Half a Century

In the spring of 1850, while the United States was polarized over the slavery debate and Daniel Webster was negotiating the compromise of that year, the outspoken abolitionist, feminist, and journalist, Jane Grey Swisshelm unleashed a congressional sex scandal. Frustrated by what she saw as the Massachusetts senator's surrender to the Southern Slave Power, she published an article alleging Webster's marital infidelities with women of color. As a result of the media storm that followed, Swisshelm lost her job at the New York Tribune. This is but one of the many episodes found in her 1880 autobiography, "Half a Century," which is a narrative of the frontier, of the fight against slavery, and of Swisshelm's fearless, compassionate, and innovative work as a surgical nurse treating Union soldiers who had suffered the most terrible wounds of war.

By : Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815 - 1884)

01 - Ch. 1: I Find Life 02 - Ch. 2: Progress in Calvinism, Hunt Ghosts, See La Fayette 03 - Ch. 3: Father’s Death 04 - Ch. 4: Go to Boarding School 05 - Ch. 5: Lose my Brother 06 - Ch. 6: Join Church, and Make New Endeavors to Keep Sabbath 07 - Ch. 7: Deliverer of the Dark Night 08 - Ch. 8: Fitting Myself into My Sphere 09 - Ch. 9: Habitations of Horrid Cruelty 10 - Ch. 10: Kentucky Contempt for Labor 11 - Ch. 11: Rebellion 12 - Ch. 12: The Valley of the Shadow of Death 13 - Ch. 13: ‘Labor—Service or Act’ 14 - Ch. 14: Swissvale 15 - Ch. 15: Willows by the Water-Courses 16 - Ch. 16: The Waters Grow Deep 17 - Ch. 17: My Name Appears in Print 18 - Ch. 18: Mexican War Letters 19 - Ch. 19: Training School 20 - Ch. 20: Rights of Married Women 21 - Ch. 21: Pittsburg Saturday Visiter 22 - Ch. 22: Reception of the Visiter 23 - Ch. 23: My Crooked Telescope 24 - Ch. 24: Mint, Cummin, and Annis 25 - Ch. 25: Free Soil Party 26 - Ch. 26: Visit Washington 27 - Ch. 27: Daniel Webster 28 - Ch. 28: Fugitive Slave Law—The Two Riddles 29 - Ch. 29: Bloomers and Woman’s Rights Convention 30 - Ch. 30: Many Matters 31 - Ch. 31: The Mother Church 32 - Ch. 32: Politics and Printers 33 - Ch. 33: Sumner, Burlingame and Cassius M. Clay 34 - Ch. 34: Finance and Desertion 35 - Ch. 35: My Hermitage 36 - Ch. 36: The Minnesota Dictator 37 - Ch. 37: Another Visiter 38 - Ch. 38: Border Ruffianism 39 - Ch. 39: Speak in Public 40 - Ch. 40: A Famous Victory 41 - Ch. 41: State and National Politics 42 - Ch. 42: Religious Controversies 43 - Ch. 43: Frontier Life 44 - Ch. 44: Printers 45 - Ch. 45: The Rebellion 46 - Ch. 46: Platforms 47 - Ch. 47: Out into the World and Home Again 48 - Ch. 48: The Aristocracy of the West 49 - Ch. 49: The Indian Massacre of ‘62 50 - Ch. 50: A Missive and a Mission 51 - Ch. 51: No Use for Me Among the Wounded 52 - Ch. 52: Find Work 53 - Ch. 53: Hospital Gangrene 54 - Ch. 54: Get Permission to Work 55 - Ch. 55: Find a Name 56 - Ch. 56: Drop My Alias 57 - Ch. 57: Hospital Dress 58 - Ch. 58: Special Work 59 - Ch. 59: Heroic and Anti-Heroic Treatment 60 - Ch. 60: Cost of Order 61 - Ch. 61: Learn to Control Pyaemia 62 - Ch. 62: First Case of Growing a New Bone 63 - Ch. 63: A Heroic Mother 64 - Ch. 64: Two Kinds of Appreciation 65 - Ch. 65: Life and Death 66 - Ch. 66: Meet Miss Dix and Go to Fredericksburg 67 - Ch. 67: The Old Theater 68 - Ch. 68: Am Placed in Authority 69 - Ch. 69: Visitors 70 - Ch. 70: Wounded Officers 71 - Ch. 71: ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’ 72 - Ch. 72: More Victims and a Change of Base 73 - Ch. 73: Prayers Enough and to Spare 74 - Ch. 74: Get Out of the Old Theater 75 - Ch. 75: Take Boat and See a Social Party 76 - Ch. 76: Take Final Leave of Fredericksburg 77 - Ch. 77: Try to Get Up a Society and Get Sick 78 - Ch. 78: An Efficient Nurse 79 - Ch. 79: Two Fredericksburg Patients 80 - Ch. 80: Am Enlightened 81 - Conclusion

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 announcement of marriage; and who, in 1850, had as much newspaper notoriety as any man of that time, and was singularly indifferent to the praise or blame of the Press;—of one who, in 1837, could not break the seal of silence set upon her lips by "Inspiration," even so far as to pray with a man dying of intemperance, and who yet, in 1862, addressed the Minnesota Senate in session, and as many others as could be packed in the hall, with no more embarrassment than though talking with a friend in a chimney corner.