One Glorious Ambition Read online

  “But does she have a way forward to become better?”

  “As much as I can give her.”

  Dorothea saw the compassion in the brother’s eyes. He was doing his best, but his best was not sufficient to treat the woman’s condition. “And if a hospital in Lexington would serve her, would you let her go? Bring her there for care?”

  “I would.”

  In the mirror behind the bar Dorothea looked at the faces of the men she had silenced with her entrance. “Will he?” she asked them.

  “I think he’d take her,” one said and other heads nodded in agreement.

  “May I meet your sister?”

  The barkeep came out from behind the shiny oak bar and took Dorothea to a shed fit for a horse or a mule. A chain held the door shut, but inside, the woman was free to move in the small space. A little dog looked healthy and panted atop the single bed, which was covered with a quilt. A coal stove vented to the outside. A window let in pale light. A thunder bucket sat ready to be emptied, but it appeared this happened daily. Small wooden figures lined a shelf, and knives and other tools covered a table. A fragile woman was dressed in cotton. She was slender as a noodle and rocked from foot to foot at the back of the dimly lit room. How odd he trusts her with knives and yet keeps her confined.

  “Her name’s Madeleine, after our mother, what died when she was borned,” the barkeep said.

  “You carved these, Madeleine?” The woman nodded.

  “She has a gift,” her brother said. “Just can’t keep herself from running naked in the streets sometimes. Have to go find her, or she would freeze to death. I confine her 'cause I have to.”

  “These are lovely.” Dorothea picked up a carving of a child whose face held the expression of Madeleine’s sorrow.

  “She will have a better life in the hospital we propose.” She thought to ask Madeleine if she wished to move to such a place, but she felt it unfair to give hope when she could not assure it. “Until then,” Dorothea said, “make certain she has clean clothes weekly and perhaps some books. Can she read?”

  “I can read,” Madeleine answered.

  “Can you?” Dorothea turned to her. “I’ll send some books before I leave.”

  Madeleine rushed at her, grabbing at the table as she passed it. For a moment, Dorothea thought she sought the knife or would push past her brother and out the door. But instead, Madeleine stepped so close to Dorothea that she could see a piece of green stuck in her teeth when she grinned, her eyes wild. Madeleine handed her the carving of the sorrowful child. “In return for the books. And your visit.”

  “I am moved by your generosity.”

  “I am generous. Yes. I am.”

  Back at her boardinghouse, Dorothea packed some books and sent them to the brother. In a quiet moment, she fingered the delicate carving. The woman was an artist. She might know of an outlet for the woman’s carvings, and Madeleine could perhaps support herself if her unpredictable condition could be treated successfully. Maybe carving brought her discipline and order, and so she could endure until the mind tricked her and had her ripping off her clothes and running through the cold. How difficult it must be for her brother to see her as sane as any of his bar patrons and know that at any moment she could be another person, her suffering catapulting her into danger and his life into chaos.

  “We are all deprived by these people stored in sheds and basements,” she wrote to Anne. “The woman’s carvings are exquisite and without a hospital there will be no hope anyone else will ever see them nor that she might one day live the noble life she so deserves.”

  Dorothea traveled all of Kentucky’s forty-four counties and submitted her memorial in January 1846. She did not ask for a hospital to humanely house the incurable insane, but rather she asked for one to treat the insane. The incurables might need to be overseen by private benefactors, such as herself, because she failed to see how she could ever convince the legislators to fund a hospital for the most severe cases, including people who were ensconced in attics and sheds. They were out of sight of the legislators and unlikely to ever cast a vote. A hospital would bring hope to the Madeleines who had families who cared for them and who would bring them forward.

  “The legislature voted five thousand dollars and set up a committee to find a site,” Dorothea wrote George Emerson. “They must do more for the carving woman, but I do not know when. Each state has its own problems, and the suffering of the insane is on the bottom of their lists. I am becoming cynical in my older age that anything will ever change in the ways that are so massively needed throughout this country.”

  Many states in the South called on Dorothea as her reputation grew. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as well as Missouri and Illinois, lured her to bring her notebooks and traveling desk to their counties. She also carried with her Madeleine’s tiny carving in her bag. Dorothea commissioned music boxes in every state, returning to pick them up and deliver them to patients who drew her to them, their wide eyes or disheveled stares stopping her as she otherwise whisked through the various institutions and took notes. Suffering pressed on her as if she were one of the pansies she laid between the pages of her books, and the memories lingered.

  She wrote a brief memorial for Illinois, seeking a hospital and a new penitentiary. The asylum was funded, but the penitentiary was not. She saw vast needs and pushed for memorials in every state she visited. She Miss-Dixed assemblymen over fine dining in her boardinghouse or on the plantations with slaves fanning her impassioned face with palms. In Nashville she successfully submitted a memorial written in four days. Supporters had four thousand copies printed and distributed. The memorial moved quickly through the legislature, and it was adopted in 1847. Tennessee joined Louisiana in the reform work, one more state moving to relieve the suffering of many.

  “I cannot believe you talked me into coming here for Christmas,” Anne told her when Dorothea met the stage in Nashville. “Transportation is wretched. I am all the more amazed that you travel as much as you do and still remain healthy and sane.”

  “My sanity is not in question here.”

  “Mine is to have made this trek.” The women laughed. Then Dorothea introduced her to Jane and John Bell, the former Speaker of the House and now a newly elected senator. The Bells had invited the women to stay with them.

  “Any friend of our dear Dorothea is a friend of ours,” Jane Bell charmed. “Our Sewanee plantation awaits you where the Cumberland River winds by like a lazy snake. Here, let Jeremiah get your bags, dear.” She motioned for a slave to place Anne’s luggage in the wagon. Anne’s eyes grew wide.

  As they rode by fields with slaves bent to pick cotton, Anne’s mouth tightened. She scowled despite Jane’s questions about her travels and life in Boston. When Dorothea knocked on Anne’s door later, Anne pulled her in and showed her that the room overlooked an orchard.

  “I had no idea you were staying with people who own slaves,” she hissed. “How could you, Dorothea?”

  “It’s their way of life. They’re good to them. You’ll see how healthy they are.”

  “It’s deplorable. I … I didn’t realize. I thought you were in a boardinghouse or I never would have come.”

  The words stung. “They are gracious, gracious people. They were instrumental in passage of the bill for the hospital. Their slaves are fine. Truly.”

  “Dorothea, you’re blind. They’re as captive as your insane you worry over so.”

  “The insane have no one to speak for them. The slaves have the Bells and people like them to make sure their needs are met.”

  “But they don’t meet their needs.” Anne shook her head. “Do you think happy, well-tended people risk their lives to come north? They’re … not free to come and go. All the arguments about whether new states come into the Union as free or slave, have you been deaf to that? It’s deplorable. No human being deserves to be left in someone’s will to a niece like an old bed. Remember how you hate the auctions in Pennsyl
vania of the mentally ill?”

  “This is different.”

  “No, it is not. It appalls me that you cannot see it.”

  “Even Reverend Channing thought their plight exaggerated by those in the North who knew nothing of their ways in the South.” He had said as much in St. Croix, hadn’t he?

  “He changed in later years.” Anne sat at a dressing table, her hands clasped in her lap. “How good that he is not alive to see you here among these … people.”

  Her precious Reverend Channing had become an abolitionist? He would be upset with her? No. She hadn’t seen one mistreated slave in all the time she had been here or anywhere in the South.

  “It’s not that I wish the institution of slavery on anyone,” Dorothea said. “It’s just that those relieved of their reason need me more.”

  Anne sighed. “I know where your heart is, but I will not be comfortable here.”

  “Give your body rest after the long journey. The Bells are wonderful people. Their cook creates ambrosia for the gods.”

  Anne sat as tight as a guitar string. “And is their cook a slave?”

  “I imagine … I never asked.” Why is this so upsetting to Anne? “I’ll be going back to Boston when the Bells leave for Washington. I could travel with you. Give you hints of my survival skills on muddy roads and small inns.” Dorothea smiled, hoping to ease the strain.

  “No. I’ll arrange to leave in the morning.”

  “Please, don’t let this come between us.”

  “I’ll try not to, Dorothea. But it is beneath your Christian heart not to see the degradation of all involved with this despicable thing. As much as it degrades us all to allow the mentally ill to be mistreated, so are we diminished by tolerating slavery. Both place people in bondage, and we are called upon by our Lord to care for each afflicted person as the ‘least of these.’ You must come back with me.”

  Dorothea blinked nervously. “I only have the call to serve those deprived of their reason.”

  “I understand. But don’t close your eyes to the subtle support that staying on a slave-run plantation truly is. We are all called to be awake and to seek justice, wherever we find it. There is no justice for the Negro. You must not forget that. It is an issue that will come to a head one day, and you do not want to be on the side of evil.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Battle Preparations

  A hole formed in Dorothea’s thin leather soles. She would have to find a cobbler to repair them and then order another pair. The many muddy trails, wet-bottomed boats, cold snows that she stepped into while traveling thousands of miles over the past seven years of surveying had not been kind to her feet. She stoked the small coal stove in her room at a Nashville boardinghouse. The two black merino dresses she rotated were looking thin in places from the many brushings. If she stayed a week or more here, she would have them steamed, but lately she rarely stayed that long anywhere. She checked the black dress for tiny holes she could repair and decided that she would stop at the nearest dry-goods store to purchase wool. She would delay her trip for a few days and sew a new dress. Her crinolines needed refreshing as well, perhaps she needed two new ones so she could avoid the hoops that made movement so expansive. It wouldn’t do for her to look threadbare or too frugal. She must look feminine and formidable when she met with the men who made the nation’s laws to put forth her most ambitious plan.

  This was where she stood: ready to pursue her life’s purpose in a powerful way. She was forty-five years old, and her new hope involved living in the belly of the beast: Washington DC. She planned to arrive in the spring of 1848 and to stay at Mrs. Birth’s boardinghouse, where the Bells had landed after John was elected to the Senate. They had already written to her of the lovely accommodations. Hope rose as abundant as the lilacs that would be blooming then. She had learned how to move through the maze of politics and would emerge victorious for the Abrams and Madeleines of this great land so flawed by its blindness to those relieved of their reason.

  Dorothea supposed she was blind too. Anne was right about slavery. But Dorothea could not enter into that foray. The mentally ill had her passion. She had let Anne leave without her, remaining with the Bells to strategize about her grand idea until they left for Washington DC.

  After another week in Nashville, with new clothing and two pairs of shoes without holes in her trunk, she left by train, heading first to New Jersey for the opening of the first asylum she had helped construct. Trenton was beautiful in May, and the grounds leading up to the mansion-like building wore emerald green like royalty. The Delaware River sparkled off to the side. Landscaping suggested tender care, and the rooms inside were bright and airy. Dorothea was ecstatic with the Trenton hospital and humbled by Superintendent Horace Buttolph’s personal tour, along with Thomas Story Kirkbride, the architect who had become synonymous with moral treatment.

  “Here we are,” Buttolph said on the third floor as he opened a door to a sitting room. Dorothea could see a bedroom beyond.

  “I don’t remember this in the plans.” She turned to Kirkbride.

  “We thought it a good addition.”

  She let her fingers linger on the wainscot shelf. A small kaleidoscope could rest there one day. Through the window she saw a horse and rider lope across a field. It reminded her of Marianna’s drawing. “Yes. An apartment for the superintendent to stay when needed. It is a good idea. There are always emergencies.”

  The superintendent shook his head. “I have quarters on site. This apartment is for you, Miss Dix. Should you ever be in need of a place to rest your head. These rooms will always be here for you. You may furnish them as you like, of course. They are yours for the rest of your life.”

  Dorothea’s throat thickened. Tears threatened to dribble down her checks. She reached to wipe them with her gloved fingers.

  “Are you all right, Miss Dix?” Kirkbride touched her elbow.

  “I am. Yes, I am. It’s … to see this place, after all you’ve done to speak of moral treatment and to create this lovely atmosphere … the wings staggered so light comes in. Art on the walls.” She spread her arms to take it all in. “And to have created a small apartment that will surely be available for residents or students spending time here.”

  “It will be known as the Dix Apartment,” Buttolph insisted. A place of her own.

  “I … thank you.”

  They toured the other rooms, and then she offered, “I have a writing desk. It was my grandfather’s and is quite an heirloom. It would fit nicely here. If you like, I’ll have it shipped.”

  Dorothea left for Washington and reviewed her notes along the way, wistfully resting her hand on the traveling desk as she recalled the lovely apartment she might one day call home. While she had resisted having hospitals or wings named for her, or even a bust, as Jane Bell had wanted, the idea of “home” appealed. She inhaled deeply and returned to her notes.

  She had done her homework. She no longer wished to charm or beg state legislators who were always strapped for funds. Those wishing to reduce the suffering of the mentally ill had to compete with other state needs while assemblymen parsed out meager funds to those making the greatest noise, or worse, offered bits to those who would help them win election, like mother birds feeding their babies to silence their constant chirps.

  Now, her target was Washington and a report by the US General Land Office stating that the federal government had title to almost one billion acres in the states and territories. A billion acres! The end of the war with Mexico had brought a half million new acres into the public domain. Plans were underway to open up the Oregon and Minnesota Territories for more settlement, but nearly a billion acres were not yet spoken for and promised incredible development for the still young nation. For Dorothea, the land promised a way to finally fund hospitals across the continent, where asylum supporters would no longer have to seek unreliable state funding every year. She had drafted a plan to provide long-term funding for a national system of public mental hospitals
. This was her greatest goal.

  She had written the national memorial a bit differently than those she had prepared for the various states. She would ask Congress to set aside five million acres of public land to be divided among the states, which could then sell the land for the sole purpose of funding public mental health hospitals for the indigent where moral treatment would prevail. None of the proceeds could go for housing the insane in almshouses or jails or even private hospitals, and none would fund care in private homes. This democracy, with all its lack of discipline and order, had helped create madness among its people, and it must be required to assist in relieving the suffering of the Madeleines and Abrams of this land.

  There was precedent. Congress had already set aside land for schools and for universities in the year she was born—1802—and two states had later received donations for deaf-mute schools. She could build a case for need, show precedent, and then describe the solution: land grants and sales. She just had to work with others to make it happen.

  She already knew several legislators she called colleagues if not friends. Many she had worked with in her state campaigns were now representatives and senators. John Bell, two representatives from Massachusetts, and Horace Mann, her old mentor, had been elected to the House, the latter succeeding the late John Quincy Adams. She had met Jefferson Davis while traveling in Mississippi—he would not be supportive—and she knew Henry Clay as the founder of the Whig Party, having met him at a horse stable in Lexington, where he practiced law before his many incarnations in government service. There were others. Her task would be to win over the reluctant, such as Davis, and give sound reasons to the supporters not to lose faith in the battle. For it would be a battle, she knew that.

  “I think both parties will find value in my proposal,” she told John Bell at the boardinghouse. Jane knitted on the settee, and John picked at his teeth with a toothpick. His stern eyes belied his compassion for the downtrodden as well as his passion for the federal government’s role as a tool to benefit individuals across the nation. He had been in the House of Representatives and had sided with those who wanted public land sales to fund things such as canals and roads. Most of the Democrats, however, wanted the federal government to stay out of the states’ affairs, especially with regard to issues of property, which included land and slaves.