ABSTRACT
Lydia Maria Child was miserable. For an abolitionist and woman’s rights activist, the fall of 1856 was a discouraging time. Kansas had bled profusely but free-staters were no closer to victory over a federally-backed proslavery territorial government. The upcoming presidential election might help, but voting was reserved almost exclusively for white men. Would they support black freedom? Still worse was Child’s isolation in Massachusetts, far from Kansas and Washington alike. She used her pen to champion the free-state cause, and her money to assist free-state settlers, but she longed to do more. Late in October, Child vented her frustration in a private letter. “This is the death-grapple between Slavery and Freedom . . . and one or the other must go down!” she wrote. “Oh, what a misery it is, to feel in such a fever-heat of anxiety as I do, and yet be shut up . . . where I cannot act!”1
