Endings

This chapter focuses on events surrounding the end of the Cotton Centennial Exposition, in particular the Woman's Day celebration on May 30, 1885. Although it was Maud Howe's time to shine because the event centered on her gift of books, her mother presided at the occasion. Grace King noted, she did so “as a matter of course. She presides at everything & has done it so long that her air, manner, smile & language are actually thread bare,” King gossiped to her sister May. King and other local women had long ago tired of Howe's intruder personality, but she had delivered useful messages and employed effective tactics to make a successful Woman's Department.

February Festivities

This chapter details events in February 1885. In the Woman's Department, when the weather was cold and stormy, visitors gathered in the “bright and sunny home-like library” that Julia Howe's daughter Maud had created. As an author herself, Maud had great love and respect for the books that filled the shelves. Publishers and writers were responding generously to her requests for donations, especially when she proposed that the books be given to a New Orleans library at the end of the Exposition. Some writers even added their famous signatures. By the end of the Exposition, the collection was up to almost fourteen hundred volumes. Increased numbers of visitors browsed these shelves and eyed exhibits everywhere at the Exposition, especially as Carnival season got underway.

The Locals

This chapter describes the local women who played key roles during the Cotton Centennial Exposition. Among them was Caroline Merrick (1825–1908) who singlehandedly managed her brother's plantation in 1862. All the men were at war that year, and her husband had secreted their slaves to another parish. Merrick wrote that, at Myrtle Grove, she was responsible for the welfare of family members and all the slaves as well as for clothing and crops. Merrick learned stratagems as she managed the plantation, for she also dealt with both Union and Confederate armies that regularly took what they needed as they trooped between Baton Rouge and Port Gibson. Another was Caroline Gratia Williams Walmsley (1832?–1905) who was one of the organizers of the Christian Woman's Exchange in 1881 and the group's president for more than two decades, from 1882 until the year before her death in 1905.

Final Battles

This chapter describes the continuing internal conflicts of the Woman's Department. Contrary to the official Resolution from Lady Commissioners in support of Julia Ward Howe in mid-April 1885, declarations of peace had been illusory. Some predicaments seemed unintentional; the blows came with the territory of leadership. Others seemed of Howe's own making. In any case, her vulnerabilities were beginning to show. Director-General E. A. Burke also quit his post, citing the demands of “duty in other quarters.” In addition, the women's money had not arrived from Congress in time to pay many Lady Commissioners' expenses back to their home states. And there would be a question about how the money was to be divided. It was beginning to look like the Woman's Department might end in furor, as it had begun.

An Immense Responsibility

This chapter first describes how impoverished women in New Orleans and elsewhere looked to the Cotton Centennial Exposition as a potential employer. Many of these women carried the “immense responsibility” of helping support their families. However, most were disappointed when they did not land a job. The Exposition expected to hire approximately fifty clerks at fifty dollars a month, a handsome salary, but the weekly tabloid Mascot contended that positions were going to friends of the heads of departments rather than to those who needed work and had the right skills. The remainder of the chapter describes Julia Ward Howe's tendency to rankle.

Introduction

This introductory chapter discusses the Women's Department of the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884. The Woman's Department provided New Orleans ladies with their first collective exchange with national activists, whom they had previously dreaded, snubbed, rejected, or simply not known. Between mid-December 1884 and the end of May 1885, attentive women gained new opportunities to insinuate their voices into debates on women's issues, even if they had eschewed organized movements. During the six months of the World's Fair, some individuals began to understand that newfound strategies and collaborative efforts could serve their own agendas long after the exhibits were dismantled. The chapter then sets outs the book's purpose, which is to show how the event became a watershed moment in persuading a coterie of late-nineteenth-century white ladies to trade illusory pedestals for broader vistas, to enlarge notions of acceptable womanhood, and even to contemplate organized suffrage.

April Showers of Reproach

This chapter describes the rise of conflicts between women in the Woman's Department. The glowing unity of the opening was like the calm eye of a hurricane; impending squalls would soon again destroy the temporary accord. While the separate department offered room for women to wrestle with serious issues, it also gave gossip a home. Soon, invasive quarrels became public knowledge in reports from Catharine Cole in the Picayune and from the rabble-rousing Mascot. By early April 1885, Cole's columns began to read more like rants than reports, telling of “broils and turmoils and constantly recurring disturbances in the Woman's Department.” A hostile press would eventually question Julia Ward Howe's authority, her leadership style, and her apparent disregard for the sisterhood she espoused.

The Chiefdom

This chapter describes the events following Julia Ward Howe's arrival in New Orleans. For instance, Howe expected to walk in and begin work in the Woman's Department upon her arrival. However, physical and cultural obstacles barred her way. At the least, the area for the Women's Department was still an empty shell, no matter how often newspapers painted optimistic portraits of buildings nearing completion. Howe also granted an interview to a male journalist from the Times-Democrat, who portrayed her as “a lady of advanced years, slight and small, with an intellectual head and a noble countenance, which when lit by her rare, slow smile, is very charming.” For those who wondered, he concluded that her “masculine mind” had not diminished the “femininity of manner” that put her interviewer at ease. This kind of reassurance was important to southern readers, for it could assuage an imagined threat from exposure to “strong-willed” women. The chapter also details the extravagant opening day celebrations on December 16, 1884.

A City for Women

This chapter describes the society and culture that Julia Ward Howe would have encountered in New Orleans in 1884. The locals were no strangers to power, as they had seen it seized perversely. There was no timidity in a city where, when occupied during the Civil War, it became legendary that some ladies crossed streets rather than share sidewalks with Union soldiers, exposed their pantaloons rather than their faces to troops below their balconies, and emptied chamber pots on the heads of their enemies. By 1884, if a contemporary novel accurately portrayed “New Orleans manners, customs, habits and social features,”, men still considered it “honorable” to settle disputes with swords or pistols, and flirtatious women still incited duels by pitting men's affections against one other. Newspaper reports told how pugnacious affairs really were in a city where the most common crimes were burglary and assault and where men, women, and sometimes children carried weapons or at least kept them handy.

Exhibits Great and Small

This chapter describes the exhibits at the Woman's Department. Although Julia Ward Howe's original plan for the Woman's Department was that exhibits would highlight inventions, science, and literary accomplishments, many Lady Commissioners had had too little time to jury what they brought to New Orleans. Several of these women also declared that they would have had a higher-toned display given more time and money to gather their states' best examples. However, there was neither. On the other hand, the exhibits frankly represented the complex nature of the designation “woman's work,” which ranged from the mundane and quirky to the advanced and muscular.