Major Jack Downing
The Unionist 1833-09-05
Unionist content
Transcription
About this Item
Seba Smith (1792-1868) was a newspaper editor and humorist from Maine, where he created the character Major Jack Downing, a staple of newspapers in the antebellum period. He was also a pro-feminist man, the husband of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893), a feminist writer, poet and activist. Their children adopted both of their parents' names as their last name - Oaksmith. Her most famous quote is "My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?" This was asked at the 1852 National Woman's Rights Conference. This website provides a [full list of Elizabeth Oakes Smith's writings] and fills in more context - (http://www.oakes-smith.org/)
