Jane Swisshelm facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jane Swisshelm
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| Born |
Jane Grey Cannon
December 6, 1815 |
| Died | July 22, 1884 (aged 68) |
| Occupation | Journalist, publisher |
| Known for | Advocacy in favor of women's rights and against slavery |
Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm (December 6, 1815 – July 22, 1884) was an American journalist and publisher. She was also a strong supporter of ending slavery and gaining women's rights. Jane Swisshelm was one of the first female journalists hired by Horace Greeley at his New York Tribune newspaper.
She wrote actively in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later became a publisher and editor in St. Cloud, Minnesota. While working for the government in Washington, D.C., Jane started her last newspaper, Reconstructionist. Her strong criticism of President Andrew Johnson led to her losing her job and the newspaper closing. She wrote her life story in a book in 1881.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Jane Grey Cannon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 6, 1815. Her parents, Mary and Thomas Cannon, were of Scotch-Irish descent. Her father worked as a merchant and bought and sold land.
In 1823, when Jane was eight, her sister Mary and her father both died from a serious lung illness called consumption (now known as tuberculosis). This left her family in a difficult financial situation. Jane helped by doing manual work like making lace and painting on velvet. Her mother colored hats to earn money.
At age twelve, Jane attended a boarding school for a few weeks. At that time, there were no public schools. When she returned home, doctors thought she might also have consumption. Her mother had already lost four children to illnesses. The family moved to Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a village near Pittsburgh, and opened a store. After more study, Jane began teaching children in the village in 1830. That same year, her older brother, William, died from yellow fever in New Orleans.
Career as a Writer and Activist
On November 18, 1836, at age 20, Jane Cannon married James Swisshelm. Jane was a very strong-willed person. In 1838, they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where James planned to start a business. This was Jane's first time seeing slavery, and it deeply affected her. She saw a man who had sold his own mixed-race children. She wrote in her autobiography about the terrible things she witnessed and heard.
In 1839, Jane moved to Philadelphia to care for her sick mother, even though her husband did not want her to go. After her mother passed away, Jane led a girls' school called a seminary in Butler, Pennsylvania. Two years later, she returned to her husband's farm, which she called Swissvale, east of Pittsburgh. Today, this area is known as Edgewood.
Fighting for Rights with Her Pen
During this time, Jane Swisshelm started writing articles against capital punishment (the death penalty). She also wrote stories, poems, and articles for an anti-slavery newspaper called the Spirit of Liberty in Pittsburgh. When the Spirit of Liberty and another similar paper closed, Swisshelm decided to start her own newspaper.
In 1847, she founded the Saturday Visiter. This newspaper became very popular, reaching 6,000 readers across the country. In 1854, it joined with the Pittsburgh Commercial Journal. Jane wrote many articles supporting women's rights, especially for women to own their own property.
On April 17, 1850, while working for the New York Tribune, Jane Swisshelm made history. She became the first female reporter allowed into the reporters' area of the U.S. Senate. Her presence and her report of a fight that day were widely noticed. In the fight, Senator Henry S. Foote pulled out a pistol when Senator Thomas Hart Benton rushed at him. People said that only a woman could describe such a scene so interestingly.
In 1857, Swisshelm divorced her husband and moved west to St. Cloud, Minnesota. There, she took control of several newspapers. She used her writing and speeches to promote ending slavery and supporting women's rights. St. Cloud was a growing trade center on the Mississippi River.
In The Saint Cloud Visiter, Swisshelm strongly criticized Sylvanus Lowry. Lowry was a slaveholder and trader who had moved to the area in 1847. He was a powerful politician, elected to the Territorial Council and as St. Cloud's first mayor in 1856. He was known as the city's Democratic political boss. Swisshelm was especially angry that Lowry owned slaves, because Minnesota was a free state.
However, in 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States made a ruling in the Dred Scott case. This ruling said that enslaved people could not sue for their freedom. It also said that the Missouri Compromise, which limited slavery, was against the law. This meant that Minnesota's ban on slavery could not be enforced. More Southerners moved to St. Cloud with their slaves. When the Civil War began, most Southerners returned to the South, taking their slaves with them.
In The Visiter, Swisshelm accused Lowry of cheating the local Winnebago people as a trader. She also said he ordered attacks on people who claimed land, and that he mistreated his slaves. Lowry started his own newspaper, The Union, to fight against her influence.
After one of Jane's fiery articles, Lowry gathered a group of people. They broke into her newspaper office, smashed her printing press, and threw the pieces into the nearby Mississippi River. But Swisshelm quickly raised money for a new press and continued her strong attacks. Lowry's power in St. Cloud politics lessened, though he was elected to the state senate in 1862. He died young in 1865.
Civil War Years and Nursing
When Abraham Lincoln was chosen to run for president, Swisshelm spoke and wrote to support him. When the American Civil War started, nurses were needed at the front lines. Jane was one of the first to volunteer. After the Battle of the Wilderness, she was in charge of 182 badly wounded men in Fredericksburg for five days. She had no surgeon or assistant, but she managed to save all of them.
In 1862, a Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota led to the deaths of many white settlers. Swisshelm was among those who demanded the government punish the Native Americans. She traveled to major cities to get public support for this issue. While in Washington, D.C., she met Edwin M. Stanton, a friend from Pittsburgh who was then the Secretary of War. He offered her a job as a clerk in the government. She sold her Minnesota newspaper and continued to work as an army nurse during the Civil War in the Washington area until her government job was ready.
Later Life and Legacy
After the war, Swisshelm started her last newspaper, the Reconstructionist. Her strong criticisms of President Andrew Johnson caused her to lose the newspaper and her government job. In 1872, she attended the Prohibition Party convention as a representative.
Jane Swisshelm published a book called Letters to Country Girls (New York, 1853). This was a collection of newspaper articles she had started writing in 1849. She also published her life story, called Half of a Century, in 1881.
Swisshelm died on July 22, 1884, at her home in Swissvale. She is buried in Allegheny Cemetery. The Swisshelm Park neighborhood in Pittsburgh, next to Swissvale, is named in her honor. A new edition of Swisshelm's autobiography was published in 2005.
