They came first, in earlier days, like foam flashing on dark, silent waters,—­bits of stern, dark womanhood here and there tossed almost carelessly aloft to the world’s notice.  First and naturally they assumed the panoply of the ancient African mother of men, strong and black, whose very nature beat back the wilderness of oppression and contempt.  Such a one was that cousin of my grandmother, whom western Massachusetts remembers as “Mum Bett.”  Scarred for life by a blow received in defense of a sister, she ran away to Great Barrington and was the first slave, or one of the first, to be declared free under the Bill of Rights of 1780.  The son of the judge who freed her, writes: 

“Even in her humble station, she had, when occasion required it, an air of command which conferred a degree of dignity and gave her an ascendancy over those of her rank, which is very unusual in persons of any rank or color.  Her determined and resolute character, which enabled her to limit the ravages of Shay’s mob, was manifested in her conduct and deportment during her whole life.  She claimed no distinction, but it was yielded to her from her superior experience, energy, skill, and sagacity.  Having known this woman as familiarly as I knew either of my parents, I cannot believe in the moral or physical inferiority of the race to which she belonged.  The degradation of the African must have been otherwise caused than by natural inferiority.”

It was such strong women that laid the foundations of the great Negro church of today, with its five million members and ninety millions of dollars in property.  One of the early mothers of the church, Mary Still, writes thus quaintly, in the forties: 

“When we were as castouts and spurned from the large churches, driven from our knees, pointed at by the proud, neglected by the careless, without a place of worship, Allen, faithful to the heavenly calling, came forward and laid the foundation of this connection.  The women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to carry up the noble structure and in the name of their God set up their banner; most of our aged mothers are gone from this to a better state of things.  Yet some linger still on their staves, watching with intense interest the ark as it moves over the tempestuous waves of opposition and ignorance....

“But the labors of these women stopped not here, for they knew well that they were subject to affliction and death.  For the purpose of mutual aid, they banded themselves together in society capacity, that they might be better able to administer to each others’ sufferings and to soften their own pillows.  So we find the females in the early history of the church abounding in good works and in acts of true benevolence.”

From such spiritual ancestry came two striking figures of war-time,—­Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.