with passionate faith, and proceeded at once to convert it into action.
She was governess of Dr. Channing's children, and had long been
interested in bettering the condition of convicts; but now her
attention was turned to the insane and she proceeded at once to master
the whole question of insanity, its origin, its development, and its
treatment, so far as it was then known. Enlisting the aid of a number of
broad-minded men, among them Charles Sumner, she went to work. In one
prison, she found two insane women, each confined in a small cage of
planks; others were locked in closets, cellars, and stalls; some of them
were naked, some were chained, some were regularly beaten and scourged.
With all her data at hand, she addressed a memorial to the Massachusetts
legislature, setting forth, in page after page, the details of these
almost incredible horrors, which she herself had witnessed.

It exploded like a bombshell, for it was a terrific arraignment of the
whole state. Her statements were denounced as untrue and slanderous, but
a little investigation proved their truth, and with such men behind her
as Channing, Horace Mann, and Samuel G. Howe, it was soon apparent that
something would be done. The obstructions and delays of politicians were
swept away before a steadily rising tide of public indignation, and a
large appropriation was made by the legislature to provide proper
quarters and proper treatment for insane persons. So Miss Dix won her
first great victory, the forerunner of similar ones in almost every
state in the union; for she travelled from state to state making the
same investigations she had in Massachusetts, arousing public opinion,
and compelling legislature after legislature to make adequate provision
for the insane. The vastness of this campaign which Miss Dix planned
deliberately and which she carried through until she had visited every
state east of the Rocky Mountains, gives evidence to her extraordinary
character. During the Civil War, she was superintendent of hospital
nurses, having the entire control of their appointment and assignment.
But the care of the insane was her life work. She resumed it at the
close of the war, and carried it forward until her death.

* * * * *

We have already referred more than once, in the course of these
chapters, to the anti-slavery agitation which ended in the Civil War.
During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it was the