Justice, Humanity, and Civil Obligation." Autograph manuscript signed.
Dix, D.L . “Justice, Humanity, and Civil Obligation.” Autograph manuscript signed. Annapolis, MD: February 24, 1852.
Single 8vo. leaf; creased; one small closed tear, two nicks. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Most likely the “appeal” portion of the Memorial submitted by Miss Dix to the legislature of Maryland, quite likely read or delivered by her in person to the state legislature on the 24th or 25th of February. The latter is the date of the printed memorial offered on behalf of the insane of that state and the last single-state appeal made by Dix. The manuscript merits quoting in full:
Justice, Humanity, and Civil obligation. Becoming through your station as Legislators,
Benefactors of the needy, whose mental darkness through your action may be dispersed,
how many prayers and blessings from grateful hearts will enrich you! As your work on
earth shall be measured; and your last hours shall be slowly numbered; when the review
of life’s deeds becomes more and more searching; amidst the flashes of uncompromising
memories, how consoling will be the remembrance that of many transactions, oftenest
controlling transient and outward affairs, frequently conducting to disquieting truth,
possibly sometimes to those of doubtful good, you have also assisted to accomplish a
work whose results of widely diffused benefits, create a “Light brightening your path”
through “The Dark Valley,” and conducting you to those “Gates of Eternal Life” which
open up on “The blessed mansions” in which finites faculties are beyond the reach of
blight, and advance continually in knowledge, to perfection! Respectfully submitted,
D.L. Dix.
Annapolis, February 24th, 1852.
Dix’s biographer Marshall establishes the background of this manuscript noting that Dix reported on neighboring states when her memorials were before Congress; she confined her activities to investigations in the nearby states, traveling to southern hospitals and prisons at Christmas time.
On February 25, 1852, she submitted a memorial to the legislature of Maryland petitioning a state hospital for the insane. The memorial had the support of the Baltimore Sun and humanitarian-minded persons such as Moses Sheppard, and before the session was over an appropriation was made for enlarging the facilities of the Maryland hospital and for the purchase of a new site…(Dorothea Dix, by Helen E. Marshall, Russell & Russell, 1967, p. 123).
Building began at Spring Grove, near Catonsville, Maryland, in 1853, but although “[t]he general assemblies of 1856, 1859, and 1860 made liberal appropriations…it was not until 1872 that the patients were transferred to the new quarters” (ibid. p. 260).
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