One Glorious Ambition (40 page)

One of Dorothea’s former students, Shelley Mason, had headed overland to Oregon in 1852 via wagon train. Dorothea wrote to her, asking what rumors circulated out there about land and the federal government’s role in doling it out. The information mattered little; it would take weeks for any response to find Dorothea.

She found yet another sponsor to introduce the bill in the Senate while she wondered whether competing homestead bills and repeal of the Missouri Compromise, limiting slavery in the North, would ultimately press the air out of her legislation like a giant ape squashing a bird hoping to take flight. It was a constipating
session: nothing moved. All the arguments took place in back rooms, where Dorothea was not allowed.

Then with spring came new energy. Newly introduced bills began to move in both houses. Millard had warned her that nothing would be done until the issue of slavery was determined, but both houses advanced her bill more quickly than they ever had. She saw this as God’s timing, that at last her life’s work would bear fruit.

“I’m amazed,” she told Representative Bissell of Illinois, who had introduced the bill in the House.

“We may well discover how the president feels about the homestead bill based on how he responds to the passage of yours,” said a representative from New York.

“He’s not made himself clear about the homestead bill?” The congressman shook his head. “Then it isn’t only me that he chooses to keep in the dark.”

“I fear not, dear lady. What I do fear is that he may well veto your bill at the end and use it as a platform from which to speak about other issues.”

“But with both houses passing it, surely he would see it as the will of the people wanting this.” Could it be that after all this work a president would not accept the outcome?

“That is not how it works, Miss Dix,” Bissell told her. “A few senators may vote for passage because they believe the president will veto it. He may have told them as much. He won’t see passage by both houses as a mandate for action but rather as a political move on the part of the parties.”

“Why would they vote for something they don’t believe in? That lacks … integrity.”

The representative gave her a pitiful look. “Miss Dix, I would think you had learned more in all your time here.”

From the gallery she listened with a cautious ear to arguments on land issues and thought it good that the Dix bill was often mentioned in the conversations. At least until she heard the silver-throated James Murray Mason from Virginia suggest that the Dix bill would open doors for the federal government to dominate all state institutions with impunity.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Dorothea said. Another gallery visitor shushed her. “Well, that’s simply not true!” she hissed back.

Mason had introduced the Fugitive Slave Act, and Dorothea realized exactly what he was arguing: if they passed her bill, they were also agreeing to allow the federal government to regulate slavery within and between the states. Slave states would never agree to that. Surely someone would counter his argument. She looked around the floor. No senator rose to object. Dorothea’s stomach felt heavy as stone.

On March 8, the Senate approved the bill and sent it to the House.

Dorothea hooked numerous representatives and assured them that the Senate bill did not open the doors for the federal government to decide state issues. A few legislators listened, but all seemed grateful when a colleague came along and took them away from her.

Her chest ached when she heard a North Carolinian representative
lament that the government had no power to legislate even for benevolence on behalf of “lunatics, paupers, Negroes, or anybody else.” She did not speak out loud in the gallery, but she wanted to shout!

In her diary, she wrote: “What do those men think they’re doing in Congress if not to make laws to benefit the people! Aren’t laws the gateway for the people to pursue their own paths to life, liberty, and happiness? All people? This very system of ups and downs is enough to make a person insane.” She broke a nib, she wrote so hard.

On April 19, with barely a quorum and those present hoping to adjourn, Dorothea’s bill came up for a vote. Whigs held firm. The bill passed. She wanted to be excited but feared it was just another sucking step in the muck of politics. She looked at how the vote had gone as a measure of how Pierce would respond. The southern states, as expected, had opposed the bill on constitutional grounds. The Whigs supported it on humanitarian grounds, and the northern Democrats were divided. But it had passed, and even the newspapers commented that it was the only land bill that had been triumphant during a session of dissension. All that was left was for the president to sign it. Surely he would see the light, as would the thousands of men and women locked in a world of darkness, suffering alone.

“There is a rumor,” Anne Heath wrote by telegram. “Has Pierce returned the bill to Congress with his veto?”

“He’s done nothing. It sits. Request for consultation with Pierce denied. Pray common sense and the plight of the least of these will prevail.”

If Pierce held the bill and did nothing for ten days, it would become law. If he didn’t want to sign, he could save face by doing nothing. But Dorothea prayed that he would sign it. It would mean so much more in implementation if the president were behind it. How she missed Millard!

Dorothea woke with a sore throat and wondered if her dry cough would escalate into lung troubles again. She overheard Senator Bell tell his wife—they were back to sharing boardinghouse space—that Pierce “will likely veto it and it will kill our Miss Dix.”
No, it won’t
. If he vetoed the bill, there would be enough votes to override it in both houses. She kept a careful tally. And yet, her sore throat worsened. She pulled the cotton sheet up to her chin. She’d like to stay in bed all day … but she wouldn’t.

“Pierce will be haplessly crushed by his veto being overridden, should he veto my bill,” she told the Bells over supper. They exchanged glances with each other. “Truly. He is unaware of the mountain of support and won’t know until he’s under it.”

John Bell sounded like a man speaking to a widow when he said, “All that has gone before in the votes, Dolly, does not foretell what would happen with a veto. Overrides are … political sausage: no one knows what they’re made of and few want to eat them.”

“I appreciate your sentiments, John. But I have faith.”

“Only a handful of vetoed bills have been overridden in the history of this nation,” Bell warned.

“I am aware of that. But God is on our side here. Surely He won’t allow all our efforts to help suffering people go for naught.”

“At least you have your past successes in the states, Dolly.” Jane dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “You could continue in that vein. Forget the federal ideas.”

“No. If he vetoes it, I will get both houses to override his veto so the suffering insane poor can have a stable future.” It was part of God’s plan. She had to believe in that.

On May 3 the president vetoed the bill. Worse, he included a statement of concerns.

Dorothea pored over the arguments Pierce provided for the veto, noting that he carefully did not either support or deny the homestead bill, which would distress
that
bill’s supporters to no end. Instead he resorted to Jefferson Davis’s states’ rights argument.
Jefferson Davis. I might have known
. Pierce wrote that certain federal land grants could be investments, grants that enhanced the surrounding state lands, for example, as with the railroads. These were constitutional. But national charity bills, such as land for a school for deaf-mutes, was an unworthy act on the part of Congress, and the past president ought not to have allowed it. Miss Dix’s bill was of that ilk and therefore had to be vetoed.

“National charity is an abomination, he says.” Dorothea paced in her office as Horace Mann attempted to calm her. Her friend was no longer in Congress, but he came to Washington to
console her and help her think through the override attempt. “Having the indigent insane in a safe place doesn’t enhance the value of a community? It does. It makes it more likely people will come to a state that cares for those relieved of their reason. Does he think only poor people have insanity in their families, wretchedly ill people who need care regardless of where they live? I … he said he wished it had passed the previous session!”

“His words carried a different meaning than you thought, Dolly. If it had passed last session, he wouldn’t have to deal with it now.”

“How could he have written so bold a veto that now puts the Democrats firmly behind sustaining it and the southern states already thinking states’ rights trump every federal action. I won’t get enough votes!”

“Dolly, sit for a moment.” She did and pressed her hand to her chest. He spoke as though to a child. “You have moved within the halls of politics in powerful ways. Your efforts at the state level amaze everyone.”

“Yet my greatest ambition, to get a national land bill passed on behalf of the mentally ill, is lost without the override.” She stared at him. “Will they even bring the bill up for consideration of an override?”

“They likely will, but it will be a vote of loyalty to the president. He vetoed it. It would smack him mightily if they overrode his wishes.”

“Smack him mightily! What of those who wait in the dungeons and almshouses? They have been smacked for decades.”

Horace shrugged. “Prepare yourself, Dolly. It is the way of things.”

“How can you be so callous?”

Horace sighed. “Dolly, I care deeply about the mentally ill. I do. You know that.”

She nodded, clasping her hands in her lap. “I know. I have no right to impugn your motives.”

“But in this democratic world good men differ. We may think it’s less important to respond to homesteaders heading west than the needs of the insane, but that does not make it so. It’s not just the outcome that matters, but how we carried on, whether we were faithful to our own calling.”

“But we failed.” She nearly wailed.

“We did not achieve this goal.
You
may call it a failure, but I prefer to think of it as … schooling. For the next campaign. We will never know whose life has been touched by the campaign itself, by your articles or the letters or the greater association of the physicians and superintendents. You must not discount those experiences nor your work in the states. The very act of discussion contributes to democracy and the betterment of its citizens. Let’s not forget that.”

“I might not forget, but what of those who suffer?”

“We find new ways, Dolly. New venues. Pray. Listen. Wait.”

She looked up, a wry smile on her face. “I still have a two-thirds majority when they vote for scheduling or minor issues. They might yet override.”

“Dorothea, prepare yourself.”

For the next sixty days Dorothea rarely left the halls of Congress. She arrived each morning that summer at 6:00 a.m. and remained until midnight, eating only soup and biscuits when she returned to her boardinghouse. She buttonhooked legislators, wrote letters, even served tea in her office to legislative aides. She did what she knew to do, remembering Elizabeth Rathbone’s words: “If it is to be, it begins with thee.”