“Is it possible you will not take my hand?”
I looked at it, then into his manly, handsome face, and answered:
“_There is blood on it!_ The blood of women and children slain at their own altars, on their own hearthstones, that you might spread the glorious American institution of woman whipping and baby stealing.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “This is too bad! I swear to you I never killed a woman or a child.”
“Then you did not fight in Mexico, did not help to bombard Buena Vista.”
His friends joined him and insisted that I did the Colonel great wrong, when he looked squarely into my face, and, holding out his hand, said:
“For the sake of the old church, for the sake of the old man, for the sake of the old times, give me your hand.”
I laid it in his, and hurried away, unable to speak, for he was the most eloquent man in Pennsylvania. He fell at last at the head of his regiment, while fighting in the battle of Fair Oaks, for the freedom he had betrayed in Mexico.
Her destructive attack on the private character of Daniel Webster, in 1850, also illustrates her reckless courage and her sagacity. She was in Washington pending the fugitive slave bill. Webster was supporting the measure—a damaging defection from the anti-slavery side, because of his supposed moral as well as intellectual greatness. Mrs. S. discovered “that his whole panoply of moral power was a shell—that his life was full of rottenness. Then I knew why I had come to Washington.” She put the facts into one short paragraph, and published it in her own paper, against the advice of all her friends, and even of such stanch anti-slavery men as Giddings, Julian, and Dr. Snodgrass. They said it was true, and no one would dare to deny it; yet no one had dared to make it public; the publication would ruin her and her influence. She said: “The cause of the slave hangs on the issue in Congress, and Mr. Webster’s influence is against him; his influence would be less if the public knew just what he is. I will publish it and let God take care of the consequences.” Eccentric conduct, surely! It was published, and it did bring ruin—but on Daniel Webster, instead of Jane Grey Swisshelm. It killed Webster’s influence with the conscientious part of the Whig party, and probably gave the _coup de grace_ to his presidential prospects. She was long known as “the woman who killed Webster.”