Jane Grey Swisshelm may have been married to a farmer, but she was no ordinary farm wife. Nor did she, like most farm wives, pass through life quietly and in relative obscurity. During the mid–nineteenth century, her name appeared in newspapers across the United States. She supported the antislavery and woman’s rights movements from the podium and in print, and, despite the fact that she was a woman, she actively participated in local, state, and national political affairs. She was so well known as a journalist and a reformer that when she died in 1884, editors and their readers...

Jane Grey Swisshelm was immensely proud of her religious heritage and deeply in awe of the courage and martyrdom of her forebears. Throughout her adult life, she tried to follow their example. She typically recalled their image when she felt the need to defend her opinions or her actions. And she incorporated into her personality both their admirable qualities and their shortcomings.

The old Scottish Covenanters that she heard about from her grandmother were immensely brave, fiercely stubborn, and rigidly principled as well as infuriatingly single-minded and self-righteous. And never was any group of religious zealots more convinced that what...

Jane Swisshelm did not sew a button on her husband’s jacket, pack his trunk, and send him away. Instead, after more than twenty years of marriage, she gathered together her own belongings and with her five-year-old daughter in tow deserted the man with whom she had pledged to spend her life. Consdering herself “the unfortunate victim of misalliance,” she would not “be condemned to imprisonment.” She would take no part in base prostitution.” She gave James his “free papers”—but in the process, she gave them to herself as well.

James Swisshelm was a farmer, hardworking, tall, and strong, who...

When Jane wrote about her marriage in her memoir, she claimed that the conflicts between her and James were “all spiritual.”² This claim was at the very least disingenuous. In fact, arguments over the distribution and control of income and property were at least as important as arguments over questions of conscience in both the Swisshelm and Cannon households.

The issue of property must have been the source of much anxiety, hostility, and concern in the Swisshelm family long before Jane became one of its members. Before he died at the age of eighty-six, John Swisshelm, James’s father, disinherited the...

Light, of course, was not the only issue. By all accounts, the office where Robert M. Riddle edited thePittsburgh Daily Commercial Journalwas grungy and cluttered. But in the late fall of 1847, when he offered to take down the shutters and allow Jane Grey Swisshelm to publish her newspaper in his pressroom, Riddle acknowledged implicitly that her presence would fundamentally change both the working environment in his office and the way in which the business of journalism was conducted in Pittsburgh.¹ With the shutters open, the interior of his office would be exposed to public view. Passersby, curious...

Given Jane Grey Swisshelm’s background and particular sense of mission, it is not entirely surprising that she should have taken an interest in politics. “We learned our politics at our mother’s knee, with the 23rd Psalm and Shorter Catechism,” she wrote in 1853. She justified her participation in politics on that grounds that her religion demanded it. The Covenanter Church, she explained to her readers, required “all [its] members to ‘meddle’ in politics.” She pointed out that gender considerations did not prevent Scottish women from standing beside their fathers and husbands when they challenged the political power of the English...

Lorton was wrong. When Jane left Louisville to return to Pittsburgh to care for her dying mother, she left knowing that despite her efforts, she had not persuaded many Kentuckians that slavery should be abolished. But as tenacious and stubborn as her Covenanter ancestors, she was certainly not willing to “give in.”

In her pursuit of social justice, Jane was determined to continue her fight against slavery, and as she did so she took comfort in the thought that she was part of a larger movement of intensely committed reformers determined to fundamentally change American society. In the 1830s, 1840s,...

That was the problem, of course. When it suited her, she viewed social form with disdain, saying what she thought and doing what she pleased without concern for convention. Her behavior made her interesting but also could be a source of embarrassment for her friends and family. She insisted on defining herself on her own terms, and such nonconformity resulted in a distinctiveness that gave her an ambiguous position in polite society.

One of the characteristics of life in the nineteenth century was the ease with which people with the necessary resources could improve their social position. The shift from...

Jane Grey Swisshelm was one the most widely read and versatile female journalists in mid–nineteenth century America. She was a provocateur, a propagandist, and a polemicist. Her style was distinctive enough to cause comment. One editor described it as “poetical, piquant, and pithy.” Another noted the “boldness” of her “unsparing hand.” She was not the only woman at the time to make a place for herself in the world of commercial journalism, but few of her contemporaries had careers as long as hers, and most could not claim the kind of diverse readership that she commanded.² Not only did...