Noble Deeds of American Women: With Biographical Sketches of Some of the More Prominent
History
Noble Deeds of American Women: With Biographical Sketches of Some of the More Prominent
Women -- United States -- Biography
"In one of the eastern counties of New York lived a colored female, who
was born a slave, but she was made free by the act gradually abolishing
slavery in that state. She had no resources except such as she obtained
by her own labor. On one occasion she carried to her pastor _forty
dollars_: she told him that she wished him, with two dollars of this sum
to procure for her a seat in his church; eighteen dollars she desired to
be given to the American Board; and the remaining twenty dollars she
requested him to divide among other benevolent societies according to
his discretion."
REBECCA EDWARDS.
Honor being then above life, dishonor must
Be worse than death; for fate can strike but one.
Reproach doth reach whole families.
CARTWRIGHT'S SIEGE.
At the celebration of our national Independence, in 1797, the orator of
the society of the Cincinnati of South Carolina, paid the following
tribute to the magnanimity of Mrs. Rebecca Edwards:--"The Spartan
mother, on delivering his shield to her son departing for the army,
nobly bade him 'return with it or on it.' The sentiment was highly
patriotic, but surely not superior to that which animated the bosom of
the distinguished female of our own state, who, when the British officer
presented the mandate which arrested her sons as objects of retaliation,
less sensible of private affection than attached to her honor and the
interest of her country, stifled the tender feelings of the mother, and
heroically bade them despise the threats of their enemies, and
steadfastly persist to support the glorious cause in which they had
engaged--that if the threatened sacrifice should follow, they would
carry a parent's blessing, and the good opinion of every virtuous
citizen along with them to the grave: but if from the frailty of human
nature--of the possibility of which she would not suffer an idea to
enter her mind--they were disposed to temporize, and exchange their
liberty for safety, they must forget her as a mother, nor subject her to
the misery of ever beholding them again."[53]
[53] American Anecdotes, vol. 2, p. 11.
"THE BEAUTIFUL REBEL."
Trembling and fear
Are to her unknown.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The maiden name of Mrs. Lewis Morris was Ann Elliott. She was born at
Maccabee, in 1762, and died in New York, in 1848. She was a firm and
fearless patriot, and when the city of Charleston, South Carolina, was
in possession of the red coats, she wore thirteen small plumes in her
bonnet. She had so fair a face, so graceful a form and so patriotic a
spirit, as to be called "the beautiful rebel." An English officer fell
in love with her and offered to join the Americans, if she would favor
his proposals. She ordered the friend who interceded for him to say to
him, "that to her former want of esteem, was added scorn for a man
capable of betraying his sovereign for selfish interest."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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