectures.
In the summer of 1864, Frances travelled down the Missippi to help the injured at Mephis, Vicksburg and Natchez. A few months' experience among the Union refugees and fugitives convinced her that her best work for all was in the lecturing field, in rousing the hearts of the multitude to good deeds. So she again entered the lecture field in the west, speaking almost nightly.
After the war, women's rights leaders and friends like Elizabeth Stady Canton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown encouraged Frances to be the women's rights emissary in America's Midwest.
In September 1865, Frances was crippled when her carriage overturned at Galesburg, Illinois, after she spoke at Edward Beecher's Indiana church.After recuperating at her daughter's home for nearly a year, she decided to move to Lambertsville, New Jersey. This pushed her closer to publishers, other activists and national meetings that were often held in New York City and Philadelphia.
In her address to the First Anniversary of the American Equal Rights Association, she asked that women should get the vote: "Because it is right, and because there are wrongs in the community that can be righted in no other way." She also complained about social attitudes that restricted women to the household: "You have attempted to mold seventeen million of human souls in one shape, and make them all do one thing."
Soon thereafter, Frances was permanently disabled by a stroke. Meanwhile, the women's suffrage organisations were re-organised and re-directed. Frances could not participate in the political strategising, nor could she travel or address audiences, so she focused instead upon writing novels, using this medium to promote temperance and women's rights.
After being an invalid for 10 years, Frances died in Greenwich, Connecticut on November 10, 1884.
Read Part Fourteen HERE
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