MRS. FRANCES D. GAGE. N the 12th of October, 1808, was born in the township of Union, Washington County, Ohio, Frances Dana Barker. Her father had, twenty years before that time, gone a pioneer to the Western wilds. His name was Joseph Barker, a native of New Hampshire. Her mother was Elizabeth Dana, of Massachusetts, and her maternal grandmother was Mary Bancroft. She was thus allied on the maternal side to the well-known Massachusetts families of Dana and Bancroft. During her childhood, schools were scarce in Ohio, and in the small country places inferior. A log-cabin in the woods was the Seminary where Frances Barker acquired the rudiments of education. The wolf's howl, the panther's cry, the hiss of the copperhead, often filled her young heart with terror. Her father was a farmer, and the stirring life of a farmer's daughter in a new country, fell to her lot. To spin the garments she wore, to make cheese and butter, were parts of her education, while to lend a hand at out-door labor, perhaps helped her to acquire that vigor of body and brain for which she has since been distinguished. She made frequent visits to her grandmother, Mrs. Mary Bancroft Dana, whose home was at Belpre, Ohio, upon the Ohio river, only one mile from Parkersburg, Virginia, and opposite Blennerhasset's Island. Mrs. Dana, was even then a radical on the subject of slavery, and Frances learned from her to hate the word, and all it represented. She never was on the side of the oppressor, and was frequently laughed at in childhood, for her sympathy with the poor fugitives from slavery, who often found their way to the neighborhood in which she lived, seeking kindness and charity of the people. It had not then become a crime to give a crust of bread, or a cup of milk to the "fugitive from labor," and Mrs. Barker, a noble, true-thinking woman, often sent her daughter on errands of mercy to the neighboring cabins, where the poor creatures sought shelter, and would tarry a few days, often to be caught and sent back to their masters. Thus she early became familiarized with their sufferings, and their wants. At the age of twenty, on the 1st of January, 1829, Frances Barker became the wife of James L. Gage, a lawyer of McConnellsville, Ohio, a good and noble man, whose hatred of the system of slavery in the South, was surpassed only by that of the great apostle of anti-slavery, Garrison, himself. Moral integrity, and unflinching fidelity to the cause of humanity, were leading traits of his character. A family of eight children engrossed much of their attention for many years, but still they found time to wage moral warfare with the stupendous wrong that surrounded them, and bore down their friends and neighbors beneath the leaden weight of its prejudice and injustice. Mrs. Gage records that "it never seemed to her to require any sacrifice to resist the popular will upon the subjects of freedom for the slave, temperance, or even the rights of woman." They were all so manifestly right, in her opinion, that she could not but take her stand as their advocates, and it was far easier for her to maintain them than to yield one iota of her conscientious views. Thus she always found herself in a minority, through all the struggling years between 1832 and 1865. She had once an engagement with the editor of a "State Journal" to write weekly for his columns during a year. This, at that time seemed to her a great achievement. But a few plain words from her upon the Fugitive Slave Law, brought a note saying her services were no longer wanted; "He would not," the editor wrote, "publish sentiments in his Journal, which, if carried out, would strike at the foundations of all law, order, and government," and added much good advice. Her reply was prompt: "Yours of is at hand. Thanking you for your unasked counsel, I cheerfully retire from your columns. "Respectfully yours, "F. D. GAGE." She has lived to see that editor change many of his views, and approach her standard. The great moral struggle of the thirty years preceding the war, in her opinion, required for its continuance far more heroism than that which marshalled our hosts along the Potomac, prompted Sheridan's raids, or Sherman's triumphant "march to the sea." In all her warfare against existing wrong, that which she waged for the liberties of her own sex subjected her to the most trying persecution, insult and neglect. In the region of Ohio where she then resided, she stood almost alone, but she was never inclined to yield. Probably, unknown to herself, this very discipline was preparing her for the events of the future, and its supreme tests of her principles. A member of Congress once called to urge her to persuade her husband to yield a point of principle (which he said if adhered to would prove the political ruin of Mr. Gage) holding out the bribe of a seat in Congress, if he would stand by the old Whig party in some of its tergiversations, and insisting that if he persisted in doing as he had threatened, he would soon find himself standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she believes right, as well as the principle that animates her. |