In July 1868, questions of nationhood weighed on the minds of Canadians and Americans alike. Canada marked the first anniversary of the confederation experiment; Congress ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, the second—and, in the end, the most sorely tested—of the three constitutional pillars of radical Reconstruction. Those of an optimistic turn of mind could still feel the promise of jubilee in the air, even if they also could see the outline of what W. E. B. Du Bois would one day eulogize as Reconstruction's “splendid failure.” For Thomas Hughes in Dresden, 1868 was “‘the day of small things’ with us, literally a ‘casting our bread upon the waters.’” Although the “novelty of our new church has passed away,” he noted, there was nonetheless an “earnestness, devotedness, and consistency of life” at the mission. The day of small things was not without its compensations.

The political hour in which Jennie Johnson entered the world was important and would have a good deal to do with the course of her ministry, but in July 1868 none of this was clear. Against the backdrop of Reconstruction in the United States, Isaiah Johnson and Charlotte Butler Johnson were simply worried that the child they were expecting would not survive. Charlotte, midwife and mother to ten children, feared that the child would be stillborn; in resignation, the family that had gathered for the birth now prepared for a sunset burial.