"Letter from New Orleans," The Christian Recorder, Nov. 16, 1867, p. 2 · Freedmen's Bureau Project

Title

"Letter from New Orleans," The Christian Recorder, Nov. 16, 1867, p. 2

Date

11-16-1867

Creator

Edmonia Highgate

Description

In this article in The Christian Recorder (the newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church), teacher Edmonia Highgate eulogizes Madam Louise de Mortie, who had been a prominent supporter and fund-raiser for the orphan asylum in New Orleans.

Source

Center for Research Libraries

Transcript

LETTER FROM NEW ORLEANS .
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THE LATE MADAME LOUISE DE MORTIE.
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"Then she for her good deeds,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had borne past,
To where beyond these voices there is peace."

TENNYSON.

Like a blindingly brilliant flash of lightning and as fully charged with magnetism, she electrified the land with her rare powers, and then passed in glory out of sight. Not, however, without in her own peculiar and forcible way, accomplishing a great work for God's humanity. To whatever she directed her attention, before coming South, certain it is that all beside is obscured in her monumental establishment of a home for orphan children, in the city of New Orleans . For more then three years she employed her grand presence, and remarkable power of address in convincing the heads of this department, that whatever else failed, her asylum must be a success. And she communicated something of her love for good doing to them, then undesirable reputation, gave her written pledges of their cooperation, which be it to their honor remembered, the faithfully kept. The battle with she fought, decisive, though bloodless, with various classes of persons in this city, in developing her own genius ideas of a home, fully proved that the earnestness of her great mission had armed her with might.
No one, not residing in this immediate this vicinity, can appreciate the many aggravating obstacles which she had to surmount. But she was determined, as she once said concerning the asylum, "to live therein, if it took a life to live it." She gave lecturers to which she drew crowds of the most cultured minds. She also gave highly respectful readings, from which she realized a sum of money sufficient to sustain her in the commencement of her noble enterprise. We have known her to protect several of her little charge, when their former owners have tried to steal them away, by those there forces of her presence. Although for two years she nightly retired to rest, with the brace of pistols under her head, which some experience had taught her she might be compelled to use. We once heard her say, with a convincing flash of her eye, that if any rebel undertook to force a child from her asylum, that they should do so at the risk of her own and her antagonist's life. She so thoroughly identified herself with this effort that it is impossible to think of the Orphans' Home, without thinking of Madame De Mortie. She obtained a handsome endowment of $10,000 from a generous Parisian donor, one condition that $20,000 additional should be raised without a very short time. To accomplish this, she took up for North and in and incredibly short time aided an association here in complying with the required conditions. A very desirable sight has been purchased upon the classically associated Teche, for the erection of the permanent Home, but which she believed, as did Moses the Promised Land, a great way off. Who shall build the super structure upon the foundation and which she has so ably laid, is a question, which we can, not satisfactorily determined? When France eulogizes her Madame Racamier, as possessing in comparable, social tact and charms, and England her philanthropic Elizabeth Fry, we may point to the Peerless Louise De Mortie as combining the use rarer characteristics of both of these noble women, with something grandly her own, and speak of her as one of the noblest representatives of American higher civilization.

E. GOODELLE HIGHGATE.

New Orleans , Oct. 25th, 1867.