Chapter 12
I Question Myself

It was a hard dilemma.

Now all of a sudden the slavery issue wasn’t two thousand miles distant but right in my own backyard, even right in my own family. It had hardly occurred to me before that Katie had, indeed, come from a slave state. We had never talked about it. But now Edie’s arrival, and her strong views on the subject, brought the debate closer to home.

In spite of everything she said, in my own heart and mind I couldn’t see how slavery could be anything but wrong. It couldn’t be right to treat other people the way slaves were treated! I was in agreement with Mr. Lincoln.

But what if it was true that his election could spell ruin to the country? What if his election caused an even more serious rift between North and South than already existed? Did I want to be part of contributing to that? What would it all mean to California?

I found myself wondering about my responsibility as a writer and a Christian in a lot of new ways. If people really were paying attention to what I said, I had to be sure of myself when I put my pen to the paper. What if I said something wrong, something that readers believed and took action on? I would be responsible for misleading them.

Always before, I’d written about things because I was interested in them. That’s why I started writing—because it was something I wanted to do for myself. I wanted to express my thoughts and feelings. And there were so many things I wanted to explore! Writing seemed the natural way to express what was inside me, to communicate, even to grow as a person. That’s what my journal was to begin with—just a diary of my own thoughts and feelings. It had never been meant for anybody else.

I reflected on Ma, on things she’d said to me. I had always been a reader and more quiet than outgoing. She’d made no secret of thinking I’d probably never get married. She figured I ought to read and write and keep a diary so I could be a teacher when I got older and no man would have me.

I had done what Ma said, even though I sometimes ached when I realized it took her dying to get me started. Writing in my diary back then had been a way of letting the pain out.

I was twenty-three now, and I had books and books of diaries and journals! That first beautiful book Almeda had given me, with The Journal of Corrie Belle Hollister stamped across the front of it, had been the first of many such volumes I had filled with memories and recollections and drawings over the years.

At first Pa and Uncle Nick had kidded me about always writing down what I was thinking. But once the articles started, and payments of two, and then four, and then even eight dollars started to come in for things I’d written, they realized maybe it was a worthwhile thing for me to be doing, after all. But even then it was just my writing.

Then gradually my writing started getting bigger than just my own personal, private thoughts. Especially as I’d written about the two elections back in 1856, I had thought a lot about truth and trying to tell the truth to people. Even from men like Derrick Gregory and Mr. Royce, I had learned a thing or two about truth and being fair. I tried to learn from everybody I met, although men like that probably had no idea they were helping to teach me and show me things, even by their deceit.

Yet I don’t think it ever really struck me that anything I might say was important . . . not really important. I was trying to learn about truth and being a good reporter, but I figured that it was still mostly for me. Robin O’Flaridy still looked down on me, even after the ’56 elections; my story had never appeared, and Mr. Fremont had lost the election. Nothing I had done or said had been that important, and I had gone back to writing about people and floods and how things were in California now that the gold rush was slowing down.

Mr. Kemble kept telling me that my articles were getting a wider audience in the East on account of a woman reporter being so unusual, but I didn’t think much about it. I knew of plenty of women authors and it didn’t seem so unusual. Julia Ward Howe wrote poems, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott wrote, too. I didn’t see what was so unusual about what I did. After all, Mrs. Alcott’s poems and stories were being published in the Atlantic Monthly.

“None of those women are writing for newspapers, Corrie,” Mr. Kemble said to me. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Newspapers influence people. All those other women are just writing stories. They can get as famous as you please, but they’re not going to be taken as seriously as a nonfiction news reporter.”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin has influenced a lot of people,” I said.

“It’s sold a million copies,” he replied. “But it’s still just a story.”

“You can’t say Mrs. Stowe isn’t an influential writer.”

“She is indeed. Her book probably has started more fights and brawls and arguments than any book ever published in this country. But she’s still just a novelist. You, on the other hand, Corrie Belle Hollister—you are more than a novelist. You are a newspaper reporter. And while it may be true that when you first came in here with little stories about leaves and blizzards and apple seeds and new schools and colorful people you had met, tricking me into thinking you were a man—”

I glanced up at him, but the little curl of his lip and twinkle in his eye told me he was just having fun with me. He never lost an opportunity to remind me of my first byline: C.B. Hollister.

“As I was saying,” he went on, “at first I may have published some of your stories as a lark, just for the novelty of showing up some of the other papers with something by a young woman. But I’ve got to admit you surprised me. You kept at it. You didn’t back down from me, or from the odds that were against you, not from anything. You proved yourself to be quite a tenacious, plucky young woman, Corrie. In the process, I’ll be darned if you didn’t start writing some pretty fair stories and getting yourself quite a following of readers—women and men.”

He stopped and looked me over as he did from time to time, kind of like he was thinking the whole thing through all over again, wondering how he’d gotten himself into the fix of having a woman on his staff.

“So that’s why,” he went on after a minute, “you’re different, Corrie. Your name might not be as famous as Mrs. Stowe’s. A hundred years from now nobody’ll know the name Corrie Hollister, because newspapers get thrown away, while books don’t. But right now, people are listening to what you say, Corrie. I tell you, you’ve got an influence that you don’t realize.”

His words kept coming back to me as I debated with myself about what I ought to do, especially after all Edie Simpson had said. It was more than just journal writing now.

What if . . . what if something I said or wrote really did influence the election? Even if I caused only one or two people to vote differently than they might have otherwise, it was still a sobering responsibility.

I did a lot of talking to the Lord about it in the days after Pa and I got back from San Francisco, running the pros and cons through my mind, and always remembering Pa’s words on the boat. You never know what might be around the corner, and so you ought to be watching and paying attention as best you can. I knew Pa was doing the same thing, both about his decision and about Zack’s leaving.

Ordinarily I would have talked to him or Almeda. But with slavery and the North-South dispute and the heated difference of opinion about Mr. Lincoln, I thought this was a decision I had to make alone—just between me and the Lord.

After the discussion at Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie’s, I was growing more and more sure that slavery was wrong and should be abolished. But I saw more clearly now that there might be consequences—not only to my decision, but to the whole outcome of the election—that no one could predict. It might even mean disputes in our own family.

In my heart I found myself wanting to do it. I wanted my writing to matter for the sake of truth. If Mr. Lincoln and the antislavery people and the Republican party represented that truth, then I wanted to be part of helping people know it. But I had to be sure. So I found myself telling the Lord that I wouldn’t do anything further, and that if I was supposed to get any more involved, he would have to make it clear by having somebody contact me, or by sending along some circumstance I couldn’t ignore. I didn’t want to initiate anything more all by myself.

If I never heard again from Mr. Dalton or anybody else from the Republican party, I would take that as God’s way of saying no.

The dilemma of whether I should get involved with the election wasn’t the only question my mind was wrestling with since hearing Katie’s sister’s views on slavery. But it was probably the easiest one to resolve.

In the meantime, I found myself thinking a lot about something Pa had told me about Davy Crockett. They had both fought in the Mexican War, and everyone who fought in California admired the men who died in the same cause at the Alamo.

Davy Crockett had been a congressman from Tennessee before he went to Texas, and I had read that Mr. Crockett always told folks in Washington he had based his life on the saying, Be sure you’re right, then go ahead. I found myself reflecting on those words every day.

I kept saying to myself, “Don’t go ahead until you’re sure you’re right.”

I was pretty certain the cause was right. Now I just had to wait to see if involving myself in it was what God wanted me to do. Figuring that out, as well as waiting, was the hardest part of all.