Livermore, Mary A. (Mary Ashton), 1820-1905

<p>Mary Livermore, born Mary Ashton Rice, (December 19, 1820 – May 23, 1905) was an American journalist, abolitionist, and advocate of women's rights.</p>

<p>When the American Civil War broke out, she became connected with the United States Sanitary Commission, headquarters at Chicago, performing a vast amount of labor of all kinds—organizing auxiliary societies, visiting hospitals and military posts, contributing to the press, answering correspondence, and other things incident to the work done by that institution. She was one of those that helped organize the great fair in 1863, at Chicago, when nearly US$100,000 was raised, and for which she obtained the original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation from President Lincoln, which was sold for $3,000.</p>

<p>When the war was over she instituted a paper called the Agitator, which was afterwards merged in the Woman's Journal. Of this, she was editor for two years and a frequent contributor thereafter. On the lecture platform, she had a remarkable career, speaking mostly in behalf of women's suffrage and the temperance movements. Many years, she traveled 25,000 miles (40,000 km) annually, speaking five nights each week for five months of the year.</p>

<p>Her printed volumes included: <i>Thirty Years Too Late</i>, first published in 1847 as a prize temperance tale, and republished in 1878; <i>Pen Pictures; or, Sketches from Domestic Life, What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? Superfluous Women, and Other Lectures, My Story of the War. A Woman's Narrative of Four Years' Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army, and in Relief Work at Home, in Hospitals, Camps and at the Front during the War of the Rebellion</i>. For <i>Women of the Day</i>, she wrote the sketch of the sculptress, Miss Anne Whitney; and for the <i>Centennial Celebration of the First Settlement of the Northwestern States, at Marietta, Ohio, July 15, 1788</i>, she delivered the historical address.</p>