The Project Gutenberg EBook of Half a Century, by Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

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Title: Half a Century

Author: Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12052]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HALF A CENTURY.

BY

JANE GREY SWISSHELM.

* * * * *

"God so willed:
Mankind is ignorant! a man am I:
Call ignorance my sorrow, not my sin!"

"O, still as ever friends are they
Who, in the interest of outraged truth
Deprecate such rough handling of a lie!"

ROBERT BROWNING.

1880.

PREFACE.

It has been assumed, and is generally believed, that the Anti-slavery
struggle, which, culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862,
originated in Infidelity, and was a triumph of Skepticism over
Christianity. In no way can this error be so well corrected as by the
personal history of those who took part in that struggle; and as most of
them have passed from earth without leaving any record of the education
and motives which underlay their action, the duty they neglected becomes
doubly incumbent on the few who remain.

To supply one quota of the inside history of the great Abolition war, is
the primary object of this work; but scarcely secondary to this object
is that of recording incidents characteristic of the Peculiar
Institution overthrown in that struggle.

Another object, and one which struggles for precedence, is to give an
inside history of the hospitals during the war of the Rebellion, that
the American people may not forget the cost of that Government so often
imperiled through their indifference.

A third object, is to give an analysis of the ground which produced the
Woman's Rights agitation, and the causes which limited its influence.

A fourth is, to illustrate the force of education and the mutability of
human character, by a personal narrative of one who, in 1836, would have
broken an engagement rather than permit her name to appear in print,
even in the announcem