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The Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago), July 3, 31.
Spiritualist Campmeeting, Dubuque, Iowa.“A Grand Camp Meeting,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, July 3, 1875:124-125
The Spiritualists of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin will hold an Inter-State Camp Meeting in Dubuque, Iowa, commencing June 29th, and holding over July 5th, 1875.
The following speakers from abroad are engaged for the occasion: James M. Peebles, of Boston, Mass.; Mrs. Mattie Hulett Parry, of Beloit, Wis.; Samuel Maxwell, of Chicago; Giles B. Stebbins, of Detroit, Mich.; Elder Asa Warren, of Dubuque; and the State Lecturers for Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, and other interesting and eminent speakers are expect to assist at the meeting.
First-class test mediums will be in attendance, among them Mr. Jesse Shepard, the great musical medium from London; also John Harvey Mott, the materializing medium from Memphis, Mo.
The following are the names of the committees for each State:
For Iowa: W. W. Skinner, Des Moines; Joel P. Davis, Des Moines; Edwin Cates, Anita; Alonzo Wardall, St. Ansgar; Hon. M. P. Rosecrans, Clear Lake; Ira Phillips, Keossauqua; J. H. Davenport, Cherokee; Will S. Shoemaker, Mo. Valley; John A. McKenney, Logan; Mrs. E. Price, Smithland; T. C. Random, Forest City; J. Dunton, Algona; Hon. A. Jenkins, Estherville; A. E. Cram, State Center; W. A. Curtis, Parkersburg; A. J. Case, Waverly; Mrs. L. A. Worth, Hesper; B. Parsons, Waterloo; G. Farnsworth, Denver; S. Wilson, Manchester; P. L. Hinkley, West Union; T. C. Moore, Fredericksburg; John M. Dean, Waukon; Eli Barnes, Tripoli; L. E. Jenkens, Cedar Rapids; C. L. Patrick, Independence; Valentine Parch, Elkader; W. B. Fields, Strawberry Point; Mrs. Mary Webster, Janesville; A. W. Harbaugh, Toledo; B. F. Shaw, Anamosa; William Hunt, Center Point; John G. D. Wolf, Mt. Pleasant; Mr. Voorheis, Keokuk; Hazen Wilson, Fort Madison; William Abbot, Ft. Dodge; A. Bunker, Washington; John W. Giles, Burlington; E. B. Tilden, Prairie City; William Cowley, Eddyville; Dr. J. Webster, West Liberty; J. R. Riblett, Ackley; J. O. Bump, Iowa Falls.
For Illinois: T. M. Church and Winter Hastings, Springfield; B. B. George, East St. Louis; J. M. Norris, Rock Island; William Curtis, Ottawa; Lizzie Frank, Plainfield; Dr. J. W. Field, Monmouth; Mrs. Mary Barber, De Kalb; F. K. Parmenter, Knoxville; Charles J. Simpson, Keithsburg; A. F. Benedict, Aurora; A. G. Humphrey, Galesburg; William P. Myers, New Boston; C. W. Cook, Warsaw; J. H. Hand, Alton; F. J. Briggs, Bloomington; E. S. Holbrook, Joliet; John C. Hunt, Sterling; G. Gilbert, Nunday; Ira Sessions, Waynesville; A. Martin, Olney; S. Simmons, Neponset; Dr. J. M. Smith, Irving; M. A. Stewart, Decatur; E. M. Hill, Norris; Maria Jackson, Vermillion; J. G. Munselle, Irvington; J. Antis, Morris; W. F. Miller, Watseka; P. Turner, Norton; Mrs. I. Kinney, New Lebanon; W. M. Black, Dry Hill; Margaret Jones, Centralia; P. Turner, Gardner; N. Perry, Carpenterville; Mrs. J. Jordon, Rinard; W. B. Land, Blandinsville; A. J. Howard, Odin; N. Mendenhall, Mulbury Grove; J. M. Telley, Chandlerville; John C. Bundy, Chicago; H. Bidwell, Belvidere; Hiram Waldo, Rockford; R. B. Kaufman, Paris.
For Wisconsin: George M. Huntly, Madison; W. Whitham, Janesville; T. W. Burt, Grand Rapids; M. F. Hubbard, La Crosse; C. H. Wheeler, Beaver Dam; Samuel Clegg, Dodgeville; J. B. Burr, Milwaukee; S. C. Trowbridge, Platteville; Mrs. M. C. Culver, Eau Claire; Mrs. Mary Culvert, Beloit; Eli King, Prairie du Sac; Mrs. M. M. Green, Markesan; D. Vansill, Baraboo; J. B. Reases, Columbus; Mrs. S. Race, Portage City; Mrs. E. E. Smiley, Horicon; H. Thurston, Berlin; James S. Ordway, Oconto; Don Clute, Mauston; George Hale, Sr., Kenosha; B. N. Lawrence, River Falls; Alden Hoyt, Lake Mills; E. D. Peak, Jamestown; J. A. Lutes, Pardeeville; L. E. Hebberd, West Salem; Matilda Snow, Geneva Lake; C. Rogers, Kingston; C. R. Sylvester, Lincoln Center; Mrs. Yeaton, Brookside; H. W. Power, Centralia; J. N. Blanchard, Sherwood; T. A. Wentworth, Fontanelle; William Herreman, Marcellon; M. E. Ingham, Tunnel City; Mrs. M. A. Potter, Hingham; Henry Fowle, Oak Creek; D. B. Hulbert, Loganville; Solon P. Best, Tiffany; C. M. Younglove, Woodman; S. C. Stadson, Rest; C. L. Marga, Sylvester; J. Williams, Washburn.
It is expected that the above committees will interest the friends in their vicinities, either by seeing them or by cards or letters inviting them to attend. It is also expected that they will request all newspapers in their vicinity to give a notice of the meeting. We expect a grand jubilee, and hope all the friends in these States, and elsewhere, who can do so, will bring their tents and be early on the grounds. We have held on such Camp Meeting in Iowa, and it was a grand success, and we expect this will rival that in numbers and interest.
No pains will be spared by the local committee in preparing the grounds and furnishing facilities for comfort and pleasure, and intellectual enjoyment. The meeting will be held in a beautiful grove on the bluff, half a mile from the business center of the city. There will be a boarding house to supply meals on the grounds at reasonable rates.
The Illinois Central and its branches will sell tickets at regular fare to Dubuque, and upon presentation of the proper certificate, tickets will be sold at one-fifth regular fare returning, good from the 28th of June to July 8th. The Chicago, Dubuque & Minnesota, and Chicago, Clinton & Dubuque, and their branches, and their connection at Clinton to Chicago, full fare to Dubuque, and on certificate to return at one-fifth fare, from June 28th to July 8th. The Western Union, one and one-fifth fare. Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Minnesota, round trip tickets, one and one-fifth fare. Central Railroad of Iowa, full fare going and one-half fare returning. Dubuque Southwestern one-half fare. Certificates for return tickets will be signed on the grounds. Arrangements with other roads are being made, and will be published in due time. Come to the meeting everybody.
The Coach Whip Band will furnish music.
Dr. C. P. Sandford, Iowa City,
Winthrop Chandler, Dubuque,
Managers“The Dubuque Camp Meeting,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, July 31, 1875:158
Several Rows in the Camp.
From the Dubuque (Iowa,) Times.
Mrs. Severance’s free-love speech having been foisted upon the Spiritualist Convention by means which the majority of the Spiritualists present denounced as trickery and treachery, the first work done on Sunday morning was to administer an antidote, which was done in the shape of a speech by Giles B. Stebbins, of Detroit, Mich. Mr. S. prefaced his remarks by reading an extract from an article on Liberty, by Mrs. Mary Davis, (wife of Andrew Jackson Davis). The following is a much abbreviated summary of his speech:
Some people seem to have strange notions about the liberty of speech. They seem to think that on a ‘free platform,’ anybody has a right to speak, at any time, in any manner, about anything. But it seems to be forgotten that hearers, as well as speakers, have rights. A free meeting has a right to say that it will listen to the discussion of some subjects, that it will not discuss other subjects. I do not suppose, for instance, this meeting would think it worth while to spend any time discussing the decency and morality of stealing horses or burning houses. But stealing horses and burning houses is purity, decency and morality, compared with social freedom. I say this on the start, to plainly define my position.
The speaker had long ago advocated equal political rights, equal personal rights, equal marital rights for woman. Others had done this long years before this wretched thing miscalled social freedom ever came up. The sacredness of womanhood, can not be too highly revered. It is a common and a shrewd move of free-lovers, to seek sympathy by dwelling strongly on outrages which all thoughtful and progressive persons agree in denouncing. Our present marriage rules need to be improved. The question is, whether you will reform our marriage laws, or abolish marriage altogether. Social freedom proposes the abrogation of all marriage laws, avowedly in the interests of humanity. The theory is, that I have a right to my own person, with all its faculties and powers, to use as I choose, and that all laws of marriage are bad. But this theory utterly ignores the first and most solemn duties that we owe to ourselves, to others, to our common humanity. I am going to talk quite plain on this subject, because the subject compels me to. It is not a pleasant or a welcome task but a duty from which I will not shrink.
I refer you, for illustration, to the recent Beecher trial. For argument’s sake (without expressing any opinion that I may have on the subject), I will suppose that Henry Ward Beecher is guilty of what is charged against him. Now Victoria Woodhull is the Queen Regnant of Social Freedom. She accused Henry Ward Beecher of the shameful crime of violating the sanctity of Theodore Tilton’s home. And she says that in doing this, Mr. Beecher did no wrong; or rather, that his only wrong consisted in concealing the matter; and that Theodore Tilton was a fool to make what she calls a “dreadful suzz” about it. Who is there here that believes that Henry Ward Beecher—if he did what he is accused of doing—did perfectly right, and that it was none of the injured husband’s business? (Ominous silence!) Again, Mrs. Woodhull says: “I have the right to the most intimate relations with one man, or a hundred men.” This is social freedom—the gospel of self-indulgence; the gospel of passion; not the gospel of love.
The advocates of social freedom seek to convey the idea that marriage recognized under law, is a bondage. Now as I have said, injustice is often perpetrated in the name of marriage, because our marriage laws are unjust. They fail to recognize the right of woman to her property, to her person, to the sanctity of maternity. But the question is, shall we reform it in these respects, or abolish it entirely? The speaker argued that when a man and woman entered into the relationship, certain formalities were demanded as appropriate and just to all parties. It should be made known, like an ordinary partnership, for the information and protection of the public, and higher than this, for the care of children in the home. To say that the only alternatives are free-love or enforced lust is a base and pitiful sophistry. When two persons agree to live together, and cleave to each other only, and respect that agreement, is there any “bondage” in it? Free-love is fatal to the sanctity of love, to the order of society, to the sacredness of paternity. With free-love there can be no such thing as family or home. The children are turned into a great caravansary. In marriage there is, it is true, a restraint upon the parties entering into it; but restraint is not bondage.
It has been well said: “Let the impulses of love be governed by he voice of wisdom.” If a man desires property, shall he obey the blind, selfish, instinct of acquisitiveness, and lay hands upon property wherever he can find it? And if he is restrained, and compelled to respect the rights of others, and the demands of honesty, can he justly complain that he is under “bondage”? . . . The practical workings of free-love were illustrated by a reference to a community at Berlin Heights, Ohio, where about two hundred of them organized some eighteen or twenty years ago; and some of the remnants are there yet. No resident of that good town, at the time, was of this community, but all came from abroad. Among the “remnants” is one woman—a poor woman with eight children—the children of eight different fathers. And where are the fathers? She does not know—the children do not know. And that poor woman works like a slave to support them, while their fathers are away enjoying “social freedom” elsewhere. Its track everywhere is as slimy as that of the serpent in the garden of Eden. . . . The law of purity is not local; it is universal. The higher the mental and spiritual condition of a people, the higher the grade of civilization, the more complete recognition of marriage you find the more just its laws and the better obeyed, and so the better life of all. Let us have still higher justice and finer obedience. [. . .] Among the advocates of social freedom are some good persons, mistaken, deluded by specious arguments, etc. But among the leaders, and many of their followers, you find, too often, the pitiful results of a false theory, tending to undermine virtue and degrade morality. We all need, for strength and for the best life, the highest ideal of what human nature demands—the permanence of true marriage; a union of wedded souls gladly made known and kept in social faith, with divorce as an escape from crime or the sad mistake of a hopeless and loveless union. This leads up while the false cry for “variety of the affections” goes down, down. [. . .]
The speaker referred to several points in which he thought the marriage laws might be bettered; for instance, so that woman might not be compelled to assume the pains and responsibilities of maternity against her desires; that equal rights as to property might be secured; and in several other respects. He thought one great step toward juster laws for woman, and better laws for all, would be the giving of the ballot to woman. It is as impossible for men alone to make just laws for woman, as it would be for woman alone to make just laws for man. [. . .]
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