Half a Century

Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm (1815-1884) was an American journalist, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate. She began writing articles against capital punishment and stories, poems, and articles for an anti-slavery newspaper and others in Pittsburgh. When that paper went out of business, Swisshem founded her own called Saturday Vistior. It eventually reached a national circulation of 6,000. She wrote many editorials advocating women's property rights. In 1862, when a Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota resulted in the deaths of hundreds of white settlers, it prompted her to demand punishment by the Federal government against the Indians. She toured major cities to this end. Writing in The Saint Cloud Visiter, Swisshelm waged a private war against General Sylvanus Lowry an aristocratic Southerner who had settled in the area and reigned as Saint Cloud's political boss. Swisshelm was especially infuriated that Lowry owned slaves in the free territory of Minnesota. Writing in The Visiter, she accused General Lowry of swindling the Indians, ordering vigilante attacks on suspected claim jumpers, and torturing his own slaves. Her works include Letters to Country Girls (1843) and Half a Century (1880).