Mary
Ashton Rice was born in Boston on 19th
December, 1820. A deeply religious person, Mary read the entire Bible
every year until she was twenty-three. In 1839 she found work as a
tutor on a Virginia plantation. During the next three years she observed
the way that slaves on the plantation were treated and this turned
her into a strong opponent of slavery.
In 1842 Livermore took charge of a private school in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
She worked at the school for three years before marrying Daniel Livermore,
a Universalist minister, in May, 1845. For the next three years the
couple worked amongst factory workers providing education and health
care.
In 1857 the family moved to Chicago and
Mary worked as associate editor of the religious publication, the
New Covenant. She also published
a collection of essays entitled Pen Pictures.
A strong supporter of the Republican Party,
Livermore campaigned for Abraham Lincoln
in the 1860 presidential election.
Livermore did relief work during the American
Civil War and after a tour of military hospitals, she joined the
U.S. Sanitary Commission in Chicago.
Working with her friend, Jane Hoge, she organized a Sanitary Fair
which raised more than $70,000. Later she was appointed as an agent
of securing money and supplies. Livermore worked closely with Mary
Ann Bickerdyke who was chief of nursing under the command of General
Ulysses S. Grant and General William
T. Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign.
An active supporter of women's rights,
Livermore organized the Chicago Woman Suffrage Convention in 1868.
She was also editor of the feminist journal, The
Agitator (1868-70).
Along with Lucy Stone and Julia
Ward Howe, Livermore co-edited The
Women's Journal (1870-72). A founder member of the American
Woman Suffrage Association, Livermore was president of the organization
between 1875 and 1878. Livermore was also one of the leaders of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
Livermore wrote several books including My
Story of the War: A Woman's Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience
(1887) and The Story of My Life: The Sunshine
and Shadow of Seventy Years (1897). Livermore was also
joint editor with Francis E. Willard
of a collection of biographies, A Woman of
the Century (1893). Mary Livermore
died in Melrose, Massachusetts, on 23rd May, 1905.
(1)
Mary Livermore, The Story of My Life:
The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years
(1897)
The Sundays of my childhood
were not enjoyable days, they were observed with such unnecessary
rigor. All work was tabooed on that day, even cooking, winter and
summer. The food was cooked the day before. We rose early, and we
children were prepared for the- morning Sunday school at nine o'clock.
The churches were not sufficiently warmed for
the winter, and, in many instances, not warmed at all, and so a foot-stove
was taken by one of us, which the sexton filled
with live coals. We took turns in warming our feet upon it, and then
were half frozen. The Sunday school ended at
half-past ten, when we adjourned from the vestry to the church. A
sounding-board overhung the pulpit, which was small and circular and
seemingly suspended in the air, for the posts that upheld it and the
narrow, spiral stairway which conducted to it were enclosed by curtains.
I thought the minister, when he passed inside these curtains, rose
in the air, very much as a bird soars from the ground, until he I
came to the level where he could be seen by the people.
We were not allowed to
read a story-book, not the religious newspaper, not a missionary magazine,
or to look into a school-book. It was Sunday, and the Bible was the
only book proper for Sunday reading. At two o'clock we hurried back
to the second session of the Sunday School, then again to afternoon
service in the church, and after that came an interminable prayer-meeting
in the body of the house, to which all remained who could, - the children
always included. This prayer-meeting lasted until dark in the winter
and until very nearly supper time in summer. It was my great dread.
The prayers and addresses were rarely delivered in an audible tone
of voice, but were yet echoed and re-echoed through the building.
The intense stillness without deepened solemnly, and the darkness
crept into the nooks and corners of the church till the place seemed
ghostly, and I saw specters everywhere. Trembling with fright I would
cling to my father, and insist that he should put his arm around me
and hold my hand tightly in his.
Sunday evening was devoted
to the religious instruction of the children at home. Of this my father
took charge, while my mother in company with friends or neighbors
attended service at one of the churches in the near vicinity. First
came the catechism, through which we went every Sunday evening, my
father occasionally enforcing a precept or expounding an obscure point.
If that catechism is lost, hopelessly, I can at any time reproduce
it, question and answer, verbatim et literatim, for it is burned
into my memory forever. Then followed the Bible reading, in which
we all took part, and after this a plain, practical talk from my father
concerning the salvation of our souls and the dangers under which
we lived while unconverted. This never affected my sisters as it did
me. I was sometimes shaken to the very center of my being, and often
expressed to my father, even when very young, what I frequently felt
- a bitter regret that I had ever been born. There were times when
I envied the cat that purred at the fireside, or the dog that slept
on the doorstep. They could be happy, for they had no souls to be
saved or lost.
(2)
Mary Livermore wrote about the death of her younger sister in her
autobiography, The Story of My Life:
The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years
(1897)
My sister Rachel, next
in age to myself, and three years younger,
was a delicate child from birth. It was only by the most
untiring care and watchfulness that she lived through infancy
to young girlhood.
Always pale, with large
brown eyes, her oval face framed in her hair like spun sunshine, gentle,
and always sweet- tempered, my sister Rachel exerted a perpetual influence
for good in our family circle. We grew up together, occupying the
same room, after the birth of a still younger sister, and such was
the imperative need of my care, and of supplementing her weakness
with my strength, that my relation to her was far more motherly than
sisterly.
During
the last two years other life she suffered extremely from curvature
of the spine. The treatment prescribed for the disease
caused her more suffering than she was able to bear. To
rest on an inclined plane for hours of every day, supported
by a strap under the arms to prevent slipping, and another
under the chin, while heavy weights were attached to
the ankles, for the straightening of the spinal column, was unbearable
torture to the delicate child. Everything was done
to tone up her system, and to build up her general health,
but she failed and faded visibly before our eyes, and yet
so sweetly and uncomplainingly that we were hardly aware
of her increasing weakness.
One afternoon she asked
me to bring my books to her chamber, and to study by her bedside.
I did as she desired but there was no chance for study. She was in
a mood for talk. Her eyes were exceedingly brilliant, and her cheeks
glowed with a vivid flush. She talked incessantly, and of everything
while we sat together. I brought her sewing-table and writing-desk
to her bedside, and all the small treasures she had accumulated in
her short life. She apportioned them all among her kindred and friends,
and wrote on each gift the name of the person to whom she bequeathed
it, and left all in my charge.
A premonition of impending
sorrow came over me If my sister was standing on the verge of the
other world I must know if she feared death, or if she anticipated
it with hope.
"My dear sister,
you are not afraid to die? You are sure God
will receive you, and will welcome you?" She swept my
face with her preternaturally bright eyes.
"No Mary, I am not
afraid. God will take care of me, even better than you have done!
If I die," she continued after a moment s hesitation, "be
sure to tell Papa that I cannot remember once to have omitted my prayers,
night or morning, in all my life, and that I read the Bible regularly
just as he has planned it . And tell Mamma to forgive me if I spoke
fretfully when we drove to Dorchester last week, for I was very
ill for a few moments, and didn't want her to know it."
In an hour we were summoned
to her bedside, for she was battling for her life with a cruel assault
of pain that was unendurable. Two physicians were called, and both
arrived at the same moment, but before they were able even to make
a diagnosis of her case, she had passed into unconsciousness, and
was gone.
(3)
Mary Livermore was staying in Boston with
her father when the American Civil War
started in 1861.
My own
home had been in Chicago for years, but my aged father was thought
to be dying, and the stern speech of the telegram had summoned me
to his bedside. The daily papers teemed with the dreary records of
succession. The Southern press blazed with hatred of the North, and
with fierce contempt for her patience and her avowed desire for peace.
Northern men and women were driven from Southern homes, leaving behind
all their possessions, and thankful to escape with life.
The day after arrival, came the news that Fort Sumter was attacked,
which increased the feverish anxiety. The telegraph, which had registered
for the astounded nation the hourly progress of the bombardment, announced
the lowering of the stars and stripes, and the surrender of the beleaguered
garrison, the news fell on the land like a thunderbolt.
(4)
Mary Livermore
wrote about her feelings when it became clear that the North was at
war with the South in her book My Story of the War (1887).
15th April, 1861: Drowning the exaltations of the triumphant South,
louder than their boom of cannon, heard above their clang of bells
and blare of trumpets, there rang out the voice of Abraham Lincoln
calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months. This
proclamation was like the first peal of a surcharged thunder-cloud,
clearing the murky air. The South received it as a declaration of
war; the North as a confession that civil war had begun; and the whole
North arose as one man.
17th April, 1861: The 6th Massachusetts, a full regiment one thousand
strong, started from Boston by rail. An immense concourse of people
gathered in the neighborhood of the Boston and Albany railroad station
to witness their departure. The great crowd was evidently under the
influence of deep feeling, but it was repressed, and the demonstrations
were not noisy. Tears ran down not only the cheeks of women, but those
of men; but there was no faltering.
(5)
Mary Livermore, The Story of My Life:
The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years
(1897)
On one occasion, when going
from ward to ward of a hospital, in Helena, Arkansas, I came upon
a poor fellow evidently near death. He accepted my offer to write
a letter to his mother, but, pointing to a comrade in the next bed,
said,
" Write for him first;
I can wait."
I doubted if he could
wait, for already the pallor of death
was overshadowing his face, and I urged him again saying:
"Speak as rapidly
as you can, and I will write rapidly; there
is time for both letters."
But he persisted; "Take
him first!" and I was obliged to
obey. Writing as rapidly as possible, I watched the brave
fellow who had given up his last earthly comfort to his
comrade, and who was failing fast. Noticing that my eyes
sought him constantly, he beckoned feebly to one of the
nurses, who turned him in bed that I might not be disturbed by his
whitening face and shortening breath. And when
I moved to his bedside to receive his dictation, he had passed
beyond the need of my services.
(6)
In her book, My Story of the War, Mary Livermore described
the work of Mary Ann Bickerdyke
on the hospital boat.
After the battle of Donelson, Mother Bickerdyke went from Cairo
in the first hospital boat, and assisted in the removal of the wounded
to Cairo, St. Louis and Louisville, and in nursing those too badly
wounded to be moved. On the way to the battlefield, she systematized
matters perfectly. The beds were ready for the occupants, tea, coffee,
soup and gruel, milk punch, and ice water were prepared in large quantities,
under her supervision, and sometimes her own hand.
When the wounded were brought on board, mangled almost out of human
shape; the frozen ground from which they had been cut adhering to
them; chilled with the intense cold in which some had lain for twenty-four
hours; faint with loss of blood, physical agony, and lack of nourishment;
racked with a terrible five-mile ride over frozen roads, in ambulances,
in common Tennessee farm wagons, without springs; burning with fever;
raving in delirium, or in the faintness of death, Mother Bickerdyke's
boat was in readiness for them.
(7)
Mary Livermore joined the American
Woman Suffrage Association after
the American
Civil War. She wrote about it in
her autobiography, My
Story of the War.
In January, 1869, at my own cost and risk, I established a woman
suffrage paper, The Agitator, which, from the
start, espoused the temperance cause, as well as that of woman suffrage.
I conducted the paper for a year, and with the help of my husband,
who took charge of the business, made it a success, and lost no money.
In January, 1870, the Woman's Journal of Boston was founded
by Mrs. Lucy Stone, and a joint stock company was formed for its weekly
publication. I was invited to merge my paper in this new and promising
advocate of the suffrage reform, and to become its editor-in-chief.
I accepted the invitation with much hesitation. For there were associated
with me as "editorial contributors," Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, William Lloyd Garrison,
and Henry B. Blackwell, - so brilliant a coterie of men and women,
as caused me to doubt my fitness for the editorship, notwithstanding
my large experience in newspaper work.
Last
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