Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for a New South (Topics in Kentucky History)

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the battle for a new South

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Friends visited her at Ashland during the summer. She was able to include an active social life and pleasant shopping excursions in her routine during her stay in the city. Back in Louisville before Christmas that year, she enjoyed another wonderful visit with Nettie Belle. Periodically, friends would ask her to accompany them, but she had been unable to do so. As the McDowell children became adults, they entered into the mainstream of Kentucky life—often at the expense of their father. Tom followed his father as a horse breeder, ultimately becoming one of the most prominent turfmen in the Bluegrass.

A partner in the racing stables of W. Vanderbilt, he produced a Kentucky Derby winner in Alan-a-Dale in In Julia, the youngest child, married William Brock, a Lexington banker. In addition to his other responsibilities, McDowell continued to assist his brother W. During writer Thomas Nelson Page visited Ashland, commenting: In three weeks I have not heard money mentioned. It was a huge, formal affair with an elaborate reception. Although a newspaper article proclaimed that Dr. The shape of the boot indicates that it was her right foot that was affected.

The family discussed sending her to New York City to consult specialists. Nettie Belle Smith assumed it was because the foot was better and there was no need to go; however, evidence suggests that the problem continued to plague Madge. Grace Otis and some other girls visited in summer The men spent much of the time hunting and fishing in the Rockies.

One day while they were out hunting, the women, left behind in the railroad car on a sidetrack, became bored and hired a man with a two-horse wagon to take them for a drive. When they attempted to ford the Arkansas River in the middle of the stream where the water was about three feet deep, one of the horses reared up and dragged the wagon from the rocky bed of the ford into the quicksand on one side. For long moments it appeared that the horses would be drawn under, and the women thought they would perish.

Fortunately, some lumbermen working on the river saw the situation and came to their rescue, using poles and ropes to get the horses and wagon on the ford again. Apparently not, at least not for Madge, for his name rarely came up. Women played a major role in organizing the fair and initiating programs and exhibits that depicted the accomplishments of women and the need for social change to provide them with more opportunities. Whether Madge knew that or whether she attended any of the lectures dealing with social reform or the history of women and their status remains uncertain, but clearly she had a wonderful time on both occasions.

Madge spent two weeks during the summer with Grace Otis, and in August she visited Dr.

Howard Vance in Louisville to have her foot checked. He decided she should walk without crutches. During this visit she consulted Dr. Gibney, one of the pioneers in orthopedic surgery and head of the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and the Crippled, better known as the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled, now known as the Hospital for Special Surgery. Gibney prescribed special shoes, and by March she could walk very well, though such activity still caused a good deal of pain and swelling.

How she managed these events with her painful foot is uncertain, but it evidently did not detract from her popularity. I mean it, every word. Ultimately, she went in June to Louisville, where she had surgery at the Norton Infirmary. Her family feared that she suffered from tuberculosis of the bone, but Dr. Louis Frank wrote her on behalf of Dr. Bullock thought a most thorough and scientific examination made by an expert of ability—Only one bone was diseased and the whole of that, except the outer shell, was removed—The indications for a thorough cure are considered good.

During this time she received letters and visits from numerous friends. Equally notable is the large number of suitors she had, despite the restrictions she endured. She went out with any number of young men during the early to mids, such as George C. Phyfe of New York City.

Sometimes it is impossible to tell if these were just friendships or actual romantic relationships, but it is clear Madeline McDowell, early s. Both pursued her tirelessly for several years, although she gave them little encouragement and, in fact, often tried to avoid them. One was William W. The other was Harrison Robertson, who worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal from until the s. He asked solicitously about her health, remarking: He also made occasional stops in Lexington, apparently inviting himself rather than receiving an invitation from her.

In February he refused to go to a glee club performance because she would not go with him, and in July she cancelled a date they had to go driving. If I am too importunate forgive me. I love you so deeply—so wholly that I cannot always keep within measure[. I think of you every hour of the day and many hours of the night.

I have tried to throw this off but have clearly not succeeded. I longed to have you for my wife. But there are many men who, like me, must arrange their lives to do without love and marriage. Perhaps she had finally concluded that he could be discouraged only by sharp and complete rejection. At least he seems to have been sincere in his pledge that he would never love another woman, for he never married. The correspondence continued despite the brief misunderstanding.

He wrote her saying that when he left her, he had no intention of reopening the subject, but he felt compelled to do so because he feared she had misunderstood him. He continued his impassioned words: The love I offered you was not the trivial thing so often bandied about in the name of love. It was the one unquestionable, unreserved, overwhelming love of a man endowed—or cursed— with the power of sounding all the depths of the heart.

It seems to me that I lived for you long before I knew you or heard of you, I wanted and worked for you, filling the emptiness of existence without you with anticipation of what life was to be with you. Work was sweet because I thought it was for you; ambition was inspiring because I wanted you to think well of me;. Certainly, if any Kentucky family rivaled the Clays and McDowells in prominence, it was the Breckinridges.

They were a family tied closely to the history of Kentucky and the nation. No other surname in Kentucky matches them for length of service or overall achievement. Their sense of the past and the traditions that went with it were transmitted from generation to generation. Of his experience practicing law, he later said: Like her, he had grown up surrounded by people important in politics, business, and society. He, too, had a pervasive awareness of being related to important leaders of the past.

They thought there was nothing so great as being a Breckinridge. At the time of the British Restoration they moved to the Highlands from Ayrshire. The harsh life there drove them to Ulster, and from Ireland they came to America in the first half of the eighteenth century. Breckinridge served as vice president of the United States and ran for president before becoming a general in the Confederate army. Desha had one brother—Robert—and three sisters—Ella, Sophonisba, and Curry.

He denied that he had ever promised to marry her. Although Breckinridge would not admit it at the time, the affair ended his political career. It shocked and divided Lexington society, and many former friends ostracized the Breckinridges. As one Lexington woman described it: Desha and his sister Sophonisba, who particularly idolized their father, were crushed by these events.

Decades later Sophonisba recalled that awful time and something of the trauma the episode caused. I was necessarily so occupied, and my own life from day to day was often so exhausting that I could not freely manifest the inclination I felt. In December while traveling to Louisville, she encountered the Colonel and his wife on the train, and Mrs. I hope you were not annoyed by them. How difficult it must have been to keep this friendship intact! As Desha expressed his feelings toward his father: I approve nothing he has done.

I pass judgment upon nothing he has done. He has given me pleasure, for that I thank him; he has given me pain, for that I forgive him. The vicious primary campaign severely divided the Democratic Party. Then, in June, Basil Duke, ex-Confederate general and a nominal Democrat, announced that he supported Henry Clay McDowell, a Republican, as a nonpartisan candidate for the House seat in the Ashland district should Breckinridge win the Democratic nomination. McDowell A Thunder-Bolt Out of a Clear Sky 35 strenuously opposed efforts to persuade him to run, but when both Republicans and Democrats urged it, he agreed to consider the proposition.

Others began to speak out in his support, and he received many letters from people in both parties urging him to enter the race. His nephew Thomas S. Ballard expressed the typical sentiments of these letters when he implored: I feel it would be an infamy and something to make every American hang his head to have him continued in public service. Without being explicit, he tacitly agreed to run as a nonpartisan candidate should the Democrats nominate Willie. This proved to be unnecessary, because Breckinridge lost the primary in September.

Women in the district played a large role in his defeat. Decades later, when she attempted to write an autobiography, Sophonisba maintained that Madeline McDowell had been a leader of those who had opposed the Colonel, but in the process she had fallen in love with Desha. Time and age may have caused Sophonisba to have an inaccurate memory of that episode, however.

It would be most unusual for a twenty-two-year-old woman who had never been involved in any type of public endeavor to lead such a movement. While Madge opposed the Colonel in principle, no contemporary evidence has been found to suggest that she led the movement against him. Nevertheless, the whole situation made her friendship with the two Breckinridge children very troublesome.

She undoubtedly shared her brother Henry Jr. Her attachment to Desha as a special friend must have been evident, for her girlfriends teased her about him. In December , a woman calling herself Alice B. Tom denied the conversation had ever occurred and stated that he could prove he was in Kentucky the day the woman alleged it took place. The case dragged on until February 8, , when the plaintiff, then signing herself Alice B.

The Supreme Court of New York then issued an order dismissing the case. Since this suit was filed in New York State, it is uncertain whether it became common knowledge in Kentucky. Possibly the McDowell family succeeded in suppressing the suit and keeping it from becoming public in Lexington. Nettie informed her father: An illness, possibly meningitis, left the child suffering epileptic seizures and permanent disability. He would have been better off financially if he had done nothing for the last five or six years, he claimed. A low mark in political economy in President James K.

Yet Patterson later praised his student. The s was a period of expansion in opportunities for women to obtain higher education and participate more openly in public endeavors. Many institutions of higher learning, such as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky now the University of Kentucky , became coeducational. Increasing industrialization and urbanization brought more women into the workforce, especially in nondomestic labor. Not surprisingly, many of these women embraced feminism and accepted responsibility for improving the world through social reform.

Sophonisba, a graduate of Wellesley, had been admitted to the bar in Kentucky in but found that a woman could not support herself by practicing law in the state. Neither scenario worked out for the two. You have so much ability, such gifts, why not use them in real work. Ely gives his students. You have time and intellect, too, and you do write so well. I believe you could become great but I also think. And, indeed, in spite of such intimation, either implied or expressed, you are perfectly satisfactory to me. How they can accept things—traditions, creeds, etc.

No government can be better than the people and they must grow together. At first the group proved reluctant to embark on such a difficult project, and one newspaper even published an article ridiculing the endeavor, but the members finally agreed to her proposal, provided they spread it out over two years. As a number of historians have shown, the experience and self-confidence that women gained in voluntary associations during the late nineteenth century helped prepare them for larger roles in public life as a new century swiftly approached.

Clay seems to be in history to stay. I believe you could write the most interesting book of him yet written. As an opponent of woman suffrage, he advised: Clay his proper place in American history which has not yet been accorded him. This unpublished story perhaps served as an outlet for the frustration and depression she surely felt at times because of her foot, even though outwardly she appeared cheerful and optimistic. Friends worried about this relationship.

Although the two corresponded and shared books and articles with each other throughout , Desha constantly chided her for teasing him and not allowing him to reveal his true feelings. Ironically, in view of subsequent events, he wrote her about fidelity: Once, when Madge had sent him two of her articles, he informed her: I enjoyed both, none the less [sic] that I agree with neither. She reported to her mother, who was out of town, that she had gone to the country club with Jim DeLong, who had kept her waiting for an hour with her gloves on in order to get even with her for the times she had kept him waiting.

Delong said he had gone to the country club so often with her that it did not seem natural to get there on time. After a particularly trying time, he lamented: I seem to show you the worst side, if there can be a worst when all is bad. I know you forgive me now,—some day you will understand.

Forsooth am I not a fool? This thing of being a coward is infernal. Really are you not ashamed of yourself? Gibney about her foot, which was again troubling her. Evidently Madge was so impressed that she began to make plans to enroll.

I shall be glad to help you arrange your program in any way in my power. From Chicago the young woman went on to New York City, where she stayed with the Houstons while she consulted with doctors. She would require another surgery. On hearing this Mrs. Her mother and Aunt Mag hurried to New York. McDowell returned to Lexington. Meanwhile, he sent her to another doctor to have her lungs checked. No problem showed up, which did not surprise Madge: I wish she was heroic enough to have the foot off and save herself any more pain.

They could not sell the property at Big Stone Gap, and Will McDowell even contemplated letting his property go to pay the taxes. Gibney allowed her to go home. Nevertheless, she immediately launched into a busy social schedule, often in the company of Desha. The group named Major and Mrs.

McDowell did not accompany them, having suffered from ill health since leaving New York in February. By this time the doctors had diagnosed the foot problem as tuberculosis of the bone. Madge stayed with the Houstons until June 21, , when she went into the hospital. The following day Dr.

Gibney amputated her foot. Stites also enigmatically remarked: Perhaps a friend best summed up the true impact of the nearly six-year ordeal that resulted in an amputation at age twenty-four when she wrote: The actual bacteria causing the tuberculosis had been identified by Robert Koch only in , and there was no effective cure until , when streptomycin was discovered. Yet approximately one billion people succumbed to the ailment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone.

In most cases the disease attacked the lungs, but it could also invade the bones, gouging large holes and causing ulceration. Although tuberculosis is a communicable disease, many experts believed there was an inherited predisposition to contract it. It would remain a sword hanging over her head. Many young women would have withdrawn from society and lived a cloistered, sheltered life in a sickroom. Others would have become bitter and indulged in self-pity. But for Madge, the coming years would prove that adversity only invigorated her, while physical suffering increased her empathy for the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden.

Instead of retreating from the world, Madge began to focus on reforming it. With the amputation of her foot she had experienced one of the greatest traumas that could befall a young woman; yet she had endured without complaint and had hardly slowed her activities. She had seen her ambition to seek higher education outside the state come to naught while she struggled to find a meaningful outlet for her talents.

Through her writing she had started developing an understanding of the power of the press in promoting the ideas in which she believed. She had slowly, perhaps unknowingly, prepared for the challenges that were just ahead. In she joined John Fox Jr. She also took lessons and joined the Golfing Club. These many social outings found her more and more in the company of Desha Breckinridge, and he followed her on the trip to Big Stone Gap.

Henry Clay McDowell Sr. Duncan and Samuel G. Colonel Breckinridge proved skeptical at first of the wisdom of this move, but he hoped his son had at last discovered his vocation, and Willie felt that at least the paper gave Desha employment and a certain standing in the world. The Herald had had a disastrous year in , but by An Unholy Interest in Reforming Others 49 Desha, serving as managing editor with his father as the primary editorial writer, had turned it around so well that he was afraid the owners might take it back when the agreement expired.

However, they agreed to renew the lease with option to purchase, and in January Desha exercised that option. At first reluctant to begin this undertaking, she finally withdrew her objections and ordered: My things are always so much better before I write them than afterwards. I think you made a mistake in your choice of literary editor. I always yearned to be an editor and write some thing every day and express my opinion on every subject in the universe—It is lovely to be able to do it without any personal responsibility, as it were and without being considered to preach.

Desha and his father, too, used the Herald to advocate their views on many subjects and sometimes to praise one of their own. When the Kentucky Court of Appeals licensed Sophonisba to practice before it in , an article in the Herald commented on her many accomplishments, mentioning her continuing study of political economy at the University of Chicago as well as her legal studies. Noting that she came from a well-known, conservative southern family, the paper stated that her admission to the appellate bar gave evidence of the changing relation of women to men and the rising spirit of independence among women.

In the summer Nisba went on to pass the qualifying examinations for the PhD degree. He became gravely ill in August following another attack, but by September he had recovered enough to be out and about. Continued stress from financial problems undoubtedly exacerbated the condition, and Henry Jr. Nevertheless, the family continued to pursue its same expensive lifestyle. All these activities halted briefly in February when she and Julia contracted mumps. However, by Easter the girls had recovered sufficiently to accompany their parents on a trip to New Orleans. She began to purchase dishes while Desha shopped for rings.

With the United States supporting the independence of Cuba from Spain and tensions between Spain and the United States escalating, Congress passed a joint resolution for war in April and called for , military volunteers. Although the Herald had not been jingoistic, its managing editor volunteered for the army, joining the staff of his uncle, General Joseph C. For a time the young soldier was stationed with other Kentucky troops at Chickamauga, where Mrs. McDowell, Madge, and Julia visited him.

For weeks the social life of the area centered around the military presence. In fact, they have nothing to do but to complain. He continued to be concerned and mentioned his reservations on several occasions to Sophonisba, noting that Desha seemed worried: Madge wrote inviting him and his wife to attend the wedding, saying: Desha told Sophonisba that he had done everything in his power to ensure that their father would be present at the wedding and to make the occasion as easy as possible for him.

As late as the tenth, Willie believed Desha had not yet found a place to live, but four days before the wedding, he reported that the couple had taken rooms in the home of a Mrs. The marriage finally took place at noon at Ashland on November It was an informal affair, with only family and Dr. The Colonel had overcome his obstacles, real or imagined, and attended the ceremony with his wife.

Willie and Louise urged the newlyweds to stay with them until their apartment was ready. Breckinridge, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge: A Leader in the New South. They did, however, eat Christmas dinner with the Breckinridges. She had engaged in a difficult, tension-filled romance that resulted in a marriage that was initially opposed by both families. Yet in many ways the two were well matched. Both knew Kentucky needed reform, although they did not agree exactly on what those reforms should be, and both appeared genuinely to love the other.

Undoubtedly a complex interplay of factors drew the two together, and despite obstacles, they seemed devoted to each other. The city solicitor refused repayment in , saying there was no appropriation in the budget, but when the Lexington Board of Aldermen provided an appropriation in , the solicitor still refused payment on grounds that he could not determine from which fund it should be paid. Claiming that the payment might violate a provision of the new state constitution, he subsequently brought suit to determine if the payment would be constitutional. Editorials in the Herald eloquently denounced the solicitor, questioned his motives in bringing the suit, and stated: She and Desha stayed at Ashland while the McDowells were in Florida, and in April they moved into Ashland for an extended stay until they could occupy new rooms on Market Street.

Willie advised her against that plan and wrote to Curry urging her to find a boardinghouse. Nevertheless, she stayed with Madge and Desha for about three weeks before moving to a boardinghouse, although they urged her to remain with them. On February 11, , John S. Each man charged the other with jostling him in the street.

Keller, who was known as a peaceful, pleasant man, died two days later. The bond later proved to be invalid because of an irregularity in the signature.

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He failed to appear at the time set for the examining trial. For a number of years conditions in some areas in the state had resembled civil warfare, and this lawlessness had infiltrated the law enforcement agencies themselves. In fact, throughout the nineteenth century, Kentucky had experienced a growing problem with feuds, murders, and other crimes that had sullied its reputation. Poorly paid and badly trained prosecutors, packed juries, and governors who abused their pardoning power caused growing criticism of the entire system.

Lexington had not escaped this trend; thus, few were 56 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge surprised when King McNamara absconded and the police made little effort to capture him. On February 18 Madge and a group of women called a mass meeting at the Merrick Lodge for February They planned to organize and raise money to offer a reward for the capture of McNamara and to hire detectives to find him. The Herald noted that since the officers of the law had failed in their job, Lexington would now be protected by the women.

This event, it predicted, might be the beginning of the end of an era in which authorities winked at crime, filed away indictments, and allowed witnesses to be spirited off. To Sophonisba he wrote: In addition, Governor William O. As An Unholy Interest in Reforming Others 57 Madge explained to her mother, who was in Florida, the duties of catching the fugitive had so absorbed her that she had not had a spare minute to write. When the grand jury called for the bond on which King McNamara had been released, Justice of the Peace Abner Oldham could not produce it. Riley for malfeasance in office for their handling of the McNamara cases.

These indictments were later dismissed, but Squire McNamara received a three-year prison sentence. He remained a fugitive for more than a decade, and his ultimate capture did not result from the reward raised by the women. From time to time over the years reports came that he had been seen in New York City, Washington State, and various other places around the country.

In police in Sacramento, California, arrested a man they thought to be the fugitive, but he proved not to be McNamara. His brother Squire had been shot and killed in a Lexington saloon soon after his release from prison in Yet the community protest against lawlessness had not been in vain. Years later Desha would write: The meeting, called, organized, and dominated by the women of Lexington, marked the culmination of the subserviency of the men to the reign of lawlessness.

She conducted a contest for the Herald to determine who was the most popular businesswoman in Lexington, continued to write book reviews for the paper, and began to use its pages to open public discussion of reforms that she supported, such as kindergarten education. In March , she initiated a newspaper discussion of the value of kindergarten that foreshadowed the way in which she would use the Herald over the next two decades to promote myriad other causes. She printed not only those views supporting her own beliefs, but also those opposed.

In fact, in her first article on 58 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge kindergarten, she quoted a primary teacher disillusioned by children who had been taught by play methods. This type of teaching was impractical, the woman maintained. Madge then asked for responses discussing the methods and purposes of kindergarten. For several days, the Herald contained articles advocating and opposing kindergarten education. Her interest in the subject strengthened her concern for all forms of education and pushed her along the road to advocating other educational improvements.

The Herald continued to be a great asset not only in disseminating information to the public on social problems, but also as a means for Madge to gather her own information in the debates that the paper published. In spring and summer Madge turned her attention to yet another project. The organization opened its membership to women of all denominations, although its work continued to be supervised by the bishop and rector.

The diocese had just completed a new school building there, when Madge in summer joined a horseback tour of the mountains that had been organized by a professor from Berea College. After returning home, she organized an excursion of the Gleaners to Beattyville and Proctor. Taking supplies with them, they founded an industrial training school on May As one woman remembered: Madge took charge of selling tickets to the six coaches full of people who made the trip.

In July she embarked on a month-long excursion through the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee with Katherine Pettit, founder of a social settlement at Hindman, and a group of friends. While she was gone, the Gleaners held a bazaar to raise money for their social work. However, she occasionally admitted that her physical problems limited her activities. Of her attempts to bowl, she noted: That proved to be a short time, indeed, for he died on November 18 at Ashland. He had been a great influence in her life as well, imbuing her with a sense of noblesse oblige as he provided a strong example in both word and deed for philanthropic activities.

At her death the real estate would be held in trust for the six children and managed by Henry Jr. Instead, they supported the candidate or party that best represented their own views on public policy, and neither party in Kentucky was reform-oriented enough to please them. In , even though Lexington mayor Henry T.

Duncan was known as a reformer, Desha refused to promise that the paper would strictly follow party lines and support all platforms and candidates chosen by the Democrats. Desha still refused to make a commitment, and the mayor ultimately failed to follow through with the threat of a new paper. The Herald soon resumed its role as city printer. Lexington had no charity committee, though it had usually had one in the past, and by January 1 the city had exhausted its relief fund.

Estimating that as many as five hundred people were in dire need, the mayor and police found themselves besieged with requests for aid. The mayor called upon a group of women who had distributed charity in previous years to reorganize the benevolence system. On February 14 that request brought about the founding of the Associated Charities of Lexington, Kentucky, a permanent organization that would implement the modern ideas of relief and social welfare. Through Associated Charities Madge implemented many of the techniques and ideas promoted by reform-minded friends and relatives in Chicago.

Thus, they stressed the necessity of painstaking investigation and individual treatment of each case, with the goal of eliminating the causes of poverty. The casework system was adopted in an attempt to solve the problems of indiscriminate relief, overlapping private charities, and municipal outdoor relief systems that supposedly encouraged indolence, pauperism, and fraud. Some historians have emphasized the social control aspect of this movement, saying that it represented a response of the troubled middle class to the social dislocations of the post—Civil War industrial city and arguing that organized charity provided the urban community its surest safeguard against revolution.

Moreover, many contemporary critics of the casework method called it a cold and calculated way of administering relief. Nevertheless, in the three decades after , paid professionals gradually replaced volunteers in charity organizations and laid the foundations of modern welfare bureaucracy. In fact, they argued that learning the nature of the problems affecting someone in distress showed respect for that person and was essential for enabling social workers to find a remedy to assist the individual out of poverty. As Nisba expressed it: If we are going to feed him, we ought. In each precinct there would be a committee of two women to investigate applications for aid.

The Herald gave its complete support to this endeavor, and in March Madge was elected to the Board of Directors, a position she held most of the time An Unholy Interest in Reforming Others 63 until her death. On March 30 the organization adopted its articles of incorporation and made plans to purchase a lodge and wood yard. The lodge would provide temporary shelter, while the wood yard would apply the labor test by getting rid of those who did not want to work and by preventing the loss of self-respect to those who would prefer a job to direct charity.

Louisville, she noted, had long practiced organized, cooperative relief rather than indiscriminate charity. Even in the previous two severe winters Louisville had not been inundated with paupers as Lexington had been. She noted that the Associated Charities of Lexington would provide an employment bureau and keep records about the poor, but this would be effective only if people referred private applications for aid to the Associated Charities for investigation. Although settlements did not plan to dispense charity, the workers there found it difficult to avoid becoming involved in this activity.

Jane Addams and the Hull-House group helped organize the Chicago Bureau of Charities, and most settlement workers cooperated by referring needy cases to that organization. Mary McDowell had suggested in at the National Conference of Charities and Correction that the settlement worker could give inside knowledge to the charity worker, and in most cases this proved to be true. In fact, settlement workers made the first real attacks on urban poverty.

Quickly realizing they must deal with the problems of education, labor, housing, parks, playgrounds, and sanitation, they often found themselves lobbying for legislation on these matters and filling positions on public boards. Although she never worked in a settlement house, she continued to visit them whenever possible and reported her findings to the Lexington community.

Louisville had the first social settlement house south of the Ohio 64 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge River, and after visiting it, Madge wrote that social democracy comprised the basic ideal of the settlement house. The settlement fulfilled its educational role by providing manual training to assist people in learning skills that would help them obtain jobs and its social role by organizing clubs and giving people a recreational outlet. Neighborhood House in Louisville, she asserted, should serve as model for the rest of the South.

Some of these she reviewed for the Herald, sometimes simply to inform the public about projects in other places and sometimes to serve as specific examples for Lexington to follow. She used an article on social settlements in rural New England to advocate additional support for that kind of work in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, writing: Being of the class of people who enjoy problem novels and who take an unholy interest in reforming others, I am never able to watch an experiment toward social improvements in any other community without desiring to apply the same experiment to our own.

We people of the Blue Grass have been dealt with more generously by nature, our lines have fallen in pleasanter places than have those of our kinsmen in the mountains, and without any spirit of patronizing or of self complacency, it is fair that we should in some way hold out a helping hand to our fellow Kentuckians of the mountains. Riis contended that the decade had brought significant progress, though much more remained to be done.

Chapman believed reform movements usually failed because activists tried to do things piecemeal; by compromising, reformers postponed the ultimate victory. Chapman also called upon the individual voter to eschew the political An Unholy Interest in Reforming Others 65 machine. The women left Lexington on February 15 in a snowstorm and reached Jacksonville, Florida, in unprecedented cold. Madge sent several articles to the Herald for publication. Nevertheless, the beauty and comfort of the Poinciana Hotel, where they first stayed in Palm Beach, enthralled her.

One characteristic of the ostrich above all others impressed her: He has another human trait—not that I mean that the second mentioned is human; it would be rather inhuman from a masculine standpoint, I imagine—he is a great kicker. Taylor had apparently defeated Goebel by a narrow margin and was sworn in as governor.

Goebel supporters continued to contest the election, and on January 30, , Goebel was shot as he approached the state capitol. The Democratic majority in the state legislature declared Goebel the winner, and he was sworn in 66 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge on his deathbed the following day.

When he died on February 3, Democratic lieutenant governor J. Kentucky had two rival governments, and a virtual state of anarchy prevailed until Taylor fled the state in May. This condition of near civil war existed at the time Madge overheard a Kentucky couple speaking at the hotel in Florida. In June Nettie wrote her mother asking to borrow money from her inheritance and saying that Tom would do three more operations and then quit his medical practice.

Apparently he, too, suffered from tuberculosis because letters consistently referred to his cough, one of the major symptoms of the dread disease. By autumn the Bullocks had settled in New Mexico, seeking the sunny, dry climate for a cure. Since Madge and Nettie were very close, this separation distressed both sisters. The current state of political unrest in the commonwealth resulting from the disputed gubernatorial election had reinvigorated the spirit of reform that had developed during the McNamara case.

In a meeting held on April 17, , the women made plans to form a permanent organization to support not only better law enforcement but also other kinds of civic improvements. Madge worked very hard to promote this project. She spoke at a meeting on April 24 about the possibilities of service to the community, and she subsequently became part of the Membership Committee and was elected to the Executive Committee on May A few months later he wrote: They also held cooking, gardening, and carpentry classes.

Money for this came from bazaars and other fund-raising efforts they held in Lexington. She kept the presidency of the Gleaners only a short time. A friend later explained: It seems to be part of her essential heroism. She never stayed for rewards. Other people were warmed by her fires while she was in cold places starting new ones. Very often the reformers focused on the child as the key to solving existing social problems. While it might be too late to liberate adults from the cycle of poverty, disease, and exploitation, they hoped to prevent the child from following the same path.

Thus, many reforms advocated by Progressives focused on children—including attempts to end child labor, to improve health and education standards, and to provide recreational facilities. Of these, education received the most attention. Progressives looked on the public school as the chief instrument of acculturation and of eradicating ethnic and class differences. They sought to expand the school curriculum to satisfy the aptitudes and needs of the children and also to provide the occupational skills necessary in the increasingly industrialized twentieth century.

Settlement workers were among the first to become aware of the inadequacy of the educational system for poor children. Manual training became one of her early interests. She believed manual training would be far more beneficial than traditional education both to society at large and to the vast majority of children who would seek employment in the trades rather than the professions.

Kentucky, as well as the rest of the South, needed a trained labor force in order to compete in an industrial nation, she contended: In fact the South has only recently awakened to her interests in manufacturing industry; to the fact that cotton alone is no longer king; to the fact that she cannot place her reliance in the production of raw materials, without the capacity to work these materials into finished products of exchange. Kentucky has never awakened to this state of affairs. The manual training school, the industrial, trade, and technical school, seem in fact the logical solution.

A paternalist in race relations, she sought to improve conditions for blacks but believed progress could be achieved only gradually. Thus, she accepted the Booker T. Washington model of encouraging manual training as a means of advancement. It was even more important, she maintained, for Lexington to introduce manual training in the colored schools. Recent trips to Hampton Institute in Virginia, which had pioneered manual training for African Americans, and the Kentucky Reform School had reinforced her belief in the efficacy of such instruction.

She noted that she hoped to send one black child in whom she had a special interest to Hampton Institute. This situation had naturally excited a feeling of unrest among blacks and a belief among them that they were not being granted equal protection of the law. If this state of affairs continued, she warned, there would be an outbreak of violence between the two races for which lawless whites would be responsible.

Madge praised this program: This was the Saturday Industrial School, founded in Madge strongly supported this program: In Lexington did not have a single pub- 70 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge lic park, nor did any of the schools have a playground.

Neighborhood House had sponsored a playground in an ethnically mixed location. As a result of the playground, different ethnic groups learned to work together. In addition, fewer street gang fights took place and fewer drownings occurred from children playing in the river. The Lexington School Board was considering the addition of playgrounds to two schools, and Madge urged the board to dedicate these to the use of the children in summer as well as winter.

The hall could be a permanent home for the Chautauqua, an educational and cultural program that sent lecturers and performers on a circuit around the country, while the park would be a first step toward development of a park-playground system. The Herald supported this endeavor and asked readers to send in their opinions for publication. The consciousness of the community to these and other needs grew, however, and she won the support of the Civic League for these causes. During the first two years after her marriage, she could record some important achievements—the beginning of social settlement work by the Gleaners, the formation of Associated Charities and the Lexington Civic League, and the arousal of interest by the community in a variety of other proposed reforms.

Moreover, she had developed the methods and techniques that would serve her various causes for the next two decades. She read a great deal on the subjects that interested her, visited sites that could provide firsthand information, and then formulated her opinion. Next, she wrote about the proposed reform extensively in the Herald in order to inform and educate the public about the issue. Later she would also use the tactic of bringing to Lexington speakers who were experts in the field that was the subject of her current reform interest.

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for a New South (Topics in Kentucky History)

Like many other women during the early years of the Progressive reform movement, she had begun to create for herself a career in public reform. By the end of Madge, using her unique access to a major state newspaper, had begun to create a career for herself in civic reform. She was now ready to launch more ambitious projects on several different fronts. The reforms Madge promoted through these groups ranged from the founding of parks, playgrounds, and kindergartens to attempts to persuade officials to include manual training in the schools and to secure the passage of compulsory education, a juvenile court, and child labor laws.

At this point in her life, no single activity or interest predominated—she addressed one issue after another. Most agree that the movement resulted from the forces of urbanization, 74 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge industrialization, and immigration that swept the country in the decades following the Civil War, leaving people with the feeling that they had lost control of their lives to outside forces.

Likewise, the supposed increase in corrupt political machines in many cities and the influence of gigantic corporations that wielded unprecedented economic and political power troubled the public. Many historians also agree that Progressives were optimists who believed in human progress and sought to correct problems, often through governmental intervention and regulation.

But whether they were looking backward, seeking to restore some idealized version of economic individualism and egalitarianism that had never existed, or were modernizers advocating efficiency, discipline, and centralization— sometimes to the detriment of democracy—whether social control or social justice motivated them, or whether they meant to control business or aid it are issues still being debated.

In addition, many studies have emphasized the role Protestant religious and moral values played in the movement. Historians of the s and s often deprecated Progressives as either naive environmental determinists or lackeys of corporate business interests. They also generally described them as urban, middle-class, native-born Americans, usually college-educated professionals. Richard Hofstadter, for example, emphasized a status revolution and depicted the Progressives as members of the old liberal aristocracy who were resentful at being displaced by the nouveau riche business class.

Other historians have noted that the conservative counterparts of the Progressives often fit this same demographic description, that some Progressive reforms appealed more to the working class than the middle class, and that much of the legislation they sponsored expanded democracy and benefited lower socioeconomic groups. Virtually all agree that these reformers placed great stress on education as the means of finding the solution to problems.

Their activities gave greater force to the argument that the participation of women in national affairs would make life more decent. Well educated but without a college degree, she had not experienced an appreciable decline in status. She was not religious in the traditional sense, but her dedication to reform created a sort of civil religion evident in other reformers such as Jane Addams and John Dewey. She, like many women in the early twentieth century, found in reform a means for carving out a career for herself and influencing the world.

Throughout her life she maintained sympathy for the concept, if not the actual implementation, of socialism. The ravages of big business deeply concerned her, as it did most Progressives, and she once wrote: Their whole energy is consumed in the struggle merely to maintain existence. The average public has already swallowed much of its program, but it is still afraid of the idea of the mouse.

An example of this was free garbage pickup, for which she argued: By this time membership in the group had grown from thirty-five to eighty-three. They sponsored remodeling the old mission house in Proctor so it could be used as a social settlement. During the summer volunteers taught kindergarten, cooking, sewing, and woodworking at Beattyville in exchange for their room and board. In September the kindergarten and manual training school moved from Beattyville to the mission house in Proctor.

Years later, one of her friends recalled that Madge was the one who looked across the river at the mission house and immediately saw its potential as a social center. The Gleaners funded these activities by personal donations and special events. In December the women held a bazaar, with Madge serving as one of the hostesses, and a few days later they met at the Breckinridge home to wrap Christmas packages to send to students at the Proctor Industrial School. The section had developed in the s when a large number of Irish immigrants congregated there to work in factories and on the railroads.

Unpaved streets, poor drainage, crowded houses, and inadequate sanitation characterized the area. Sewage contaminated the water supply, while smoke and stench from distilleries polluted the community. Believing, along with many settlement workers and kindergarten teachers, in the importance of creative play, and accepting the childsaving rhetoric then popular in educational theory, she began to work for the establishment of a playground in Irishtown. She also believed—as did most social settlement workers—that juvenile delinquency resulted largely from play energies gone wrong, either through restriction or lack of guidance.

Thus, the introduction of a playground represented one step toward reforming the neighborhood and teaching the children to be useful citizens. Accordingly, playgrounds had to be supervised by trained personnel in order to achieve the desired goals. The League accepted the offer and appointed Madge to the Playground Committee. After Our Hope Lies in the Children 77 much exhausting work in raising money and preparing the lot, the playground opened on June 17 with more than three hundred people in attendance. Benches, flowers, and play equipment covered the transformed lot.

Kindergarten and sewing classes met each day. All that could be got for the children was to be claimed and obtained. But the possible was not to be laid on the altar of the chimerical, and the playground in Irishtown and the later school were for white children. On one occasion nearly Irishtown residents attended an open-air concert. Almost all of them expressed to the sponsors their pleasure at the effect the playground had on their children, and a policeman from the area noted that in the evenings the children gathered to sing the songs they had learned during the day.

Almost all were of school 78 Madeline McDowell Breckinridge age, and more planned to enroll in public school at the beginning of the new school year than ever before. Despite this encouraging sign, Madge pointed out that many Irishtown parents hesitated to send their kindergarten- and early-elementary-aged children to public school because they had to walk long distances and cross the dangerous railroad tracks. This situation highlighted the need to establish a kindergarten and elementary school in Irishtown. Please enter your name.

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Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for a New South

Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. Melba Porter Hay Publisher: Topics in Kentucky history. English View all editions and formats Summary: The great-granddaughter of Henry Clay and a descendant of several prominent Bluegrass families, Breckinridge inherited a sense of noblesse oblige that compelled her to speak for women's rights. However, it was her physical struggles and personal losses that transformed her from a privileged socialite into a selfless advocate for the disadvantaged.

She devoted much of her life to the struggle for equal voting rights, but she also promoted the antituberculosis movement, social programs for the poor, compulsory school attendance, and laws regulating child labor. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Biography History Named Person: Melba Porter Hay Find more information about: Kentucky native Madeline McDowell Breckinridge was at the forefront of the suffrage movement at both the state and national levels.

Breckinridge inherited a sense of noblesse oblige that compelled her to speak for women's rights. This title recounts the remarkable life of this well-known vanguard of social change in the commonwealth. Publisher Synopsis ""Hay's Madeline McDowell Breckinridge deserves a spot on the bookshelves of scholars and aficionados of the history of women, Progressivism, and Kentucky.

User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Similar Items Related Subjects: Women -- United States -- Biography. Women's rights -- United States -- Biography. Women -- United States -- History. Linked Data More info about Linked Data.

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