CHAPTER XIII

MARY A. LIVERMORE

1821-1905

Mary Ashton Rice was a little Boston girl, brought up very strictly. She was a restless active child, quick to learn at school, always enthusiastic over her tasks. A great favorite and a leader, she took the part of any unfortunate child in school; a cripple, a shabbily dressed youngster, one who was ridiculed because of her scanty luncheon, found friend and defender in Mary.

There were few playthings for the Rice children and Mary invented a wonderful game called “playing church.” In the old woodshed they arranged logs for the pews and sticks of wood eked out the audience of children. Mary always conducted the services, praying and preaching with the greatest seriousness, while the others listened. And her father would say, “I wish you’d been a boy, child, we’d have trained you for the ministry.” None of them ever dreamed that she would become a great public speaker and would often give addresses in churches.

Graduating from school at fourteen, she went to the Charlestown Female Seminary, and before the term closed was asked to take a position made vacant by the death of one of the teachers. Reciting and studying out of hours, she managed to complete the four-year course in two years and at the same time earned the money for this education.

Then she went as governess in the family of a Virginia planter. She had heard Lucretia Mott and Whittier lecture, and determined to find out for herself whether the facts of slavery were as black as they were painted. She came back from her two years in Virginia, a stanch abolitionist.

She served as principal in a Massachusetts high school for the next three years, and resigned to marry Doctor Livermore, a young minister whose church was near the school. She assisted in his parish work; she started benevolent and literary and temperance societies among the church-members; and she helped her husband edit a religious paper, after they moved to Chicago. She frequently wrote stories and sketches for eastern magazines, and she sat at the press table in the “Wigwam” when Lincoln was nominated for the presidency in 1860. With her writing, her three children, and a quiet, happy home life, doing the common duties of every day, it seemed impossible that Mary Livermore would ever be helping to make American history.

But Lincoln was elected, Sumter was fired on, the nation plunged into civil war, the president called for volunteers.

Summoned to Boston by her father’s illness, Mrs. Livermore was in the station when the Massachusetts troops started south. The streets were crowded, the bells rang, the bands played. Women smiled and said good-by when their hearts were breaking. After the train had pulled out several women fainted and Mrs. Livermore stayed to help them.

“He has only gone for three months, you know,” she said to one little mother.

“If my country needs him for three months or three years, I’m not the woman to hinder him,” was the brave reply. “When he told me at noon to-day he’d enlisted I gave him my blessing and told him to go, for if we lose our country, what is there to live for?”

Seeing such partings Mary Livermore could not rest. She had no sons to send. What could women do to help?

“Nothing,” was the answer from Washington when they offered their services; “there is no place for women at the front, no need for them in the hospitals.”

The outbreak of the war found the North wholly unprepared. Hospitals were few and poorly equipped, nurses scarce and not well trained; there were no diet kitchens, no organized ways to supply medicines to the sick, to care for the wounded. Taxed to the utmost in every direction, the government could not meet all the urgent demands for hospital supplies. Relief societies sprang up everywhere, working individually, sending boxes to the troops from their special localities.

But what a waste in that haphazard method! Perishable freight accumulated till it was a serious problem. Baggage cars were flooded with fermenting sweetmeats and broken jars of jelly. Decaying fruit and demoralized cakes were found packed in with clothing and blankets. The soldiers were constantly moving about and many packages failed of delivery. The lavish outpouring of the generous people of the North meant for a time a lavish waste. If the men’s answer to Lincoln’s call was unparalleled, no less remarkable was the response of the women; but it needed to be systematized and organized like a great business. That was Mary A. Livermore’s contribution to saving the Union.

To supplement the work of the federal government the Sanitary Commission was established. Mrs. Livermore was president of an aid society in Chicago which was one of the first to merge with the Commission. And from then till peace came she gave her time, her energy, her heart and mind and soul to the work of relief. She had enlisted not for three months, but for the duration of the war. With Mrs. Jane Hoge she served as organizer and executive not only for all the activities of Chicago and Illinois, but for the entire Northwest. Faithfully she worked to provide for the sick and wounded soldiers abundantly, persistently, methodically.

What full and varied days she had for those four years--opening a great sewing-room in Chicago where hospital garments were made by the wives of soldiers, writing hundreds of letters with news of missing men, establishing a system of relief for their families and for refugees, giving instructions and arranging transportation for groups of nurses starting to the front, planning ways and means to raise money and supplies, writing for her husband’s journal and for other publications sketches of her “Sanitary” experiences, supervising the four thousand aid societies under the Chicago office, constantly visiting groups of ladies to help them start the work, sending out monthly bulletins to keep in close touch with these branches, appointing inspectors to report on the quality of food and water, and the sanitary arrangements in camps and hospitals, printing and distributing to the army pamphlets on preserving health in camp and emergency treatment, initiating and overseeing forty soldiers’ lodgings--free hotels for men passing back and forth separated from their regiments--helping with a pension agency, a back-pay agency, a directory of more than two hundred hospitals, sending to the battle-fields surgeons and instruments, ambulances, anesthetics, and frequently going herself to see that the things reached the men and were efficiently distributed.

The work of the women of the Northwest she consecrated and organized, making them half-soldiers while she kept the soldiers half-civilian by bridging over the chasm between military and home life. She planned wisely, largely. She worked exactly, persistently. In a few months army surgeons were enthusiastic in their praise of the Sanitary Commission, where at first the whole scheme was regarded as quixotic, described as the fifth wheel of a coach, and reluctantly agreed to only because its plans could do no harm. And the people of the North accepted their larger methods and gave supplies to any hospital and any men needing them. The Commission became the great channel through which the bounty of the nation flowed to the army.

Every hour saw boxes arriving at the crowded rooms of the Chicago branch, where the total force of workers was four. Supplies were unpacked, assorted, repacked, one kind in a box, and sent to Washington or Louisville, the gates to the South. A high standard Mrs. Livermore set for her aid societies--one box of hospital supplies every month, and this standard she upheld throughout the war. Such a rigid system was insisted on, in receiving and distributing their stores, that a very insignificant fraction was lost, the vouchers taken at every stage making it possible to trace them back to the original contributors.

Her first actual war experience was after the victory at Donelson. There was a cold rain during the first day’s fighting which changed to sleet and snow with a bleak wind. There were no tents. The men bivouacked in the snow. Hundreds of them who fell were frozen to the ground and had to be dug out. The hospitals were not ready for such a stream of patients. There were few ambulances. In their bloody frozen uniforms wounded men were jolted over the hilly roads in springless carts, to be sent to St. Louis.

Mrs. Livermore spent three weeks in the different hospitals there and in Cairo, visiting every ward, reporting careless arrangements, happy to see great improvements on her second visit. Always the men greeted her gladly, stretching out their hands to touch hers, talking freely of home and friends.

A year later she was sent down the Mississippi with shipments of sanitary stores, to inspect every hospital from Cairo to Young’s Point, opposite Vicksburg. Mud and water she found everywhere, swamp fever and malaria and scurvy. One group of hopelessly sick men she offered to take north with her, and Grant made this possible by cutting the red tape of the military régime.

The demand for hospital supplies increased steadily, as the army increased in numbers and in the scope of its operations. The Sanitary Commission expended fifty million dollars during the war, each battle costing about seventy-five thousand, and Gettysburg half a million. And in raising this vast sum Mrs. Livermore was one of the most efficient workers.

She planned a great Sanitary Fair in Chicago, to raise twenty-five thousand dollars. The men laughed at such an impossibility. But the women went ahead. They hired fourteen of the largest halls in the city, and went into debt ten thousand dollars. They must have gone crazy, said the business men, and sent a committee to advise that the fair be given up, and adding that when they thought the money was needed they would contribute the twenty-five thousand. But the ladies thanked them courteously and continued with their plans.

Such a fair as it was, opening with a great parade, “the potato procession,” the papers had called it, making sport of the scheme. The school children were given a holiday. Banks and stores were closed. Railroads ran excursions, bells rang, guns were fired, the whole city gathered to see the parade--children carrying flags, convalescent soldiers in carriages, captured standards of the Confederate armies, and farmers’ wagons with mottoes such as “Our father lies at Stone River” and “We buried a son at Donelson.” The flags on the horses’ heads were edged with black. The women who rode beside son or husband were dressed in black. And when the parade stopped in front of Mrs. Livermore’s house, the crowd was in tears.

The farmers gave great wagon loads of potatoes and cabbages and onions, for shipment to the soldiers. Live stock was sold at auction just outside the main hall. In manufacturers’ annex were plows and reapers and stoves and trunks and washing machines, all for sale. There was a curiosity shop, an art gallery whose treasures were loaned for the fair, one hall for entertainments every evening--concerts, tableaux, lectures by Anna Dickinson, the girl orator. Dinner was served each day. When it was all over the women had cleared a hundred thousand dollars.

But the fair did far more than raise this large sum of money. It was a splendid demonstration of loyalty to the Union. It encouraged the soldiers. It kindled an electric generosity and a contagious patriotism, infusing into widely scattered groups of workers an impetus that lasted through the war. It captured the attention of the entire loyal North for weeks. Its success led to Sanitary Fairs in Cleveland, Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, New York and Philadelphia.

Soon after the Chicago fair was over, Mrs. Livermore was asked to speak to an aid society in Dubuque, Iowa. She left on the night train, reaching the Mississippi River at a point where there was no bridge and travelers must cross by ferry. But the ice in the river had stopped the boats. She waited nearly all day. Could she keep her engagement? At last she saw two men starting out in a small rowboat, but they refused to take her.

“You’ll be drowned,” they said.

“I can’t see that I shall drown any more than you!” was her reply, and finally they rowed her across. Her determination to accomplish whatever she undertook was one reason for her success.

She had expected to talk informally to a small group of women. To her dismay she found that great preparations had been made. The largest church in Dubuque was filled with an eager crowd, the governor and many noted men being present, and every county in Iowa represented. And her lecture was announced, “A Voice from the Front.”

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I’m not a public speaker. What I had to say to a few ladies is not worthy to be called a lecture to this great audience. I can’t do it!”

So it was arranged that Colonel Stone, with whose regiment she had spent some time near the line of battle, should take down brief notes of the talk she would have given to the aid society, and tell the story to the people. They had started into the church to carry out this plan when he said to her, “I’ve seen you at the front, I watched your work in the hospital, and I believe you’re in earnest. I’ve heard you say you’d give anything for the soldiers. Now is the time for you to give your voice. Shall this opportunity be lost--or shall Iowa be enlisted for the work of the Sanitary Commission?”

“I will try,” said Mary A. Livermore.

The sea of faces blurred before her. She seemed to be talking into blank darkness. She could not hear her own voice. But suddenly the needs of the soldiers crowded upon her mind, the destitution, sickness, suffering she had seen at the front,--and the people of Iowa must be roused to do their share. She thought she had spoken half an hour, it was nearly two hours. The audience listened spellbound, men and women weeping, every heart filled with a new patriotism.

“Now,” said the governor when she closed, “Mrs. Livermore has told us of the soldiers’ needs. It is our turn to speak, and we must speak in money and gifts.”

Eight thousand dollars were pledged, five hundred barrels of potatoes, bushels of onions and anti-scorbutics of which the army was greatly in need. People stayed till eleven o’clock, and the leaders till one, planning for an Iowa fair which later cleared sixty thousand dollars.

That was the first public speech of the little Mary Rice who had preached to sticks of wood. But it was not the last. In hundreds of towns she spoke, raising thousands of dollars for hospital work and soldiers’ homes, helping organize aid societies and fairs.

And after the war, from Atlantic to Pacific, in churches and colleges, in city and country, she lectured to crowded houses, talking on her war experiences in the “Sanitary,” on temperance and woman’s suffrage. A most popular speaker she was, achieving much for the various causes with which she was connected. But most of all she is remembered for the wonders accomplished in the many-sided work of the Sanitary Commission, whose efficient service helped to win the war.