On the 12th of October, 1808, was born in the township of Union, Washington County, Ohio, Frances Dana Barker. Her father had, twenty years before that time, gone a pioneer to the Western wilds. His name was Joseph Barker, a native of New Hampshire. Her mother was Elizabeth Dana, of Massachusetts, and her maternal grandmother was Mary Bancroft. She was thus allied on the maternal side to the well-known Massachusetts families of Dana and Bancroft.

During her childhood, schools were scarce in Ohio, and in the small country places inferior. A log-cabin in the woods was the Seminary where Frances Barker acquired the rudiments of education. The wolf's howl, the panther's cry, the hiss of the copperhead, often filled her young heart with terror.

Her father was a farmer, and the stirring life of a farmer's daughter in a new country, fell to her lot. To spin the garments she wore, to make cheese and butter, were parts of her education, while to lend a hand at out-door labor, perhaps helped her to acquire that vigor of body and brain for which she has since been distinguished.

She made frequent visits to her grandmother, Mrs. Mary Bancroft Dana, whose home was at Belpre, Ohio, upon the Ohio river, only one mile from Parkersburg, Virginia, and opposite Blennerhasset's Island. Mrs. Dana, was even then a radical on the subject of slavery, and Frances learned from her to hate the word, and all it represented. She never was on the side of the oppressor, and was frequently laughed at in childhood, for her sympathy with the poor fugitives from slavery, who often found their way to the neighborhood in which she lived, seeking kindness and charity of the people.

It had not then become a crime to give a crust of bread, or a cup of milk to the "fugitive from labor," and Mrs. Barker, a noble, true-thinking woman, often sent her daughter on errands of mercy to the neighboring cabins, where the poor creatures sought shelter, and would tarry a few days, often to be caught and sent back to their masters. Thus she early became familiarized with their sufferings, and their wants.

At the age of twenty, on the 1st of January, 1829, Frances Barker became the wife of James L. Gage, a lawyer of McConnellsville, Ohio, a good and noble man, whose hatred of the system of slavery in the South, was surpassed only by that of the great apostle of anti-slavery, Garrison, himself. Moral integrity, and unflinching fidelity to the cause of humanity, were leading traits of his character.

A family of eight children engrossed much of their attention for many years, but still they found time to wage moral warfare with the stupendous wrong that surrounded them, and bore down their friends and neighbors beneath the leaden weight of its prejudice and injustice.

Mrs. Gage records that "it never seemed to her to require any sacrifice to resist the popular will upon the subjects of freedom for the slave, temperance, or even the rights of woman." They were all so manifestly right, in her opinion, that she could not but take her stand as their advocates, and it was far easier for her to maintain them than to yield one iota of her conscientious views.

Thus she always found herself in a minority, through all the struggling years between 1832 and 1865. She had once an engagement with the editor of a "State Journal" to write weekly for his columns during a year. This, at that time seemed to her a great achievement. But a few plain words from her upon the Fugitive Slave Law, brought a note saying her services were no longer wanted; "He would not," the editor wrote, "publish sentiments in his Journal, which, if carried out, would strike at the foundations of all law, order, and government," and added much good advice. Her reply was prompt:

She has lived to see that editor change many of his views, and approach her standard.

The great moral struggle of the thirty years preceding the war, in her opinion, required for its continuance far more heroism than that which marshalled our hosts along the Potomac, prompted Sheridan's raids, or Sherman's triumphant "march to the sea."

In all her warfare against existing wrong, that which she waged for the liberties of her own sex subjected her to the most trying persecution, insult and neglect. In the region of Ohio where she then resided, she stood almost alone, but she was never inclined to yield. Probably, unknown to herself, this very discipline was preparing her for the events of the future, and its supreme tests of her principles.

A member of Congress once called to urge her to persuade her husband to yield a point of principle (which he said if adhered to would prove the political ruin of Mr. Gage) holding out the bribe of a seat in Congress, if he would stand by the old Whig party in some of its tergiversations, and insisting that if he persisted in doing as he had threatened, he would soon find himself standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she believes right, as well as the principle that animates her.

DARE TO STAND ALONE.

She handed this poem to the gentleman with whom she had been conversing, and he afterwards told her that it decided him to give up all for principle. He led off in his district in what was soon known as the Free Soil party, the root of the present triumphant Republican party.

In 1853 the family of Mrs. Gage removed to St. Louis. Those who fought the anti-slavery battle in Massachusetts have little realization of the difficulty and danger of maintaining similar sentiments in a slaveholding community, and a slave State. Mrs. Gage spoke boldly whenever her thought seemed to be required, and soon found herself branded as an "abolitionist" with every adjective appended that could tend to destroy public confidence.

While Colonel Chambers, the former accomplished editor of the Missouri Republican lived, she wrote for his columns, and at one time summing up the resources of that great State, she advanced this opinion: "Strike from your statute books the laws that give man the right to hold property in man, and ten years from this time Missouri will lead its sister State on the eastern shore of the Mississippi."

After the publication of this article, Colonel Chambers was waited upon and remonstrated with by some old slaveholders, for allowing an abolitionist to write for his journal. "Such sentiments," they said, "would destroy the Union." "If your Union," replied he, "is based upon a foundation so unstable that one woman's breath can blow it down, in God's name let her do it. She shall say her say while I live and edit this paper."

He died soon after, and Mrs. Gage was at once excluded from its columns, by the succeeding editors, refused payment for past labors, or a return of her manuscripts.

The Missouri Democrat soon after hoisted the flag of Emancipation under the leadership of Frank Blair. She became one of its correspondents, and for several years continued to supply its columns with an article once or twice a week. Appearing in 1858 upon the platform of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society, she was at once excluded as dangerous to the interests of the party which the paper represented.

During all the years of her life in Missouri Mrs. Gage frequently received letters threatening her with personal violence, or the destruction of her husband's property. Slaves came to her for aid, and were sent to entrap her, but she succeeded in evading all positive difficulty and trial.

During the Kansas war she labored diligently with pen, tongue, and hands, for those who so valiantly fought the oppressor in that hour of trial. She expected to be waylaid and to be made to suffer for her temerity, and perhaps she did; for about the close of that perilous year three disastrous fires, supposed to be the work of incendiaries, greatly reduced the family resources.

This portion of the life of Mrs. Gage has been dwelt upon at considerable length, because she regards the struggle then made against the wickedness, prejudice, and bigotry of mankind, as the main bravery of her life, and that if there has been heroism in any part of it, it was then displayed. "If as a woman," she says, "to take the platform amidst hissing, and scorn, and newspaper vituperations, to maintain the right of woman to the legitimate use of all the talents God invests her with; to maintain the rights of the slave in the very ears of the masters; to hurl anathemas at intemperance in the very camps of the dram-sellers; if to continue for forty years, in spite of all opposing forces, to press the triune cause persistently, consistently, and unflinchingly, entitles me to a humble place among those noble ones who have gone about doing good, you can put me in that place as it suits you."

At the breaking out of the war, by reason of her husband's failure in business at St. Louis, and his ill-health, Mrs. Gage found herself filling the post of Editor of the Home Department of an Agricultural paper in Columbus, Ohio. The call for help for the soldiers, was responded to by all loyal women. Mrs. Gage did what she could with her hands, but found them tied by unavoidable labors. She offered tongue and pen, and found them much more efficient agents. The war destroyed the circulation of the paper, and she was set free.

The cry of suffering from the Freedmen reached her, and God seemed to speak to her heart, telling her that there was her mission.

In the autumn of 1862, without appointment, or salary, with only faith in God that she should be sustained, and with a firm reliance on the invincible principles of Truth and Justice, in the hope of doing good, she left Ohio, and proceeded directly to Port Royal.

She remained among the freedmen of Beaufort, Paris, Fernandina, and other points, thirteen months; administering also to the soldiers, as often as circumstances gave opportunity. Her own four boys were in the Union army, and this, if no more, would have given every "boy in blue," a claim upon her sympathy and kindness.

In the fall of 1863, Mrs. Gage returned North, and with head and heart filled to overflowing with the claims of the great mission upon which she had entered, she commenced a lecturing tour, speaking to the people of her "experiences among the Freedmen." To show them as they were, to give a truthful portrayal of Slavery, its barbarity and heinousness, its demoralization of master and man, its incompatibility with all things beautiful or good, its defiance of God and his truth; and to show the intensely human character of the slave, who, through this fearful ordeal of two hundred years, had preserved so much goodness, patient hope, unwavering trust in Jesus, faith in God, such desire for knowledge and capability of self-support—such she felt to be her mission, and as such she performed it! She believed that by removing prejudice, and inspiring confidence in the Emancipation Proclamation, and by striving to unite the people on this great issue, she could do more than in any other way toward ending the war, and relieving the soldier—such was the aim of her lectures, while she never omitted to move the hearts of the audience toward those so nobly defending the Union and the Government.

Thus, in all the inclement winter weather, through Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, she pursued her labors of love, never omitting an evening when she could get an audience to address, speaking for Soldiers' Aid Societies, and giving the proceeds to those who worked only for the soldier,—then for Freedmen's Associations. She worked without fee or reward, asking only of those who were willing, to give enough to defray her expenses—for herself—thankful if she received, cheerful if she did not.

Following up this course till the summer days made lecturing seem impossible, she started from St. Louis down the Mississippi, to Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez. On this trip she went as an unsalaried agent of the Western Sanitary Commission—receiving only her expenses, and the goods and provisions wherewith to relieve the want and misery she met among our suffering men.

A few months' experience among the Union Refugees, and unprotected fugitives, or unprotected Freedmen, convinced her that her best work for all was in the lecturing field, in rousing the hearts of the multitude to good deeds.

She had but one weak pair of hands, while her voice might set a hundred, nay, a thousand pairs in motion, and believing that we err if we fail to use our best powers for life's best uses, she again, after a few months with the soldiers and other sufferers, entered the lecturing field in the West, speaking almost nightly.

In the month of September, she was overturned in a carriage at Galesburg, Illinois. Some bones were broken, and she was otherwise so injured as to be entirely crippled for that year. She has since been able to labor only occasionally, and in great weakness for the cause. This expression she uses for all struggle against wrong. "Temperance, Freedom, Justice to the negro, Justice to woman," she says, "are but parts of one great whole, one mighty temple whose maker and builder is God."

Through all the vicissitudes of the past; through all its years of waiting, her faith in Him who led, and held, and comforted, has never wavered, and to Him alone does she ascribe the Glory of our National Redemption.