Page:Women of distinction.djvu/46

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

While in Ohio, in autumn, 1860, the subject of our sketch was married to Mr. Fenton Harper, a resident of that State. She had laid by some means, with which she purchased a farm and soon went into her own home after marriage. She still remained a strong anti-slavery advocate, and despite domestic duties she continued her literary pursuits at times, and during this period produced some of her best works.

May 23, 1864, death came as a swift messenger and called from her side her husband. Still she was undaunted, and like a warrior continued to fight the great enemy of her country—Slavery; she fought him to the end.

She had full confidence in God as intending to bring about just such results from the war as would free the bonded slaves. She watched every step the great and bloody struggle made, and once in a letter to a friend said: "And yet I am not uneasy about the results of this war. We may look upon it as God's controversy with the nation. His arising to plead by fire and blood the cause of His poor, needy people. Some time since Breckinridge, in writing to Sumner, asks, if I rightly remember, 'What is the fate of a few negroes to me or mine?' Bound up in one great bundle of humanity, our fates seem linked together, our destiny entwined with theirs, and our rights are interwoven together."

She still trusted, for she had, by long experience, learned to "labor and to wait." She labored, she prayed, she trusted, and sure, as God always does on the side of the right, the war ended and the slaves were