The Civil War Years
With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the Chaces continued their striving for the outlaw of slavery and although firmly supportive of the Union cause, were disappointed that Abraham Lincoln did not move immediately to abolish slavery. Elizabeth Buffum Chace met and corresponded regularly with many of the most significant Anti-Slavery figures of that time; she associated personally with William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and William Wells Brown, and hosted them frequently at her home.
As an illustration of just how dedicated to and involved in the anti-slavery movement the Buffum family were, while John Brown was being held in Virginia after his actions at Harpers Ferry and right prior to being hanged, Elizabeth's sister Rebecca Buffum and her son Edward journeyed to Virginia from Rhode Island specifically to visit with Brown in his cell. They requested and received special permission from the Virginia authorities to do so thinking that they could "minister" to John Brown. By their own account of the visits, John Brown welcomed them openly.
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Famous quotes containing the words civil, war and/or years:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“Well, children, enjoy this all you can, for in four years you may begin to walk over again.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)