QVARTERLY

An Historical Review of New England Life and Letters

APRIL 1932

UNPUBLISHED PoreMs or Emity Dickinson Margaret Higginson Barney — Frederic I. Carpenter

Rocer SHERMAN: CoRDWAINER StatTesMAN Julian P. Boyd HawTuHorne AND Po irtics Randall Stewart Rosert Ranrout, Jr. Merle E. Curti Soncs anp VERsEs ABOUT WasSHINGTON Mary W. Smyth RicHarp Partripce: Coconiat Acent Marguerite Appleton

MEMORANDA AND DocyMENTS A New England Boy in the Civil War Caroline B. Sherman James Otis and Jonathan Swift Floy P. Gates A Book Note by Melville John H. Birss Herman Melville’s Ty pee Nelson F. Adkins

Book Reviews (see next page )

Rosert Frost “Lacks Power” Robert Hillyer Nores on NIGHTINGALES Stewart Mitchell A Bisriocrapny oF New ENGLAanp, 1931 Allyn B. Forbes

$4.00 4 year $1.00 a copy

THE SOUTHWORTH PRESS

PORTLAND MAINE

EDITORS SAMUEL Extor Morison ArtTuur M. ScHLESINGER Sranitey T. WiLiiaMs Kennetu B. Murpock Freperic I. CARPENTER Srewart MrrcHecyi Managing Editor

BOOK REVIEWS

PROVINCIAL AND Court Recorps oF MAINE, 11, edited by C. T. Libby;

History or York, Mainz, 1, by C. E. Banks J. F. Baldwin Mr. Justice Hoimes, edited by Felix Frankfurter T. V. Smith BLAINE OF Maine, by C. E. Russell R. V. Harlow LETTERS AND Papers OF Mayor-GENERAL SULLIVAN, II,

edited by Otis G. Hammond L. S. Mayo Leonarp Bacon, by T. D. Bacon Daniel Evans Lanp Ho! 1620, by W. S. Nickerson S. E. Morison PHILENIA, by Emily Pendleton and Milton Ellis Karl Schriftgiesser My Unirep Srates, by Frederic J. Stimson G. R. Nutter AMERICAN INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL Law,

by B. F. Wright D. W. Brogan EMERSON Topay, by Bliss Perry F. 1. Carpenter PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL

SOCIETY, LXIII H. S. Commager Tue Lapy or Godey’s, by Ruth E. Finley Lawrence Martin Ciassic AMERICANS, by H. S. Canby Stewart Mitchell LABORING AND DEPENDENT CLASSES IN COLONIAL

AMERICA, 1607-1783, by Marcus W. Jernegan Perry Miller Tue GREEN MOUNTAIN SERIES OF VERMONT Books,

edited by Arthur W. Peach Stewart Mitchell STANFORD WHITE, by C. E. Baldwin A. Hyatt Mayor JONATHAN Epwarps, by A. C. McGiffert F. 1. Carpenter SHORT NorIcEs

Tue New Encianp Quarterty is published quarterly at Portland, Maine. Publication Office, 105 Middle Street, Portland, Maine. Subscription Office, Post Office Box 66, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Manuscripts may be ad- dressed to S. E. Morison, 417 Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, Stanley T. Williams, 595 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, Connecti- cut, or Stewart Mitchell, Hotel Somerset, Boston, Massachusetts.

All books for review should be sent to Kenneth B. Murdock, The Master’s Lodgings, Leverett House, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

All Rights Reserved

Entered as second class matter January 5, 1929, at the post office at Portland, Maine, under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Copyright 1932 by The Southworth Press

THE NEW ENGLAND QVARTERLY

egistered in the United States P

An Historical Review of New England Life and Letters

.

Volume V. Number 2 April, 1932

CONTENTS

UNPUBLISHED Poems oF Emity Dickinson

Margaret Higginson Barney Frederic 1. Carpenter

Rocer SHERMAN: CoRDWAINER STATESMAN Julian P. Boyd HAWTHORNE AND Po.rrics Randall Stewart Rosert RanTout, JR. Merle E. Curti

Soncs AND VERsEs ABOUT WASHINGTON Mary W. Smyth RICHARD ParTRIDGE: COLONIAL AGENT Marguerite Appleton MEMORANDA AND DocuMENTs A New England Boy in the Civil War Caroline B. Sherman

James Otis and Jonathan Swift Floy P. Gates

A Book Note by Melville John H. Birss

Herman Melville’s Typee Nelson F. Adkins Book Reviews

PROVINCIAL AND Court Recorps or Maine, 11, edited by C. T. Libby; History or York, Maine, 1, by C. E. BANKs

J. F. Baldwin

Mr. Justice Hotes, edited by Felix Frankfurter T.V. Smith BLAINE OF Maine, by C. E. Russell R. V. Harlow LETTERS AND Papers oF Mayor-GENERAL SULLIVAN, II,

edited by Otis G. Hammond L. 8. Mayo LEonaRD Bacon, by T. D. Bacon Daniel Evans Lanp Ho! 1620, by W. S. Nickerson S. E. Morison PHILENIA, by Emily Pendleton and Milton Ellis Karl Schriftgiesser My UNITED Srates, by Frederic J. Stimson G. R. Nutter AMERICAN INTERPRETATION OF NaTuURAL Law,

by B. F. Wright D. W. Brogan EMERSON Topay, by Bliss Perry F.1. Carpenter PROCEEDINGS OF THE MAssACHUSETTS HISTORICAL

SOCIETY, LXIII H. S. Commager Tue Lapy or Godey’s, by Ruth E. Finley Lawrence Martin CLassic AMERICANS, by H. S. Canby Stewart Mitchell

LABORING AND DEPENDENT CLASSES IN COLONIAL AMERICA, 1607-1783, by Marcus W. Jernegan Perry Miller THe Green Mountain Series oF VERMONT Books,

edited by Arthur W. Peach Stewart Mitchell STanrorD WuirE, by C. E. Baldwin 4A. Hyatt Mayor JonaTHAN Epwarps, by A. C. McGiffert F.1. Carpenter SHort Norices Rosert Frost “Lacks Power” Robert Hillyer Nores ON NIGHTINGALES Stewart Mitchell A BisBLiocRaPHy oF New ENGLAND, 1931 Allyn B. Forbes

EpiroriaL Norices Nores ON CONTRIBUTORS

217

221 237 264 281

293

310 344 346 348

352 358 361

363 364 367 368 371

375 377

379 382

385 388

390 393 395

402 404 408 425

THE NEW ENGLAND QVARTERLY

APRIL, 1932

UNPUBLISHED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON

MARGARET HIGGINSON BARNEY FREDERIC IVES CARPENTER

HE experimental or imperfect work of an author

frequently proves as interesting and suggestive as the perfect work, which has been universally read and acclaimed. The carelessness of metre, the incompletion of rhyme, the abruptness, the anacolouthon — even the absence of apparent sense — often reveals the author more completely than the perfect metre or phrase. In the past, Emily Dickinson’s published poems have some- times been praised for their studied carelessness. The half-rhymes, the irregularities have seemed too excellent to be the result of spontaneous self-expression. But a reading of some of her less perfect poems, hitherto un- published, would seem to prove the opposite.

217

218 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

The following six poems of Emily Dickinson were among those sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson for his criticism and comment between the years 1860 and 1875.’ They are here reproduced from the manuscript volume given by Colonel Higginson as a part of the Galatea Collection, to the Boston Public Library, with the kind permission of the late Mr. Charles F. Belden, Librarian.

The cause of their not having been published before is not far to seek. The poems are unsuccessful in so far as formal perfection is concerned. But the very quality of their imperfection reveals something of the method of Emily Dickinson, the poet. They fail, not through lack of inspiration, but through lack of art. They all re- veal glimpses of the precious metal underneath. What is needed is a new assaying, a new refining.

The poems are here presented in the order in which they occur in the Galatea Collection. The dates of com- position have been approximately determined from the hand-writing of the manuscript. Only the last poem may be given a definite date, for it is mentioned in a letter written by Emily Dickinson to Colonel Higginson in 1875. She wrote: “I send you a Gale, and an Epitaph, and a Word to a Friend, and a Bluebird’ for Mrs. Higginson. Excuse them if they are untrue.”

1 A complete list of the poems sent Colonel Higginson will be found in

Letters of Emily Dickinson, recently published by Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd.

2 Not to be confused with the Bluebird published in Poems, Second Series.

POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON 219

1860-1870 To undertake is to achieve Be undertaking blent With fortitude of obstacle And toward encouragement.

That fine suspicion, natures must Permitted to revere Departed standards and the few

Criterion sources here.

1870-1875 (Sent with leaves) Dominion lasts until obtained, Possession just as long. But these — endowing as they flit Eternally belong.

How everlasting are the lips Known only to the dew!

These are the brides of permanence Supplanting me and you.

1870-1875 The days that we can spare Are those a function die, Or friend or nature — stranded there In our economy.

Our estimates a scheme,

Our ultimates a sham,

We let go all of time without Arithmetic of him.

220 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

1870-1875 The mind lives on the heart Like any parasite. If that is full of meat The mind is fat.

But if the heart omit, Emaciate the wit. The aliment of it

So absolute.

1870-1875 “Faithful to the end” amended From the Heavenly clause, Constancy with a proviso Constancy abhors.

“Crowns of life” are servile prizes To the stately heart. Given for the Giving, solely,

No emolument.

1875

After all birds have been investigated and laid aside, Nature imparts the little blue-bird, assured

Her conscientious voice will soar unmoved

Above ostensible vicissitude.

First at the March, competing with the wind, Her panting note exalts us, like a friend,

Last to adhere when summer cleaves away, Elegy of integrity.

ROGER SHERMAN: PORTRAIT OF A CORDWAINER STATESMAN

JULIAN P. BOYD I

66 HAT,” said Thomas Jefferson to a friend, “is Mr.

Sherman of Connecticut —a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” If all available records per- mit us to hazard a judgment, Jefferson was right. And it isno wonder. The pattern for Sherman’s life was fixed by the iron rules of conservative orthodoxy in Church and State as surely as any Calvinistic predestinarianism could have fixed it. No Puritan ever adhered more closely to the rules than did Sherman, and there was nothing in them to permit a man to say foolish things. Moreover, fortune had saddled upon him the necessity for gaining a livelihood by hard manual labor, and his efforts to achieve it had taught him a shrewd economy of words as well as money. Words were tools of great im- portance, to be chosen deliberately, used sparingly, and sent forth upon their mission soberly.

When, in 1761, Roger Sherman moved to New Haven, he found himself in what served as a metropolis for the colony, insofar as its fifteen hundred or so shop- keepers, artisans, and farmers could enable it to do so. Sitting quietly by the sea, the little port was outside the main currents of commerce and politics of the British Empire. She trafficked a little with Boston, New York, and the West Indies, but hardly any with England. Her

22!1

222 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

inhabitants, like those of all other towns in Connecticut, were contented, self-reliant, narrow, and independent in their isolation. The legislature, which met here every other session in the stately brick building on the com- mons, enacted laws whose main object was the preserva- tion of the Puritan status quo. The judges who inter- preted these laws did so with the same end in view, and, if doubt arose, confined themselves to “some plain and clear rule of the Word of God” rather than trust them- selves to the untried expedient of the English Common Law. The teachers in the rural academy called Yale Col- lege, who each year took a few farmer boys and made them over into Congregational ministers or school- masters, traveled the same road of orthodoxy.

The town common was the center of village life. On, or near it, were the court-house, the grammar- school, and the jail, with its stocks, whipping-post, and gibbet. Horses, cows, geese, and occasional pigs wan- dered about the green and added their barn-yard cacoph- ony to the quiet bustle of the town. Cumbersome cart- wheels cut deep ruts into the turf in the early spring. Youngsters, clad in leather breeches and spatter-dashes, played about the pond. Down at the harbor was the hum of an infant commerce. On the wharves were barrels of molasses and rum, stacked in rows of military precision, and close by one could detect the pungent smell of hickory smoke blending with the pleasant aroma of rum in the process of distillation.

All of this was carried on under the zgis of a Puritan society, dominated in all departments by Congregation- alism, chiefly of the sort that Jonathan Edwards was preaching up in Northampton. Government by the peo-

ROGER SHERMAN 223

ple was unheard of. Government for the people, by a select group of men, reélected year in and year out by reason of their orthodoxy, family, wealth, talents, edu- cation, and political experience, was the rule. It was essentialiy an aristocracy of worth, where progress or even change were ideas as abhorrent as democracy or heresy. The colony was a magnification of the towns that it consisted of, and in the towns as in the colony the rulers were all of the same pattern, with here and there an ill- fitting exception. They were eminently respectable, un- impeachable in character, and bound by the ties of ortho- doxy to serve God and man well by performing the duties of their offices with fidelity.

Roger Sherman was typical of the best that such a society could produce. As a private individual, he ex- emplified the Puritan virtues of self-reliance, industry, economy, strict morality, and devoutness. As a public official, he performed the duties of his office so as to safe- guard the integrity of the established order as nearly as possible and with as much economy as possible. His own convictions, altered here and there perhaps by convinc- ing argument but never by intimidation, guided him in the achievement of that end. There was little need for demagoguery, still less for graft and bribery, patronage and pusillanimity. Though the ominous rumble could be heard faintly, the noise of democracy was yet a long way off.

But those who picture this Puritanism as altogether somber and colorless, where souls were attended to and bodies neglected, are careful to select their materials. Connecticut produced a Jared Ingersoll as well as a Roger Sherman. They were neighbors in New Haven,

224 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

but they had little in common. Ingersoll was Yale-bred and a Loyalist; Sherman was self-taught and a Patriot. Ingersoll was a lawyer, a man of wealth and position, and had represented the colony at the court of George III. He owned slaves and fine horses and was, as his biographer says, “as closely akin in spirit to the Virginia cavalier as was likely to be found in New England.” But Roger Sherman never saw the fashionable lords in the Cockpit. The nearest he ever got to the atmosphere of the court of George III was in 1774 when, in the Con- tinental Congress, he met the aristocrats of the Virginia and South Carolina tidewater. He disapproved of both slavery and intoxicating liquors, and cared nothing for taste and fashion.

Nothing reveals his Puritanism so strikingly as an ap- praisal in terms of the contrast that Ingersoll offers. Fortunately, portraits of each have been preserved and we are enabled to make the astonishing contrast of the best that colonial Connecticut had to offer in smooth urbanity with the best that it had to offer in Puritan pro- vinciality. The portrait of Ingersoll is an exquisite Cop- ley, and is in the possession of a descendant in Boston; that of Sherman is by Ralph Ear! and is in the Yale Gal- lery of Fine Arts.

The Copley canvas shows Ingersoll seated in a richly upholstered chair at the side of a mahogany table. He is dressed in full court regalia; his knee-breeches are garnet colored, and his wrists are sheathed in ruffles of fine lace. He wears a dress sword. His white satin waistcoat is elaborately embroidered, and a cambric neckerchief with long lace ends falls inside his vest. His body is well poised, and his left hand rests gracefully

ROGER SHERMAN 225

on his knee. The expression on his regular features is one of dignity and gentility. The portrait might easily be that of an eighteenth-century London gentleman.

The portrait of Sherman is a masterpiece of photo- graphic authenticity —such a conclusion is inescapable to one who has gone through the records of his life. It fits in with everything we know about him. It is utterly devoid of the indications of extravagance and wealth that fill the Copley portrait. Sherman is seated in a plain Windsor chair in the corner of an unadorned room. His awkward posture is that of a self-conscious farmer. His clothes are plain and ill-fitting. His muscular wrists project awkwardly beyond his coat sleeves, and are quite devoid of lace ruffles. His coat, waistcoat, and tight- fitting knee-breeches are without ornament of any kind. In his rugged face there is not the slightest suggestion of sophistication or fine living. It is the face of a Con- necticut yeoman endowed with a superior intelligence, and is as square and honest as his blunt leather shoes.

Sherman’s hand also rests on his left knee, but with what a difference! Ingersoll’s fingers are long, taper- ing, and gracefully flexed. Sherman’s hand is large, his fingers blunt and muscular. He grasps his leg tightly. One feels that this is a stroke so accurate that a photograph could not improve upon it. Sherman’s hands had pegged shoes, measured rum, grasped plow handles, and wielded a hammer to the mellow clanging of a blacksmith’s anvil. But they became cumbersome and embarrassing when empty or idle. Yeomen’s hands have always been so.

Sherman’s contemporaries were almost invariably in- spired to sit down and draw pen pictures of this Puritan

226 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

patriot in their letters and diaries. John Adams of Mas- sachusetts, Silas Deane of Connecticut, Thomas Jeffer- son and Patrick Henry of Virginia, William Pierce of Georgia — all saw him from widely different vantage points, yet their descriptions bear witness that Ralph Earl drew an authentic likeness. None of them failed to speak highly of his intelligence, his honesty, his de- votion to public duty, his industry, and his piety. And few failed to point out his amazing ungainliness. In the First Continental Congress John Adams heard him speak, and immediately wrote in his diary:

Sherman’s air is the reverse of grace; there cannot be a more striking contrast to beautiful action than the motion of his hands. . . . He has a clear head and sound judgment, but when he moves a hand in anything like action, Hogarth’s genius could not have invented a motion more opposite to grace.

Thirteen years later, in the Constitutional Convention, William Pierce saw him for the first time and wrote:

Mr. Sherman exhibits the oddest shaped character I ever re- member to have met with. He is awkward, unmeaning, and unaccountably strange in his manner. In his train of thinking there is something regular, deep, and comprehensive; yet the oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking, and that strange New England cant which runs through his public as well as his private speaking make every- thing that is connected with him grotesque and laughable. And yet he deserves infinite praise — no man has a better heart or a clearer head.

“Grotesque and laughable.” Three-quarters of a cen- tury afterwards, another yeoman who had a like reputa- tion for honesty, intelligence, and statecraft was fur-

ROGER SHERMAN 227

rowing his brow to save the Union that Sherman had done so much to create. He, too, was called “grotesque and laughable”—“the Gorilla from Illinois.” But there the similitude ends. Lincoln was no Puritan and he had a sense of humor.

II

Sherman’s background was of a homespun humble- ness. His family was one of the oldest of the Puritan lines, undistinguished by wealth or social position and mainly devoted to agriculture, with an occasional clergy- man, schoolmaster, or local magistrate cropping out. Born into a family of limited means, he found it neces- sary to learn the trades of cordwainer, shop-keeper, and surveyor. He was an inveterate reader, admired Milton and Vattel, and knew the Bible well enough to discuss theological subjects with the leading divines of New England. From his life-long devoutness it is obvious that Congregationalism narrowly missed getting an able theologian, but his liking for politics was too strong. Like a true Puritan, the hatred of idleness flamed in him to an unusual degree. He followed the trades of cord- wainer and surveyor, bought and sold land, became a merchant, composed and published almanacs, and busied himself in all of the affairs of town and church. These various endeavors enabled him to operate mercantile establishments in New Milford, New Haven, and Wall- ingford, and soon he was prepared to devote all of his time to his chief interest.

He began to study law, was admitted to the bar, and became a Justice of the Peace within a year. Law led into politics, and from 1755 to his death in1793 he was never out of public office. He served an apprenticeship of sev-

228 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

eral years in the legislature, and then in 1766 was elected to the Governor’s council. This, under the Connecticut system, practically meant that he could hold the office quam diu se bene gesserit, and he did hold it for nine- teen years. There were annual elections, to be sure, but these were perfunctory affirmations of continued ap- proval rather than contests for reélection; only two gov- ernors of colonial Connecticut were ever really voted out of office. The same year Sherman was elected a judge of the superior court, and this office he held for twenty- three years. During the while he served as member of the Council of Safety, member of the Continental Con- gress, Mayor of New Haven, member of the Constitu- tional Convention, and afterwards as member of the Federal Congress and Senate. He was the only person to sign all four of the great documents upon which the structure of the republic rests: the Articles of Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federal Constitution. For a humble cordwainer, this was no casual achievement. In all of these offices he acted consistently with the Puritan training which was so deeply ingrained in him. This long record of service, which compares favorably with those of Washington and Franklin, was directed in the main toward one principal object: the maintenance of the established order as it was when the British ministry began its close surveillance of the colonies in 1763. One of the sure evidences of Sherman’s claim to statesmanship is his progression from a local politician in 1755, who regarded Connecticut’s isolation as a splendid one for maintaining the status quo in Puritan govern- ment, to a national figure in 1787 who found it necessary

ROGER SHERMAN 229

to compromise local autonomy with national consolida- tion for the same purpose.

As a prosperous merchant who objected to an external control over his trade, and as a Puritan who regarded the existing order as one that would retain its excellence only if kept intact, he naturally fell in with the Revolu- tionary movement. The enforcement of the Navigation Acts on the one hand, and the dubious prospect of an Anglican bishop in Connecticut on the other, struck at two of the main pillars in Sherman’s cosmos. He lacked the training in philosophy and jurisprudence that char- acterized the learned James Wilson and the radical Thomas Jefferson, but, surprising to relate, this orthodox and conservative Puritan stood with them in advance of his countrymen on the fringes of treason by declaring that Parliament had no right in any case to legislate for the colonies. He was one of the first to refer to the colonies as “distinct dominions” in the British Empire. That was the sort of political theory that suited the merchant class as well as the Puritan leaders in 1776. But it was also a theory that would come home to them after the war. When that time arrived, the “distinct dominions” were, as one patriot put it, “intoxicated with the idea of their own sovereignty,” and, under the dominance of an aroused populism, not only showed a distressing disregard for the welfare of the merchant class, but began to disintegrate the bonds which held the Puritan order together. Stay laws favoring debtors, paper money as legal tender, and the organization of Methodist churches in Connecticut were indubitable forerunners of democracy. Yet Sherman was consistent. In 1776 he joined the revolutionaries to protect material

230 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

interests and the established order from a blundering external control seated in Whitehall. In 1787 he joined the counter-revolutionaries to protect the same interests from the equally blundering and more malicious control of the local ragtag and bobtail.

If he was not grounded in the theory of government, he was, nevertheless, a master in the art of practical politics, and from the beginning he was a leader in the Continental Congress. If his revolutionary doctrines are surprising, no less so is his use of that adroit compro- mising and diplomatic “management” which are so essential to a mastery of statecraft. Puritans are not often found in attitudes of compromise with principles they hold in abhorrence, such, for instance, as slavery and democracy. Yet Sherman, perhaps more than any other, deserves the title of the Great Compromiser in the formative period of the Republic. Especially is this true of that convention in 1787 which produced the “bundle of compromises” known as the Federal Constitution. The chief one in the whole bundle, that concerning the mode of representation in the national legislature, was Sherman’s own handiwork.

On one matter, however, he revealed his Puritan theory of government by fighting an unpopular and an uncompromising battle. With a Yankee’s shrewd liking for sound credit, Sherman devoted probably a majority of his time in the Continental Congress to the task of keeping the nation at least within hailing distance of solvency. In season and out he protested against financ- ing the Revolution with paper money. Taxes alone, he insisted, could save America from an “enthralment of debt.” It was a futile task, yet he stuck to it. Forty-

ROGER SHERMAN 231

two separate times within four years did the govern- ment issue bales of fiat money. The States exulted in the blissful thought that provisions could be bought and armies paid by the mere expedient of enacting a law. Their presses ran overtime printing money. “Not worth a Continental” came to mean the ultimate in worthless- ness.

The essence of Puritan government was that the rulers should exercise their own judgment in the sight of God when deciding public questions, regardless of any popu- lar clamor to the contrary. Sherman stated the theory succinctly and there can be no doubt that he followed it:

It is the duty of a good representative to inquire what meas- ures are most likely to promote the general welfare, and, after - he has discovered them, to give them his support. Should his in- structions, therefore, coincide with his ideas on any measure, they would be unnecessary; if they were contrary to the con- viction of his own mind, he must be bound by every principle of justice to disregard them.

Only a superficial knowledge of the spirit of the Revolu- tion is needed to understand how much at variance with popular desire was Sherman’s stand concerning paper money and taxes. One of the grievances against Eng- land was that paper money had been prohibited by Act of Parliament. As for taxation, the word itself in the minds of many Americans was practically synonymous with tyranny. Yet Sherman wrote letter after letter to governors and others, urging the states to draw upon the country’s resources and not demoralize the nation’s finances by issuing fiat money. Sherman’s theory of a “good representative” is a point of view that belongs to the past. But compared with the blandishments with

232 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

which modern politicians fawn upon the electorate in the cadaverous light of Prohibition, the Puritan theory, if not in accord with prevalent democratic dogma, never- theless had much in it to recommend itself to the admira- tion of those who esteem such virtues in public officers as honesty, courage, and intellectual responsibility.

Eight years of arduous, nerve-wracking labor in the Continental Congress made Sherman far older than his sixty-three years indicated. In length of time, and per- haps also in industry and usefulness, his legislative ex- perience was greater than that of any other member. In 1784 he retired to New Haven to his judicial duties and his new office of mayor of the city. During the next three years he observed such democratic exuberances as Shays’s Rebellion with no less hostility than he had re- garded the measures of Lord North’s ministry. In 1787 he was ready for the counter-revolt.

Ill

While recent researches have gone to prove that the members of the Constitutional Convention were in sub- stantial agreement on the great objects to be accom- plished, such as giving the national government right of taxation, control of commerce, and power to establish a currency, the assembled statesmen were nevertheless di- vided on the question of the best form of government to achieve these objects. Nationalists like Wilson, Morris, and Hamilton collided on this matter with confederates like Patterson, Lansing, and Martin. In between was a small group acting as a balance wheel.

Two in this group deserve conspicuous places in a re- cital of the achievements of the convention. They were

ROGER SHERMAN 233

both self-made, both masters of the art of “manage- ment” that makes political bodies accomplish things, and both had records of long public service; yet in philoso- phy, in private morals, in personality, and in religion, they were poles apart. One was an opportunist, the other decided the minutest questions by reference to some accepted rule of conduct. When, in the midst of the chaotic debates that threatened to disrupt the convention, Benjamin Franklin moved that the meetings be opened with prayer, he probably did it altogether for its psycho- logical effect. But when Roger Sherman seconded the motion, he did it with a devout and fervent belief in the efficacy of prayer. He was too much of a Puritan not to believe that divine benedictions would answer their pub- lic petitions. In this fitting way the two most venerable of the elder statesmen gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 figured in one of the most dramatic moments of the most dramatic convention that has ever been held in America.

Franklin indulged in one other stroke in psychology when he let fall his famous remark about the sunburst on the Speaker’s chair, making it symbolic of the dawn of a new day in the history of America. But his eighty-one years militated against him in the arduous work of the convention. To Sherman, therefore, fell the exacting task of reconciling conflicting interests. There were, to be sure, few Luther Martins in the convention, with adamant convictions and uncompromising natures. And others like Ellsworth and Dickinson also sought to com- promise disputes. Yet Sherman, by reason of his un- rivalled experience in the Continental Congress, was easily the leader of this group. It was he who moved the “Connecticut Compromise,” whereby States were

234 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

equally represented in the Senate and in proportion to population in the House. Moreover, he had anticipated such a measure as early as 1776. On many points he changed his own convictions when it seemed that the ultimate objects could be achieved in no other way. He entered the convention believing that the Articles of Confederation merely needed amendment so as to give Congress the power “somewhere to draw forth the na- tional resources.” His biographer, finding that Sher- man’s defense of the States’ privileges and distrust of the people had given Calhoun too much comfort, glided softly around the matter by saying that Sherman yield- ed to compromises which “gave us not an ideally perfect national government, but the best perhaps which the people were willing to bear.” The fact is that Sherman was very much pleased with the outcome. It promised to be a safe adjustment of local autonomy with national interests. But his chief arguments for ratification were not the excellences of the Constitution so much as the dangers that would face the people if it were not adopted.

There remained only the question of putting the new government in force. Early in 1789 the legislature elected him as a representative in Congress. Deliber- ately, as usual, he considered the matter. If he accepted, he must resign as judge. Would the legislature, he asked Governor Huntington, provide temporarily that his ac- ceptance would not vacate his judicial position? If not, he must crave time for further deliberation. The legis- lature, he was informed, would not. Here was a difficult decision. Was a state judgeship preferable to a seat in the national legislature? Most public men, even Fed- eralists, would probably have answered affirmatively.

ROGER SHERMAN 235

But there was more involved. The credit of the nation was sinking, commerce was demoralized, the States were drifting into chaos. The Constitution must be put in force to end the dangers that threatened to bring democ- racy and other horrors in their wake. Sherman resigned his position as judge and set out in his chaise for New York.

When Hamilton brought forth his scheme for fund- ing the national debt, assuming the debts of the States, and establishing a national bank, he found it necessary to make a famous trade with Jefferson, giving him enough votes to carry the capital to the Potomac and tak- ing enough in return to insure the passage of his own measures. But Sherman’s vote was not in the bargain: he voted for Hamilton’s measures and against the Po- tomac site. In doing so he was merely climaxing his réle as a self-appointed watchman of the nation’s credit. His slow, ponderous judgments had in them none of the dash and brilliance that characterized Hamilton, yet the whole Hamiltonian structure of national finance is a monument to Sherman’s Yankee shrewdness as well as to Hamilton’s genius. Long before Hamilton ever thought of having the finances of the nation in his charge, Sher- man had suggested a sound currency supported by taxa- tion and had labored to have the national debt funded. But the time was not ripe. Not until the Constitution had been adopted and Hamilton appointed Secretary of the Treasury did the man and the moment meet.

Two years in Congress and two more in the Senate Sherman gave to an unremitting support of the great measures that Hamilton set forth. Then, having spent a majority of his seventy-two years in honest public service,

236 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

he died in the comforting thought that the safeguard- ing of the Puritan status guo was at last achieved. Ten years more and the indubitable evidence of decay in the props of Federalism as well as Puritanism would have poisoned his thoughts as it did those of Timothy Dwight and Fisher Ames and Timothy Pickering.

In a day when too many public officials show a will- ingness to support any measure that promises a majority of votes for them, Ralph Earl’s portrait of an awkward country lawyer, sitting in a plain Windsor chair in the corner of an unadorned room, deserves contemplation and reflection. He sincerely believed the people to be incapable of governing themselves, and said so. The product of a society that encouraged sobriety and aus- terity, he was not an affable or even a genial person. Yet there will be cause to apprehend the future if America should lose sight of those homely virtues that were the most cherished values in the Puritanism that produced Sherman: industry, integrity, and devotion to duty in public office and private life. A reader of Uncle Tom’s Cabin once remarked that an institution that could pro- duce such a character as Uncle Tom could not be alto- gether bad. Likewise, though there was much in it to condemn, a Puritan society that could produce a Roger Sherman surely had a part of the secret for governing itself.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS UNPUBLISHED LETTERS TO WILLIAM B. PIKE

EDITED BY RANDALL STEWART

AWTHORNE’S career in politics, which forms the background of the following letters to Will- iam B. Pike,’ an intimate political associate for nearly twenty years, deserves, perhaps, more emphasis than it has hitherto received. His political activities may be said to have begun as early as 1837, when his

1 William B. Pike (1810-1876) was the son of a carpenter whose trade he followed as a young man and at intervals throughout his life. Inspired by Andrew Jackson, he joined the Democratic party and be- came a politician and office-holder. He was associated with Hawthorne in the custom houses of Boston and Salem. After a brief tenure in the Boston Custom House (1839-1841), he was removed in accordance with the principle of “rotation in office.” He was weigher and gauger at the Salem Custom House from 1845 to 1857, and collector from 1857 to 1861. For additional biographical details, see George H. Holden, “Haw- thorne Among His Friends,” Harper’s Magazine, LXi11, 260-267, July, 1381.

Pike, according to Julian Hawthorne, “probably knew Hawthorne more intimately than any other man did” (Julian Hawthorne, Haw- thorne and His Wife, (Boston, 1885), 1, 444). Rose Hawthorne, who remembered having seen Pike at “The Wayside” after the return of the family from England, wrote concerning him: “He was so short, sturdy, phlegmatic of exterior, and plebeian, that I was astonished at my fa- ther’s pleasure in his company, until I noticed a certain gentleness in his manner of stepping [speaking? ], and heard the modulations of his voice, and caught the fragrance of his humility.” Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), 154. For a long description of Pike by Hawthorne, written in 1839, see ibid., 39-41.

One letter by Pike to Hawthorne, and two letters by Hawthorne to Pike have been published (see Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 444-447; Memories of Hawthorne, 150-154, and G. P. Lathrop, Biographical Sketch of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Complete Works of Hawthorne, River- side Edition (Boston, 1888), X11, 520-523).

237

238 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

friends, Horatio Bridge, Franklin Pierce, and Jona- than Cilley, almost succeeded in procuring his appoint- ment as the Historian of an Exploring Expedition to the South Seas.* The political influence thus made operative resulted in Hawthorne’s appointment by George Bancroft, on January 17, 1839, as measurer in the Boston Custom House. Partly because of the un- congenial nature of his duties, and partly because of his desire to join “Mr. Ripley’s Utopia” at Brook Farm, he resigned this office on January 1, 1841. Less than a year after his marriage, Hawthorne was again eager to secure a political appointment: in his jour- nal of March 31, 1843, he mentioned the “prospect of official station and emolument.”* This prospect was not to be realized, however, until 1846. The interval of three years was a period of anxiety, because of Haw- thorne’s impoverished financial condition, and of con- siderable political activity on the part of both Haw- thorne and his friends. “Polk’s election,” he wrote to his wife from Salem on December 2, 1844, “has cer- tainly brightened our prospects; and we have a right to expect that our difficulties will vanish, in the course of a few months.”* A letter to Bridge, dated Salem, November 29, 1844, indicates that Hawthorne hoped to be made Postmaster at Salem.* With the very defi- nite object of promoting his friend’s political interests, Bridge invited Hawthorne to Portsmouth in July, 1845, 2 See Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 148-158. * Passages from the American Note-Books (Boston, 1888), 330.

* Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Chicago, 1907), 1, 115.

5 Horatio Bridge, Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1893), 98-99.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 239

to confer with Franklin Pierce, Charles G. Atherton, and John Fairfield, all of whom, at that time, were United States Senators.* After much shrewd manip- ulation, in which Hawthorne, according to his own statement, proved himself “considerable of a polliti- cian,” he was appointed surveyor at the Salem Cus- tom House on April 9, 1846. His tenure was abruptly terminated by removal on June 7, 1849." For a period of three years, Hawthorne enjoyed a respite from pol- itics. But the nomination of Franklin Pierce as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in June, 1852, brought him back into the political arena as the author of the campaign biography. After Pierce’s election, Hawthorne was besieged by office-seekers, since he was regarded as a man of influence with the new adminis- tration. His last political office was the consulship at Liverpool, which he held from August 1, 1853, to Au- gust 31, 1857.

Except for two intervals, therefore, of two and three years respectively, 1841-1842 and 1849-1852, Haw- thorne was involved in politics, either as an office- seeker or an office-holder, for twenty years. It is only fair to say, however, that his political activity was mo- tivated by financial necessity. He received very little money for his books before the publication of The Scar- let Letter in 1850; and the increased income from his writings after that date was not adequate for the grow-

® Bridge, Personal Recollections, 109.

7 From an unpublished letter to Bridge, dated Salem, March 1, 1846, in the possession of Miss Margaret S. Maurice.

® For the circumstances attending Hawthorne’s dismissal from office, see Winfield S. Nevins, “Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Removal from the Salem Custom House,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, L111, 97-132, April, 1917.

240 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ing needs of his family. Official station seemed to be

the only means of subsistence available to him. But he intensely disliked politicians and political methods. In a letter to Sophia Peabody, dated Boston, March 15, 1840, he wrote the following vigorous pronounce- ment:

I do detest all offices—all, at least, that are held on a polit- ical tenure. And I want nothing to do with politicians — they are not men; they cease to be men, in becoming poli- ticians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to India-rubber—or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much. One thing, if no more, I have gained by my Custom-House experience —to know a politician. It is a knowledge which no previous thought, or power of sympathy, could have taught me, because the animal, or the machine rather, is not in nature.”

A feeling of repugnance toward the Salem Custom House and an eagerness to resign the consulship at Liv- erpool as soon as he should have accumulated a “mod- erate competence” are revealed by several passages in the letters which follow.

But in spite of this aversion to politics, Hawthorne acquired a good deal of skill as a politician. It was a disagreeable game, which, nevertheless, he would play to the best of his ability, since his livelihood depended, in no small measure, upon success. Several passages in the following letters suggest an active and sagacious participation in local political movements. It is hardly possible, and perhaps unnecessary, to reconstruct in de- tail the alignments of forces and the rivalries of petty factions in the Democratic party in the district of Bos-

® Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1, 149.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 241

ton and Salem during the two decades of his political career. The letters to Pike, however, and other letters, particularly those to Horatio Bridge,”® show that Haw- thorne was constantly en rapport with persons and movements in the contest.

As a political strategist, Hawthorne, it seems, was a consistent advocate of harmony within the ranks of the party, for the very utilitarian reason that open warfare is suicidal. A passage from the letter to Pike dated Bos- ton, February 10, 1840, is remarkable for its cool cal- culation:

So far as my personal gratification is concerned, I should like nothing better than to have you come out upon Bancroft in the way you propose; but for your own sake, I should advise you to consider well before taking such a step. It will render it impossible for him to offer, or for you to receive, any office hereafter; whereas, as the case now stands, it appears to me that you may sooner or later be forced upon him. Do not act hastily; it will never be too late to blow him up; and you will have other opportunities fully as advantageous. So long as there is a possibility of his being of use to you, do not compel him to be your open enemy.”

Passages of similar purport occur in some unpublished letters to Zachariah Burchmore. Ina letter dated Con- cord, March 14, 1853, Hawthorne wrote:

I advise you to try to make friends with the enemy, before proceeding to open war. Perhaps it may be a false alarm, after all. Do not force them into an attitude of hostility, if they have not already taken it. If you have an interview with the President [Franklin Pierce], speak of them in a friendly way, and do not (unless compelled) act on the sup- position that they are hostile to you.”

2° Published, in part, in Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Haw- thorne.

11 See below, page 246.

12 This letter is in the Morgan Library.

242 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

And he wrote to Burchmore again from Concord, on May 31, 1853:

Meantime, be quiet, and do not let them [the enemy] sus- pect you of founding your hopes upon any hostile section of the party. If you declare war against them, and try to fight your way in, I would not give a “whore’s cuss” (to borrow an elegant phrase from the old General)"* for your chance of being re-instated.™*

Here, his efforts toward the establishment of a modus vivendi were motivated not only by political expediency but by a genuine friendship for both Burchmore and Pike, who was, apparently, one of the “enemy.”

Of particular interest are the repeated efforts made by Hawthorne in behalf of other office-seekers, since these activities reveal both a commendable altruism and his importance as a political personage. As early as his term of office in the Boston Custom House, Hawthorne was engaged in supporting the candidacy of others. “I did not write you yesterday,” he explained to Sophia Peabody on August 25, 1839, “because . . . I had a diffi- cult letter to project and execute in behalf of an of-

fice seeker.”** In one of the letters to Pike, there is a reference to a communication of this kind.*° When

Franklin Pierce became President, Hawthorne was in- strumental in securing for his friend, Ephraim F. Miller, the collectorship at Salem.” “If I did not save

18 General James Miller, who was collector at the Salem Custom House while Hawthorne was surveyor there, and to whose character Hawthorne paid an eloquent tribute in “The Custom House” (see The Scarlet Letter, Riverside Edition, 36-41).

14 This letter is in the Morgan Library.

15 Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1, 54.

16 See the letter of October 14, 1846.

me Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher (Boston, 1913), 38.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 243

him [ Miller],” he protested in a letter to Burchmore, “T should like to know who the devil did.” Better known are his efforts to obtain political appointments for R. H. Stoddard” and Herman Melville.” In- deed, at the time of Pierce’s inauguration, Hawthorne was the advocate of many applicants: “There is so much of my paper [i.e., letters of recommendation] now in the President’s hands,” he wrote to Burchmore, “that (as the note-shavers say) I am afraid it will be going at a discount.”* He appealed many times to Pike’s generosity in behalf of Burchmore and Howard.” And as a final instance of activities of this kind — when he resigned the consulship at Liverpool, Hawthorne sent to President Buchanan, through the intermediary | agency of Bridge and Pierce, an ardent plea for the retention of J. L. O’Sullivan as Minister to Portugal.”

The study of Hawthorne’s political career reveals with special illumination certain distinctive aspects of his personality: his democracy, his loyalty to friends, his practicality, his shrewdness, his skill in diplomacy, and his remarkable sense of humor. Henry James pointed out “the democratic strain in Hawthorne’s

18 From an unpublished letter, dated Concord, May 31, 1853, in the Morgan Library.

19 See R. H. Stoddard, Recollections, Personal and Literary (New York, 1903), 126-127, 134.

20 See Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 134.

21 From an unpublished letter, dated Concord, March 14, 1853, in the Morgan Library.

22 See below: the letters of March 29, 1853; June 19, 1853; July 17, 1856; February 27, 1857; and March 27, 1857. 23 See Bridge, Personal Recollections, 158.

244 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

composition” —a trait which is admirably illustrated by his friendship with Burchmore and Pike. His loy- alty to his friends was capable of assuming heroic pro- portions: witness the often-repeated story of the ded- ication of Our Old Home.” His letters to political allies abound in sagacious advice which must have been received as almost oracular by the Salem junto. He knew his way among the politicians at Washington. “Are you fond of brandy?” he asked young Stoddard, with worldly cynicism; “. . . most of these public men are inveterate guzzlers, and love a man that can stand up to them in that particular.”” And throughout his career in politics, an unfailing sense of humor pre- vented him from being deceived, for a moment, as to the real nature of the political occupation. “I think you must blaze away a little harder in your advertise- ment,” Hawthorne wrote to Ticknor, apropos of the forthcoming Life of Franklin Pierce. “We are poli- ticians, now; and you must not expect to conduct your- self like a gentlemanly publisher.” His letter in which he advised Stoddard to accept any post that might be offered, regardless of his personal qualifications, with the view of being transferred later, if necessary, to a more suitable office, is a masterpiece of cynical humor.” In brief, the worldly and pragmatic Hawthorne, who is revealed, in part, by such fragmentary materials as

24 Henry James, Hawthorne (New York, 1880), 46.

25 See James T. Fields, Yesterdays With Authors (Boston, 1882), 107- 108.

26 Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 461-462.

27 From an unpublished letter, dated Concord, August 25, 1852, in the Huntington Library.

28 See Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 462.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 245

are presented here, must be taken into account in any view of the man which aims at totality.

Boston, Fesruary 10TH, 1840.”

Dear Pike,

I was not more explicit in reference to those letters because I did not know their precise purport, and because I was re- quested not to mention the writer’s name. The letters were from the representative from Middlesex, and were addressed to Ball and Colonel Thomas. I have seen Colonel Thomas this afternoon; and he says that he has since received another letter, dated the 6th instant which makes no mention of the Post-Office affair.*° Ball’s letter was dated the 3d.

The result of my personal interview with Colone] Thomas is that I consider the affair more desperate than when I wrote you last. Its aspect is so discouraging, that I should not wish you to take any steps that may compromise yourself, and put you on worse terms with Rantoul than you are already. It is by no means clear to me that Woodbury’s name has not been sent to the Senate.** The letters to Colonel Thomas are rather negative than positive —he infers that the appointment is not made, because the writer does not say so. The letter to Ball is more positive; but (from a fact that has recently come to my knowledge) I suspect that the writer might have reasons for wishing to deceive him, and for inducing him to suppose that he was earnest in my favor. If you draw any in- ferences from this point, keep them to yourself — but I don’t

2° The following letters, unless it is otherwise indicated, are in the possession of Miss Margaret S. Maurice.

8° Hawthorne at this time was making an effort, apparently, to secure the postmastership at Salem, an office which he continued to covet, though without success, for several years. He wrote to Horatio Bridge from Con- cord on March 24, 1843: “. . . possibly it [the postmastership] will yet be the reward of my patriotism and public services” (Personal Recollec- tions of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 90).

31 The Salem Gazette for February 25, 1840, announced the appoint- ment, “by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,” of Charles W. Woodbury as Postmaster at Salem.

246 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

believe that you will guess at the truth. On the whole, I conclude that we have lost the battle. Nevertheless, if Doctor Brown™ feels inclined to come out against Woodbury, I would not do or say anything to prevent him. I impart to you my present gloomy view of the business, because you have a claim upon me to know the whole truth. I don’t feel my- self under much obligation to anybody else; nor do I care how much they embroil themselves with the Rantoul faction.

What an astounding liar our venerated chief** turns out to be! I must confess, however, that I do not put implicit confidence in Palfray’s representation of the matter—his own conduct having been, in my opinion, not much more honorable than Bancroft’s. So far as my personal gratifica- tion is concerned, I should like nothing better than to have you come out upon Bancroft in the way you propose; but for your own sake, I should advise you to consider well before taking such a step. It will render it impossible for him to offer, or for you to receive, any office hereafter; whereas, as the case now stands, it appears to me that you may sooner or later be forced upon him. Do not act hastily; it will never be too late to blow him up; and you will have other oppor- tunities fully as advantageous. So long as there is a possi- bility of his being of use to you, do not compel him to be your open enemy. I advise you, in the first place, to com- municate with him in private. If you still resolve to open your battery upon him, be careful not to compromise Colonel Hall,** from whom is derived most of our information as to his being favorable to my application for the Post-Office. As to myself, you may mention anything that I have said to you, with the single exception of what was said in reference to R’s ill opinion of you.

82 Benjamin Frederick Browne (see note 35).

58 George Bancroft (1800-1891), as collector of the port, was the head official of the Boston Custom House. He was later Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of James K. Polk.

54 Colonel Hall was head of the measurer’s department in the Boston Custom House. Hawthorne was his immediate subordinate and occasion- ally acted as head of the department during Hall’s absences (see Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1, 64).

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 247

I don’t know how soon I shall be in Salem. I wish you would come up here and hold a talk. There are some things that I should like to impart to you, but hardly feel myself at liberty — certainly not on paper. So I conclude with drink-

ing your health in a glass of hot gin and water, and subscribe myself,

Your friend, NaTH[ANIE]L HAWTHORNE.

Bosron, Marcu 19TH, 1840. Dear PiKeE,

I return Dr. Brown’s Dartmoor manuscript, and beg you to express my acknowledgments to him for the perusal. It has afforded me much entertainment and instruction; and I

should suppose that the work might easily be made very ac- ceptable to the public.**

I have dunned Loring on your account; and he promised

to call immediately on Holman, and pay him half the amount of the due bill.

I intend to come to Salem on Saturday; and Colonel Hall has appointed to meet me at the Essex House there, at two o'clock of that day. He wishes likewise to see you; and as

85 This manuscript was edited later by Hawthorne and, with the ex- ception of one chapter, was published, anonymously, and in installments, under the title, “Papers of an Old Dartmoor Prisoner, Edited by Na- thaniel Hawthorne,” in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January-September, 1846. The chapters in the magazine were first collected by Mr. Clifford Smyth and were printed, with the addition of the unpublished chapter, the manuscript of which Mr. Smyth had discovered, under the title, The Yarn of a Yankee Privateer (New York and London, 1926). Mr. Smyth conjectured the author to be one John Lord, a great-uncle of Hawthorne’s. When this conjecture was received with scepticism, Mr. Smyth’s publishers offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the solution of the problem. This device resulted in the presen- tation of evidence, none of which came from Hawthorne himself, tending to show that the author of the narrative was Benjamin Frederick Browne (1793-1873). (For a detailed account of the developments following the publication of The Yarn of a Yankee Privateer, see “Hawthorne’s ‘Pri- vateer’ Revealed at Last,” The Literary Digest, xcit1, 44-49, April 9, 1927). The passage in Hawthorne’s letter to Pike may be regarded as definitely establishing Browne’s authorship.

248 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

it is possible that I may not be able to keep the appointment, I hope you will not fail to be there at the time aforesaid.” If not fair weather, he probably will not come.

Yours truly, Natu[anre]it HAwTHorne.

SaLeM, June 28TH, 1840. Dear Pike,

I have received a letter from the Navy Department, in answer to the one which you requested me to write.” Mr. Paulding™ says—“The Department has already referred an application, made by the Hon. Mr. Parmenter in behalf of the same person, to Com. Warrington for a report; and I hope when that is received it will be such as will enable me to accede to your wishes by directing Cook’s discharge.”

Yours truly, Natu[AnrE]iL HAwTHorne.

%*1f Hawthorne was unable to keep his appointment, it was because he preferred to call on Miss Sophia Peabody, who lived in Salem at this time, and to whom he was engaged to be married.

The proposed meeting of Hall, Pike, and Hawthorne was one of many political conferences which Hawthorne attended during his lifetime. In a letter to Sophia Peabody, dated Boston, March 15, 1840, Hawthorne spoke darkly of a political appointment which would make possible his residence in Salem near his beloved but which would require his absence in Washington for extended periods, and added: “Do not be frightened, dearest—nor rejoiced either—for the thing will not be. It might be, if I chose; but on multitudinous accounts, my present situation seems pref- erable.” (Lowe Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1, 149.)

37 Hawthorne’s letter, a copy of which has been sent to me by the Navy Department, was addressed to J. K. Paulding, Secretary of the Navy, and requested the discharge from the naval service of one James Cook, who was a former publisher of The Salem Advertiser, 2 Demo- cratic paper, and who, it is averred, was mentally deranged at the time of his enlistment. Cook, according to the naval records, was discharged on July 23, 1840.

38 Hawthorne’s letter, which is a model of diplomatic correspondence, concludes with the following complimentary address to Paulding: “It is with reluctance, Sir, that I have taken this liberty, as being unknown to you personally, nor perhaps by reputation; and yet, apart from your official character, I cannot but feel it one of my birth-rights to address Mr. Paulding, who has made himself the admired and familiar friend of every reader in the land.”

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 249

Boston, NovEMBER 14TH, 1840. Dear Pike,

I met Rantoul and Woodbury this morning, on their way to see Bancroft, in order to intercede on Hill’s behalf, for my place.” I have understood (but this is a profound se- cret) that the permanent office has been promised to Seaver. If this be the case, is there not some danger that Hill will have the temporary office, which was promised to you?

I do not know what success R & W met with.

Yours truly, N[ATHANIEL] HAWTHORNE.

SALEM, Ocroser 14, 1846*° Dear Pike,

I have stretched my conscience to the utmost, and written the enclosed letter — which I think is quite as strong as Hoyt can possibly expect. I shall be glad if it do him any good, but do not believe that Pierce** will take any active inter- est in the affair.

Pierce knows you well, and has a great respect for your character and political insight. We have often talked to- gether about you. A letter from yourself would be quite as likely to help Hoyt as one from me.

Yours truly, N[ATHANIEL] H[AwrHorne].

39 By this time, Hawthorne, apparently, had resigned his position in the Boston Custom House, although the resignation did not take effect until January 1, 1841 (compare George Edwin Jepson, “Hawthorne in the Boston Custom House,” Bookman, xX, 573-580, August, 1904). As early as November 27, 1840, Hawthorne had decided to join “Mr. Ripley’s Utopia” at Brook Farm (Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I, 229).

*° This letter is in the possession of Mr. U. S. Milburn.

*1 Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) was graduated in 1824 from Bow- doin College, where he and Hawthorne were members of the Athenzan Literary Society. He was a United States Senator from 1837 to 1842. In 1846, he was engaged in the practice of law at Concord, New Hamp- shire; but his importance in political affairs is indicated by the fact that he was offered, though he declined, the post of Attorney-General in President Polk’s cabinet.

250 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Wesr Newton, DecemBer 25TH, 1851. Dear Pike,

I wish you would come and see us; so does my wife, and so do the children. Come any time, the sooner the better, and stay as long as you please. You might at least come out on Saturday afternoon, and go away Monday morning. Trains leave Boston at 14 past 12, 3, 5%4, 2, 6%, and leave Newton at 10 minutes past 7, at 8, at 4% past 9 and many other times in the course of the day. So it need be no interruption to your business. Do come.

Yours truly, Natu[anre]i HawTHorne.

P.S. Our house is within three minutes walk of the rail- road.

Concorp (Mass[achusetts]) Juty 20, 52“ Dear Pike,

I think we must have mutually magnetized each other, and thus brought about the coincidence of sending simul- taneous letters in reference to your visit. But why should you not come on Saturday in the cars? ‘The trouble and expense will be much less; and it will not make more than an hour’s difference in your return to Salem, on Monday. The first cars leave here at 7 A.M. The cars leave Boston for this place at 4 o'clock, (I think) and at % past 6, P.M. According to your plan, you will be here only a part of a day; not long enough to do up much talking; whereas, on my system, we shall have an entire day and two evenings — so we shall expect you confidently on Saturday at tea-time.

Yours truly, NatH[AnrE]L HAwTHoRNE.

P.S. We have a barn, but no hay nor corn—so that we could not put the horse up. Do come in the cars; and if *2 This letter is in the possession of the Iowa Historical Society. Haw-

thorne was engaged at this time in writing the campaign biography of Franklin Pierce.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 251

nothing else will satisfy you, we can get a chaise here, and I could take you part or a whole of the way to Boston, on Sunday afternoon.

Could you ascertain whether Dora Golden*® (now Mrs. Inwood) received a package from my wife, within ten days or thereabouts? She lives in Mason Court, Liberty-street.

Concorp, NovEMBER 12TH, ’52. Dear Pike, , > 5

I have never heard of a translation of Pierce’s life into German, and do not believe that such a thing exists. Ow- ing to its tardy appearance, it could not have been done in season to be read by our German population, during the campaign; although portions of it may probably have been published in the German newspapers.

I met Simon Barstow in Boston and he asked me when the dinner was to be. For the future, I mean to go to the city incog.—or, at least, without the knowledge of anybody in Salem, except yourself. I had hardly a single moment to myself, during two days that I staid there.**

Truly yours, N. H.

Concorp, NovEMBER 22D ’52. Dear Pixe,

I heartily congratulate you on the birth of your baby; for I doubt not you will love it just as much as if it were your own.” Being of the feminine gender, she cannot receive the name which Abby“ intended for her. What if you should call her Fanny Pierce? —Fanny being the feminine of Frank.

43 Dora Golden had been a nurse-maid in the Hawthorne family dur- ing their residence in Salem (Hawthorne and His Wife, 1, 343).

#4 After the election of Pierce on November 4, 1852, Hawthorne, be- cause of his intimacy with the President-elect, was harassed by office- seekers.

*5 Presumably the child of one of Pike’s sisters. Pike, who never mar- ried, lived with three maiden aunts (see below).

*® A nickname for Hawthorne’s sister, Elizabeth.

252 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

I will be at Parker’s®’ at twelve oclock on Wednesday. If convenient I should like to have a little talk with you, before meeting Simon Barstow.

My wife and all the family are going to West Newton on Wednesday, to stay over Thanksgiving. Could you not come here and stay with me, during their absence? If so, come to Boston prepared.

Yours truly, N. HAwTHorne.

Concorp, Marcu 29TH, ’53. Dear Pixe,

Please to deliver the enclosed to Mr. Lord. I have told him that I will be in Boston on Thursday —by which time, probably, the smoke will have cleared away, so that we may be able to find out whether Zack has done anything. I rather think I have frightened him so damnably by my let- ters that he is afraid to come home. Spare the poor devil —or rather, heap coals of fire upon his head, as Scripture enjoins.”

*? The bar-room at the Parker House was a favorite place for the meet- ing of Hawthorne and his political associates. There are descriptions of the room in Passages from the American Note-Books, 375-376, and in The Blithedale Romance, 519.

#8 Mrs. Hawthorne’s sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, resided in West Newton.

*® Zachariah Burchmore was clerk of the Salem Custom House while Hawthorne was surveyor there (1846-1849). Hawthorne describes him in “The Custom House” as a “man . . . the observation of whose char- acter gave me a new idea of talent” (The Scarlet Letter, 41). At the time of this letter, Burchmore was an applicant for the place of ap- praiser in the Boston Custom House; and Hawthorne, on March 4, 1853, had written to Charles G. Atherton in his behalf (the letter was printed in The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, August 5, 1883). From an unpublished letter in the Morgan Library by Hawthorne to Burchmore, dated Concord, March 14, 1853, one infers that Burchmore had gone to Washington to advance his political interests and that a faction, led by Lord, was opposing him. In another unpublished letter in the Morgan Library, dated Concord, May 31, 1853, Hawthorne wrote to Burchmore: “I have already taken one step towards a negotiation with the enemy respecting your being restored to your old place. . . . Be prudent — keep on good terms with Lord — treat Pike as an old friend, and, if occasion

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HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 253

I have a letter from Pierce telling me of my confirma- tion. I am not to take the office, however, until the first of August, my predecessor having requested to hold his po- sition till that date, which is the end of his four years. The same favor must be granted to me at the end of my term, or I shall be woefully out of pocket by Pierce’s complai- sance. I mean to sail in the middle of July.

I want you at Liverpool for your own sake and mine, and I want it understood beforehand that you are to have the first situation that it may be in my power to give, so that I may hold you up as a screen between me and cther applicants. I don’t think very favorably of taking the in- dividual whom you mention.

Haley Barstow has applied for the place of my “First As- sistant” at Liverpool! God deliver me from such assist- ance!

Truly yours,

Natu[ANIE]L HAWTHORNE.

Concorp, JUNE I9QTH, 53. Dear Pike,

I fully expected you last night and can’t imagine why you did not come. There are but two more Saturday nights before we go; and I want to talk to you about sev- eral matters— especially about your joining me in Liver- pool, in case there should be an opening there.

Another subject of considerable uneasiness to me is this poor devil Zack. I have no idea that Peaslee will do any-

serve, let him know that you regret ever having differed with him, and that his good offices would now be most valuable to you — say as little as possible about me, or any other foreign influence — and I think that ultimately all will go well.” (The letter is unsigned.)

5° Franklin Pierce assumed the presidential office on March 4, 1853; he nominated Hawthorne Consul at Liverpool on March 23 and the Senate confirmed the nomination three days later. The Hawthornes sailed for England on July 6, 1853.

254 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

thing for him; and unless you can find in your heart to help him, he is utterly lost. To be sure, he deserves noth- ing—he is a poor, miserable, broken, drunken, disagreeable loafer, contemptible as an enemy, and only troublesome to his friends; and for these very reasons, I throw him upon your generosity. Help him, or he sinks. ‘This, it seems to me, is the critical point with Zack; and if he is left much longer in the lurch, he will be past redemption. He is humbled now, and has come to a proper sense of his own imbecility; and, so far, adversity will have been good for him. He will never forget the lesson. But if you really mean to desert him, his fate is obvious—he will die a drunkard within two years; and to tell you the truth, Pike, I shall not envy you your feelings when you stand over his grave and scent the fumes of the rum oozing up through the sods—and remember how he was your friend for thirty years, and never differed with you until within the last five years of his life, and then only through a silly vanity — and how he was once able to do you good, and did it, and never did you any harm, even if he desired it—and how, at his pinch, you lent him no assistance, merely because he deserved nothing! In God’s name, which of us miserable sinners does deserve anything? *

Now I do think that it would be creditable to all of you, if Zack were permitted to creep back again into his old clerkship — the only position which he is qualified for, and

51 Hawthorne’s concern for Burchmore’s sobriety is evident as early as June 9, 1850, when he wrote from Lenox: “Permit me to express a hope that you will be as abstinent from choice as I am from necessity. Hadn’t we better make a mutual pledge not to drink a glass of spirits until we meet again? Awful! I don’t believe you will agree to it, nor stick to it if you do. As for myself, I could not break the pledge if I wished, liquor being quite unattainable.” In the same letter, Hawthorne urged Burch- more’s reconciliation with Pike: “P[ike] has a real affection for you, and I trust you will not do or say anything that may make it impossible for you to be friends hereafter. He is certainly not a frank and candid man like yourself, but I uphold him to be incapable of treachery to his

friends.” (This letter was published in The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, August 5, 1883.)

ee ee ae oe. ee ee |

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 255

which no other man can fill so well. You cannot seriously have any apprehensions of his doing mischief there; he will be completely under your thumbs, and just as powerless as he is at this moment. Think over this matter—talk with Mr. Lord about it, and with Millet, who is far too good a fellow to kick a man after he is down, and see if it cannot be arranged. If you doubt about the clerkship, give him a common Inspectorship.”

Truly yours, Natu[anreE]_ HAwTHorne.

LiverPoo.t, JANUARY 6TH, ’54.™ Dear Pike, »J » 54

I send a Swedish-English Dictionary**—which please ac- cept as a New Year’s gift. Should I meet with a portrait of Kingsley, I will forward it—or if I can catch Kingsley himself, I will send him in person.

52 Hawthorne’s impassioned appeal, together with his efforts in other directions, resulted in Burchmore’s appointment as appraiser in the Salem Custom House at a salary of $1,200 per annum. The appointment was announced in The Salem Gazette, November 4, 1853.

58 This letter is in the Huntington Library.

54 The following unpublished passage in a letter from Hawthorne to Longfellow, dated lenox, May 8, 1851, throws some light on Pike’s study of Swedish: “A friend of mine in Salem — a man of no letters, but of remarkable intellect — has seen fit to commence his mental cultivation by the study of Swedish, and with the aid of an old dictionary and a testament, has made some progress. It occurs to me that you might be able, and not unwilling, to assist him by the loan of such books as may suit his needs. You are his poet, and he your most especial worshipper; so that you ought to display yourself towards him in an attitude of god- like graciousness, He mentions his desire to read the original of the ‘Chil- dren of the Lord’s Supper,’ aided by your translation. For my own part, I should consider a grammar somewhat essential; but being quite new in the study of languages, I am not sure that he has ever heard of such a convenience. Now, should it be perfectly agreeable to you to lend him books that will carry him forward more commodiously than he has here- tofore proceded [sic], I shall feel it as a favor to myself; he being a man for whom I have both affection and respect.” (This letter is in the possession of Mr. H. W. L. Dana.)

256 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

We are having a very disagreeable winter here, and the Englishmen think there never was any cold so intense. It is about the same temperature as our mild winter-weather; but the atmosphere is so moist that it penetrates to the bone. My family, however, are beginning to get acclimated, and are much improved in health since I last wrote you. For myself, I never was better.

In your letter, you seem in doubt what would be the feelings and conduct of the President, in case certain mat- ters should be communicated to him by your enemies. In my opinion, it would not hurt you in the least. He is en- tirely above any miserable vindictiveness of that sort; and even as a matter of policy, he would never think of disturb- ing you. But there is nothing small or mean in his feel- ings — whatever there may be in his intellect. Should you ever see reason to apprehend any difficulty, see him and talk to him frankly.

I am getting along here pretty well, and am prospering in a moderate way. ‘The Manchester business still remains as when I wrote you last.” I have some idea of appointing temporarily an agent, at a small stipend, with the under- standing that he shall retire whenever a regular vice-consul makes his appearance. It would be a damnable slice out of my business, if an independent consul were appointed; and I am not at all certain that it would not be my wisest way to offer you the place at £200, (at which my clerks esti- mate the direct income) if you thought it worth your while to take it. And it may be worth your while, if the pro- jected tariff should affect your present office unfavorably —as I presume it will. At all events, I will not close up the place in such a way that it may not be open for you, if required. I don’t deny that I should like to put that £200

55 The letter here referred to, dated Liverpool, September 15, 1853, was printed by G. P. Lathrop in his Biographical Sketch of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 520-523. Hawthorne received emoluments from Manchester as well as Liverpool. Fearing, however, the appointment of a consul at Manchester, he offered the place to Pike.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 257

into my own pocket, if I can; but if it goes into yours, I shall not feel as if it were lost. Write me what your feel- ings and prospects are; and taking your interests and mine into due consideration. I hope we shall be able to decide for the best.

Lord called on me, a week or two ago, looking much better than I expected to see him. He told me that Zach had got an office—which I knew before. It turns my stomach to think of that Salem Custom-House. Oh, Pike, how can you sup your swill at such a hog-trough? I wish I could blot out from my mind all memory of the years I spent there. God bless my enemies, say I! If it had not been for their kind services, I might have been in the Sur- veyor’s room till this day.

The Atlantic is just in from New-York. Good-by, and write me soon and often, through Ticknor.™

Your friend, N[aTHaANIEL] H[AwrHorne].

LIVERPOOL, APRIL 29TH, 54. Dear Pike, 4 ITH, 54

I think I am running a considerable risk by not putting in somebody as Vice-Consul for Manchester; and if you will take it, I shall be glad. You may have the emolu- ments up to two hundred pounds— which my clerk repre- sents as about the amount of the present direct income. With economy, you can live comfortably and handsomely on that, as a single man. If you decline it, I shall appoint some American resident of Manchester.

I hardly know what to advise you; but it would certainly be a great comfort to me to have you out here. At any rate, decide and let me*know by the next steamer, and if

56 At this time, Pike was weigher and gauger at the Salem Custom House, with a salary of $1,500 per annum.

5? For an account of Hawthorne’s relations with William D. Ticknor, see Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher.

258 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

you conclude to come, write immediately to General Pierce, telling him of my offer and your acceptance of it. Of course, if he says nothing to prevent your coming, it will be an implied pledge that no Consul shall be appointed. Act promptly; for the business ought not to be left at loose ends any longer.

You are in my debt for one or two letters. Do write by the very next steamer.

Your friend, NatH[AnreE]L HAwTHorne.

P.S. If you don’t take this opportunity to come abroad,

you will never come.

U[nrrep] S[tatres] Consuarte,

Dear Pike, LiverPoot, JUNE 7TH 1854.

You will never see England unless you seize the oppor- tunity; so come at once. It will give you a new lease on life. If you stay at Salem, those three old-maid aunts will be the death of you, by fattening you like a hog. Old women never know how to show their kindness in any other way than by giving a man doughnuts and pumpkin pies, and such infernal trash. IT’ll venture to say this is what has made you so fat. Come, come, come! You will be able to live on two hundred pounds; for my clerks support fam- ilies respectably on less than that.

Do not fail to communicate with the President, as sug- gested in my former letter, before you leave America.

Your friend, Natu [ANrE]L HAwTHORNE.

P.S. I would not take the Cunard Steamer, but would make a saving by taking either one of Train and Co’s junk- ets (which are equally as safe and almost as speedy) or else a screw-steamer from Portland or Boston. The sailing packets are preferable; and the passage, at this season, does not average more than eighteen days.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 259

I wish you to come very much indeed; but it is for you to decide, after all, whether it will be for the best. Could you not hit upon some arrangement for keeping your pres- ent office open, should you find it desirable to go back to it? I am not altogether sure that you would like a prolonged residence in England, though, for a year or two, you would find it full of interest. At times I have felt such a yearn- ing for home as I never expected to feel; for I do not con- sider myself a very ardent patriot; — and, besides, I have my house with me. I rather think your love of country is bet- ter than mine.

Still I say — come!

Your friend, NatuH[AnrE]i HAwTHorne.

May 10 1855 Dear PIKE,

I was very glad to hear from you again, and I wish you would write oftener. You will have noticed the passage of the new Consular Bill. I learn from Washington, how- ever, that the administration do not intend to put it in ef- fect until after the next meeting of Congress; and, before that time, I shall have got together about as much money as there is any use in having. My desires are moderate; and I have already enough to live upon—besides a pen which is not yet, I hope, quite blunted.

Can you deliver the enclosed letter. She used to live in Mason Court, but may have removed.”

Your friend, NatH[AnrE]L HAwTHorne.

58 A letter to Pike written on an inside page by Mrs. Hawthorne indi- cates that the reference is to Dora Golden: see footnote 43.

260 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

LiverPoot, DecEMBER 2!IsT, 1855. Dear Pike,

How are you getting on? Do write, and tell me all about the cursed old Custom House and its inhabitants, and especially about yourself. Are you growing rich? You will have seen that my income has been cut into by Con- gress, but I have had two good offers” already; and even now it is not worth much short of $10,000—but do not tell anybody. I mean to keep it (unless Congress further curtails it) till next autumn, when I shall consider myself rich enough to resign.

It is really a grief to me that I am not likely to see you in England. There is no man whom I should like so much to have for a companion; and I never see anything inter- esting without thinking of you.

Your friend, N[atHante_] H[AwrHorne].

LiverPoo., JuLy 17TH, 1856. Dear Pike,

I shall certainly not put in for any other person, in this business of the Collectorship;*° indeed, I have no interest that would do anybody any good, or I would give it to you. I presume you will not make your push till Buchanan™ comes in.

It sickens me to hear of this accursed Custom House again, and to find you still fighting the old battle, and throwing away, on these miserable squabbles, a heart and intellect from which I used to hope for such high things.

5® Hawthorne had been offered, but had declined, the post of Minister to Portugal (Bridge, Personal Recollections, 148). What the second offer was is not known.

®° Pike aspired to the collectorship in the Salem Custom House — an office to which he was appointed the following February.

61 James Buchanan (1791-1868) was ambassador to England during Franklin Pierce’s administration and succeeded Pierce as President of the United States (1857-1861).

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 261

Forgive me, my dear Pike; but I could not help saying this. I wish the Custom House would sink under your feet, tak- ing along with it every devil in the lot, only leaving you above ground, a free man.

I enclose a note to John D. Howard,” who has written me the most dolorous letter I ever read, in which he won- ders why he was born —and, to say the truth, so do I. He is apparently in the last stage of pauperism; and should he be starved before my note reaches him, I shall reckon it the best thing that could happen. I have sent him a draft for ten dollars, and that is all I can do; for all the beggars in creation beset me here, besides a host of poor connections on your side of the water. If you get the Collectorship, I charge you to do something for this miserable, God-for- gotten cripple! Let it be the first thing you do, and (he being such a wretched and useless simpleton, so destitute of friends and interest) perhaps God may set it off against many wicked acts of policy that you will hereafter do, and so grant a blessing to your administration. And can’t you get up a subscription for him, now?

Mrs. Hawthorne and the children have returned to Eng- land,” and are now at Blackheath, near London. Her health is much improved, and I have strong hopes that she will be able to spend the winter in this country, without detriment. Una is very much grown, and is a fine, intelli- gent, good girl, and a great comfort to her father. All my three children are as good or better than any that I see else- where; and I thank God for them. It will be a long while yet before you see them and me; for we mean to spend at least two years on the Continent. To say the truth, there is no great inducement to return to our own country, where you seem to be on the point of beating one another’s brains out.

Write again soon,

Sincerely yours, Natu[aAnre]L HAwTHOoRNE.

P.S. I shall send the note to Howard separately.

62 Howard had been naval officer in the Salem Custom House during Hawthorne’s term as surveyor.

63 Because of ill health, Mrs. Hawthorne, accompanied by Una and Rose, had spent the winter in Lisbon, where J. L. O’Sullivan was United States Minister.

262 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

LiverPoo.t, Fesruary 27TH 1857. Dear Pike,

I see that you have got the appointment. Accept my congratulations, and also my commiserations. God bless you, anyhow. If you ever get to Heaven, it will be owing to some wonderful goodness in your original nature, which could not be spoilt even by the Salem Collectorship. Remember that poor devil Howard and do let poor Zack have a little foot- hold within your precincts.”

I have resigned my office, to take effect in August.” Buchanan may perhaps turn me out sooner but that will not trouble me. I can live, in spite of him.

Your friend, Natu[AnreE]L HAwTHorne.

LiverPoo.t, Marcu 27TH, ’57. Dear Pixe,

In my former letter (and I hope you have kept it, so that you may see) I did not mean to express, or to hint, any dis- approbation of your having been a candidate against Eph.,” or of your seeking the Collectorship, except as it was likely to keep you in a sphere of action such as I felt to be un- worthy of man in his highest capacity. Ever since I knew you, I have wanted you to do some higher and better thing than other men are able to do, and have often grieved (and made no secret of it to yourself) that fate has persisted in

** The official appointment of Pike as collector in the Salem Custom House, superseding Ephraim F. Miller, was announced in The Salem Gazette, February 20, 1857.

®° Burchmore, presumably, retained his position as appraiser during Pike’s term of office. I have found, however, no record of an appoint- ment for Howard.

®* Hawthorne sent his resignation to President Buchanan, to take effect August 31, 1857 (Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 157). He was not actually relieved by his successor until October, 1857: Letters of Hawthorne to William D. Ticknor (Newark, 1910), 1, 63. ®? Ephraim F. Miller.

HAWTHORNE AND POLITICS 263

keeping you in that vile Custom House. As to Eph., I know very well that he has no shadow of a claim to the Collec- torship, and never ought to have been appointed. Moreover, it was quite impossible for him to have kept the office a day longer. And of all men living (if the Collectorship is a really good and desirable thing) I should wish you to have it.

I am happy to tell you that I have resigned the Consulate. It has not proved quite what I expected, in point of profit, but still, as my books have been selling profitably during these past four years, I have acquired from all sources what I may call a moderate competence. During my further stay in Europe, I shall probably spend more than my income; but after my return, I shall be able to live at less expense, and, by writing one or two more books, shall make up for over- expenditures. It is a vast relief to me, to feel that my wife and children will be left in comfortable circumstances, in case of my death. I may say, in this respect, “the bitterness of death is past.”

It will probably be two years yet before we return; and when we do come, I shall want your advice about making additions to my house, or building a new one, or selling my place at Concord and buying another. Perhaps you and I will finally settle down in each other’s neighborhood.”

My wife is very well, and so are the children,

Your friend, NatH[ ANnrE]L HawTHorNe.

P.S. Remember Howard; and pray heap a few more coals of fire on Zack’s head. *8 Compare I Samuel 15:32.

®° The Hawthornes returned to live at “The Wayside,” in Concord, in June, 1860.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR., THE REFORMER IN POLITICS

MERLE E. CURTI

IKE father, like son. That was what many a citizen of Beverly, Massachusetts, must often have said when the Rantouls were mentioned. More than one dis- appointed father probably cherished some little envy of the elder Rantoul, apothecary, justice of the peace, and county commissioner, a man who had been representa- tive of the town in the General Court for a quarter of a century. For it was the fortune of this good and gentle citizen to see in his namesake a man after his own heart. Both father and son were reformers and humanitarians by temperament and conviction. Both preferred to work with a party which, in their community and state, was in the minority. One was as zealous as the other in cham- pioning human rights and restricting property rights whenever they threatened the under-dog. In a period scarcely noted for religious tolerance, both befriended that cause. Before the son’s early death at the age of forty-seven, the father saw him fight for their convic- tions on a larger stage, with more talents and success than had been his to enjoy.

The father lived also to see at least some progress made in many of the causes dear to him. He had early championed Unitarianism and in his correspondence with the famous Rammohun Roy of Calcutta contributed something to the clarification of Unitarian principles.’

1 “Reminiscences of Robert Rantoul, Sr.,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, vi, April, 1864, 90.

264

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 265

Long before his death, in 1858, Unitarianism had be- come both respectable and influential. In 1810 he had founded what was perhaps the first Sunday school in America; when he died, a half century later, there were thousands of them. Long before the Massachusetts Tem- perance Society was formed in 1812, he had advocated its principles. He could remember being jeered at for dispensing no liquor at a funeral, but by 1858 an im- posing number of states boasted of anti-liquor legisla- tion. Having served in the militia during the war of 1812, he became an early member of the Massachusetts Peace Society, which was formed in 1816; and long be- fore 1858 that cause had enlisted, both in America and in Europe, distinguished advocates who justifiably claimed certain definite achievements. Popular educa- tion, to which in a very humble way the elder Rantoul contributed, had carried the day in both the North and the West long before he settled down, in the fifties, to write his mellow reminiscences. As early as 1809 he had publicly denounced capital punishment; before his death more than one state had made notable headway in re- ducing the number of offenses punishable by death. A share of spoils and power had even come to the Demo- cratic party in Massachusetts — a mere skeleton battalion when he joined its ranks. Scarcely a futile life, the elder Rantoul’s. In one thing alone in which he had been con- cerned were there no significant victories to record: the power of corporate wealth, with its privileges and its social irresponsibility, had steadily gained momentum. Such was the background of Robert Rantoul, Jr. Like his father, he was (and remained to his early death, in

266 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

1852) a minority man, a protestant against social habits and institutions. His life and work illuminate some of the problems of the reformer in politics, and serve as a measuring rod of the strength and limitations of the tal- ented figures who bend their efforts towards social and economic amelioration through the game of politics.

At the age of three Robert, Junior, taught himself to read. His father, whose schooling had been meager, sent him to Andover and to Harvard. Those who knew him best told of his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his intellectual independence. Frequently he studied fourteen out of twenty-four hours, though he was far from being a “grind.” Indeed, though chosen valedic- tory poet by the class of 1826, he was by no means, scholastically, in the first rank. He liked too much to do things in his own way. One could hardly call him an orig- inal thinker, but he was blessed with an acquisitive mind and a remarkable memory.”

From college Rantoul went to Salem, where he read law; in 1829 he was admitted to the bar. With a good knowledge of reports, he was no mere case lawyer: a precedent was nothing to him unless it rested on prin- ciple. To his legal opponents he was never so dangerous as when pushed or crowded; then his moral conviction released great powers, compelled the careful attention of the court, and with sudden, inspired might more often than not carried the day.”

2 Luther Hamilton, Ed., Memoirs, Speeches and Writings of Robert Rantoul, Jr. (Boston, 1854), 3 ff.

* Charles Levi Woodbury, “Some Personal Recollections of Robert Rantoul, Jr.,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, xxiv, 1898, 197-

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 267

Simple in his tastes, without any assumption or pre- tense, Rantoul was affable and friendly. His was a strik- ing figure — slender, not very robust, medium in height, but arresting. His high brow, his dark, full eyes, his sal- low complexion, suggested his scholarly interests; his rapid, fluid, and effective speech made him, in spite of his penetrating, even shrill voice, a prince among debaters.*

In his later years his library was that of a gentleman and a scholar, rich in rare and important volumes on his- tory, politics, economics, law, science, and travel.° All his life he dreamed of writing a history of medizval France, and collected a mass of material for a task he could never find time to accomplish. It was no wonder that people like Nathaniel Hawthorne endured the chill of his un- heated office at 8 Court Square, Boston, to share with so generous a comrade his graceful learning.

Rantoul was ready to sacrifice much rather than to keep silent when he felt deeply. He did feel deeply about a good many causes he knew to be unpopular. Adherence to these was certain to interfere with political success, for which he was ambitious. He hated privilege and power, especially when used in violation of human rights. When the bulk of the orthodox clergy and lawyers defended capital punishment, he opposed it. When the rich ob- jected to taxation for public schools, he insisted that

* Honorable Eben Stone, 4n Address Delivered Before the Essex Bar, Feb. 2, 1889 (Salem, 1889), 35 ff. There is a portrait by Joseph Ames in the State House in Boston. George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty

Years in Public Affairs (New York, 1902), 1, 119, thought that as a debater Rantoul had few equals in the state.

5 Catalogue of the Valuable Private Library of the late Robert Rantoul, Jr. (Boston, 1859).

268 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

free educational privileges were the right of every one. His advocacy of temperance, free trade, and interna- tional peace grew out of his conviction that the pur- pose of society was the development of free, happy, and growing individuals. From Jefferson he borrowed the principle that the government which governed least was the best possible one; yet no one was more alert than he in insisting that government prevent powerful individuals, in the interest of their prop- erty, from exploiting other individuals less advan- tageously placed. These principles, at the cost of some political sacrifices, Robert Rantoul, Jr., maintained fairly consistently all his life.

Laboring men found in this young idealist a stout de- fender. It is not too much to say that he gained for them their first important victory in the courts of Massachu- setts. In 1840, some journeymen boot-makers, in their effort to induce all the members of their craft to join their organization, were indicted in Boston for conspir- acy, and, after losing their case in the lower court, ap- pealed to the Supreme Court, over which Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw presided. In his defence of the boot- makers, Rantoul demonstrated the emptiness of the legal fiction that the employee was, in person and in choice, as free as his employer. Insisting that the journeymen had a clear right to do as a combination whatever they had a right to do as individuals, Rantoul carried the day. This case, Commonwealth vs. Hunt et al, was “the first judicial appreciation of the possible good in labor organ- izations,”® and in spite of the fact that later decisions

® Theron Metcalf, Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Su- preme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (Boston, 1864), IV, 111-1373 George Gorham Groat, Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases (New York, 1911), 50.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 269

ate into the principles and reasoning of Rantoul and Shaw, this was a notable and influential victory for col- lective bargaining.

After the Dorr Rebellion, this champion of human rights defended, with Daniel Webster as an opponent, some of the leaders who had been indicted for revolu- tionary attempts." Sweeping aside legal technicalities, Rantoul upheld in a broad manner the human rights of the defendants, and his argument entitles him to be re- garded as a pioneer in sociological jurisprudence.

Appointed by Polk, in 1845, as United States district attorney for Massachusetts, Rantoul, in a series of cases, won an enviable reputation as an able constitutional law- yer. In the New Bedford bridge case he grappled with the tough problem of state and federal sovereignty; he prosecuted the Spitfire, a slaver, and effected the con- demnation of the vessel and the conviction of her master. And in other cases which he prosecuted he was no more tender of property rights when they violated social jus- tice. Years later he widened still further the breach be- tween the conservatives of Massachusetts and himself by defending Thomas Sims, a Negro of Boston, who was claimed by a slave-owner.*

While a member of the judiciary committee in the Great and General Court (1835-1839), Rantoui la- bored for the humanization of the harsh criminal code. No one during the middle period, unless it was Edward

™ Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 25 ff. 8 Ibid., 28 ff, 49 ff.

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Livingston, contributed more than he to the movement for the abolition of capital punishment.’ Efforts to re- fute his comprehensive report on that subject, presented to the legislature in 1836, were lame and faltering.” In both America and Europe Rantoul’s report was cited frequently. On the grounds both of expediency and hu- manitarianism its author attacked capital punishment —still, at that time, the legal penalty for six crimes. He committed his party to the cause, and, thanks in large part to his efforts, Massachusetts modified its laws with- in ten years.

No less unpopular was the cause of public education, and no less fearless were Rantoul’s efforts in its behalf. His interest in this reform was due to his championship of the unprivileged classes and to his faith in the power of reason and enlightenment to ameliorate an unjust social and economic order. In 1829} with the codperation of a few men whom he interested in the movement, he established a lyceum in Beverly. When the Massachu- setts State Board of Education was founded, in 1837, Rantoul was made one of its members, and he remained for some years a most effective one. On platforms and in periodicals, he pleaded for generous state support. He spoke at numerous conventions held by the friends of popular education and edited a “Workingman’s Li- brary” to further the cause." He hoped for too much

® Charles Sumner, “Robert Rantoul, Jr.”, Works (Boston, 1875-1883), 11, 76 ff.

10 The report is printed in Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writ- ings, 436-492. See also Benjamin Dole, 4n Examination of Mr. Rantoul’s Report for Abolishing Capital Punishment in Massachusetts (Boston, 1873).

11 North American Review, ci (October, 1838), 273-318; Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 66 ff.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 271

from it: in believing that free education, together with a free press, would adequately safeguard the people against the “aristocratical tendencies” of accumulated capital, Rantoul was perhaps less realistic than his con- temporaries, who insisted on the necessity of more fun- damental economic re-organization. It would not be rash — at least from the point of view of those interested in achieving progress in their own day —to assert that his efforts at reform were weakened by his excessive faith in so abstract a palliative as popular education.

Like his father, Rantoul advocated the unpopular cause of temperance. He would not heed the warnings of party leaders to let it alone. He could not go so far as to advocate sumptuary legislation to remedy the abuses of excessive drinking: his Jeffersonian principles would not let him stomach that. But he did favor the punishment of the retailer who sold liquor to persons known to make an improper use of it, and thus became an early advocate of “responsible drinking.” Primarily, however, he trusted to education and moral suasion as the most effective means of curbing any social evil such as intemperance.”

Like his father he witnessed, even in the short span of his active years, appreciable social benefit from all these humanitarian efforts. He could even feel that something had been achieved in the battle, which of all his battles, was the most dramatic and fundamental. This was his contest in behalf of “the fishermen and sailors, of the shoemakers and workingmen, of the

12 Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 339 ff.

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farmers and shipbuilders, against aristocracy, feudalism, money power and bank bought oligarchy.”” In his war against the unjust privileges of power and wealth, Ran- toul singled out for frontal attack the corporation. His allies were the loco-foco Democrats; his enemies, the bankers and capitalists of Boston. When Harvard in- sisted on an exclusive right to control the traffic over the Charles River, he delivered an animated speech in the legislature, in which he defended the rights and needs of the common man against this privileged corporation. His opposition to the claims of his Alma Mater was an important factor in establishing the principle that “the people of Massachusetts have a right to build, with their own money, their own bridges and highways; and when built and paid for, to travel them without asking leave of any corporation.”"* Rantoul also insisted, while a member of the legislature, on a critical inspection of the charters for which corporations petitioned, and he urged the necessity of specific limitations on power and privi- lege. Sometimes he was successful ; sometimes he failed. When Boston bankers and merchants petitioned in 1836 for a “ten million dollar bank,” he fought them tooth and nail, and won a victory. So long as he could stand in the way, no powerful bank should take advantage of the uninitiated by inflating the currency. On other oc- casions, too, this Democrat threw a monkey-wrench into the Whig machinery devised to succour “the children of Mammon.”

13 Woodbury, “Some Personal Recollections,” 202. 1* Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 322-327.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 273

But his larger warning that the laws governed the poor, and the rich governed the laws, fell on deaf ears. No heed was paid to his indictment of the social irre- sponsibility of corporations —to his description of the great mischief they were capable of making by stimulat- ing the creation of illusory wealth. Excessive loans, reck- less speculation, consequent depression: these were the evils he denounced in pointing out that they were but means of “fertilizing the rich man’s fields by the sweat of the poor man’s brow.” But even the poor man was anxious to follow the methods of the rich and arrive at a comparable station in life; and he did not long re- member Rantoul’s warnings.

One can better understand this indifference when one realizes that even those who see abstract principles clearly, may, because of emotional factors of which they are not even aware, act in ways inconsistent with those principles. We might suppose that Rantoul, of all peo- ple, would have practised what he preached; but he, too, was infected by the dominant desire for expansion and development. Indeed, the irony of it was that he himself shared the poor man’s yearnings for future eco- nomic power. That is why his battle against corporate wealth was essentially tragic and futile.

It was the western fever that finally got Rantoul. He served a kind of apprenticeship to the railroad interests of his own state, and then embarked on larger enter- prises. From 1845 to 1850 this son of Massachusetts was to be found less often at home than in the Missis- sippi valley. Anticipating that it was to become the seat of empire, he was glad to be a trustee in a group in-

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cluding Webster, Choate, and Cushing, the purpose of which was to get possession of the headwaters of the Mississippi and there to establish a great lumber enter- prise with mills for exploiting virgin forests, and mines for extracting rich mineral resources lying ready to be unearthed. But all the promise of this “St. Croix and Lake Superior Mineral Company” came to naught. Their land titles were disputed in the courts; their boom yielded to spring freshets which set free the whole win- ter’s store of logs; and Rantoul’s partners, absorbed in other pressing matters, left him to extricate himself as best he could. Instead he went down to financial ruin.”

Once infected, however, with the pioneer’s spirit of industrial enterprise, Rantoul had to try again. His en- thusiasm for railroad development was nourished by his belief in free trade: he had always felt that everything ought to be done to forward the greatest possible degree of unrestricted commerce. Had he not always opposed protective tariffs because they were, in his eyes, unjusti- fiable taxes on the poor in the interest of a small minority of the rich? Would not the rapid development of rail- roads promote internal free trade, strengthen the Union, and aid the common man?” Sincerely thinking so, he plunged headlong into railroad promotion, becoming the servant of a group of Boston and New York capitalists who were trying to persuade the wishful but cautious legislature of Illinois to grant a generous charter. The New England reformer drew up a charter and lobbied at Springfield for its acceptance — he who in Massachu- setts had fought corporate wealth when it asked for special privileges. The tall, gaunt, western lawyer and

15 Robert S. Rantoul, Personal Recollections (Cambridge, 1916), 245 26.

16 Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 679 ff.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 275

politician who fought his efforts at Springfield —it was Abe Lincoln — was no match for the persuasive orator from the East.” The Illinois Central charter went through the legislature; and it was a generous charter. It was, indeed, so liberal that the children of the pioneer legislators who granted it must have cursed their fathers when, in their own time, the railroad mulcted them by high freight rates and questionable dealings.

To further his ends Rantoul had very early in life become affiliated with the Democratic Party, because he believed it to be more progressive and hospitable to- wards humanitarian reforms than its rival. Without di- recting its policy, he yet played an important part in it. He upheld Jackson’s bank veto, defended the removal of the deposits, and championed the independent treas- ury. Until 1838, when he moved from Gloucester to Boston, he had lived in the country, and might well have associated with the “country” faction of the Democracy, which was led by Marcus Morton.” Instead, he allied himself with the “city” group of David Henshaw, a supporter of the “Southern principles” of Tyler and Calhoun. Rantoul’s anti-slavery views made this choice the more unusual. It has been implied” that he thought the Henshaw faction promised more in the way of po-

17 Robert S. Rantoul, Ms. Letter to W. N. C. Carlton, Newberry Li-

brary, and Reminiscences, 27. See also O. H. Meyer, Transportation in the United States before 1860 (Washington, 1917), 532-533-

18 Marcus Morton Letter Book, 1845-1849, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1v, Morton to George Bancroft, July 3, 1845; Arthur B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts 1824-1848 (New Haven, 1926), 214 ff.

19 Darling, Political Changes, 284, 308, 321, 356.

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litical advancement, and it is true that for supporting the Tyler-Calhoun faction he was, in 1843, rewarded with the collectorship of customs in the port of Boston. During the campaign of 1844 he supported Polk throughout the Northwest, and was, as we have seen, made district attorney for Massachusetts. It is possible, however, that his strict constructionist views, rather than mere opportunism, may have had something to do with his choice of factions.

Be that as it may, Rantoul moved steadily toward the anti-slavery wing of the Democracy. If he was regarded in 1844 as a “pro-Southern man”, he had none the less furthered the anti-slavery activities of Whittier as early as 1837." By 1848 he was all but ready to vote for the “free soil” candidate, Martin Van Buren.” It was his codperation with the unpopular Free-Soilers which re- sulted in his election to the Senate in 1851 for the re- mainder of Webster’s unexpired term. He who had suf- fered for advocating unpopular causes such as temper- ance and the abolition of capital punishment now found preferment because of his support of the free soil cause which his conservative foes of State Street opposed. In 1851 Rantoul was elected, again as a result of coalition, to the House of Representatives, where he defended his alliance with Free-Soilers against the attacks of Hunkers and southern Democrats.”

Rantoul’s speech at Lynn on April 3, 1851,” justified

20M. A. DeWolfe Howe, The Life and Letters of George Bancroft

(New York, 1908), 1, 249-250; Samuel T. Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf W hittier (London, 1895), 1, 142-143, 188, 199, 200-201.

21 T. W. Higginson, Elegy without Fiction.

22 Arthur Gleason Bean, “Party Transformation in Massachusetts,” Harvard College Library, 93-94.

23 Hamilton, Memoirs, Speeches and Writings, 729 ff.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 277

Theodore Parker’s remark that he was “a northern man with northern principles.” In this speech he refused to accept the finality of the Compromise of 1850: he could not support the Fugitive Slave Law. It is significant that he based his opposition to it, not on moral and humani- tarian, but on constitutional grounds. He held that the Federal Constitution did not give the central govern- ment the power of enforcing such a law: that power was reserved to the states; and, in any case, due process of law must be observed in its enforcement. Here was a man who could find constitutional reasons for the main- tenance of human rights when they came into conflict with property rights. It was also in this speech that he unequivocally stated why he valued the Union: with- out it, war between the contending North and South would be the order of the day. For war he had no heart whatever; to prevent it, he would make great sacrifices.

For jeopardizing the Fugitive Slave Law, and for his political independence generally, Rantoul was read out of his party. Although legally elected from his district to the Democratic national convention in 1852, he was unseated. Yet he remained loyal to the party and wrote Sumner that he would vote for its candidate.** He did not live long enough to do so.

After his unexpected death in August, 1852, individ- ual associates lamented his passing. Sumner, in behalf of reformers and anti-slavery crusaders, paid a generous tribute to him in the Senate.” Whittier, with whom Ran-

24 Roy Franklin Nichols, The Democratic Machine 1850-1854, Co- lumbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, CX,

No. 1 (New York, 1924), 133-134, 147- 25 Charles Sumner, Works, 111, 76-82.

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toul had shared lodgings when they were members of the legislature, eulogized him in a stirring poem.” But public bodies expressed no regret. The Boston Bar, usually forward in noticing the death of its members, kept silent. The city did not go into mourning for the “demagogue” whom State Street had always so bitterly denounced. Years before, respectable citizens of Salem had protested against his appointment to the collector- ship of the port of Boston, regarding him as a mere “busy, declamatory politician.” Even Emerson had found him wearisome and something of a demagogue.” But his death was nevertheless a great loss to the Demo- cratic Party, especially to its anti-slavery wing — and even a greater one to the ideals and reforms for which he had labored.

In a sermon preached shortly after Rantoul’s death, the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson charac- terized him as a “fair specimen of the best that a man can be, and yet be a great American statesman.”” His career might indeed be taken as a text for a sermon on “the reformer in politics.” What can one say of him in that relationship? Aithough Rantoul did not openly compromise his convictions to secure political advance- ment, yet he did undoubtedly identify himself with that faction of the Massachusetts Democracy less hospitable to his views than its rival. Had he taken up with the

26 The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston and New York, 1900), 188.

27 Reverend John Brazer to Levi Lincoln, Salem, August 30, 1843: Levi Lincoln Papers, 1796-1857: Massachusetts Historical Society, and passim.

28 Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, viii, 113 (April 19, 1850). 2° Higginson, Elegy without Fiction.

ROBERT RANTOUL, JR. 279

Morton crowd, he might not have been appointed col- lector of the customs and district attorney. These ap- pointments on the one hand aided him in his political career, and on the other enabled him to do more for the causes he believed in than he could have done out of office and in the camp of the less conservative group whose principles were more nearly his own. Half a loaf probably seemed better to him than no loaf at all. Whether he would have been able effectively to pro- mote anti-slavery principles when his party was rapidly becoming more conservative is a question which his un- timely death makes it impossible to answer. Quite prob- ably he would have left the Democrats and allied him- self with the new and more radical Republicans.

It is noteworthy that he made no permanent contri- bution in his fight against corporations, which, long be- fore his death, were exerting a dominant influence. He had even helped to create as powerful a corporation as the Illinois Central, though he does not seem to have been conscious of the inconsistency involved. It was easy to rationalize this defence of vested interest by pointing to the ultimate gains which the railroad would bring to the people of Illinois. Instead of taking two steps for- ward and one step backward, Rantoul took a step for- ward and a step backward, without even realizing that he was doing so. In a technical sense he did not, indeed, compromise with his convictions against corporations; but his distinction between actual and potential, or “ex- pectant,” capitalism was unjustifiable. A more self- critical man might have realized that railroads, too, would sooner or later be capable of encroaching on hu- man rights.

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Robert Rantoul’s fight against financial and industrial capitalism was, in fact, futile and impotent. Why? When he fought the “ten million dollar bank” charter, he was working, for the moment, with the tide: he was sup- ported by the anti-monopolist feeling which found ex- pression loco-foco Democracy. When he persuaded the farmers in the legislature of Illinois to accept the charter of the Illinois Central, which was endowed with the power of exploiting Illinois pioneers and their children, he was again, in a more significant sense, working with the tide —that is to say, with the dominant economic tendency of the time. Hence, in these things he suc- ceeded. But his verbal indictments of the social irrespon- sibility and grave evils of corporations were merely mi- nor eddies in the main stream. Had he worked out a con- sistent and thoroughgoing philosophical criticism of the existing economic order, it is true that he would prob- ably have remained a theorist without any political ca- reer at all. His ideas, however, might conceivably have provided a program for a later reaction against the eco- nomic status quo. Perhaps by choosing to be a reformer, he lost the opportunity of being an American Marx. As it was, Rantoul did contribute, in a minor way, to the protection of human rights, although his contributions were not materially to change the pattern of historical development. His career suggests that impotency is the inescapable fate of reformers in politics. Is it their dilemma either to compromise their convictions by too often casting their lot with dominant forces or else to remain remote in the realm of theory? Is there no other way?

CONTEMPORARY SONGS AND VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON

MARY W. SMYTH

URING the Revolutionary War, as for many years

previously among colonial Americans, when news- papers were scarce or still too expensive to enjoy a wide circulation, the news of the day was frequently written on single sheets, called broadsides. Sometimes these were done in prose but more often they appeared in verse, to be carried about from village to village on horseback. Local singers improved every opportunity not only to eulogize Yankee heroes and celebrate their victories in battle, but to spread melancholy tales of the latest trag- edy—accident, murder, or execution. As they travelled about hawking their own songs, oftentimes riding for many miles through the countryside (much as the old ballad-singers used to do in England centuries ago), they found such ready market for their verses that they were able to add tidy sums to family incomes. Broadside writing, besides being a popular pastime and a common method of disseminating news, became a profitable business among country folk.

Written frequently by men of little education, these broadside verses, though crude and illiterate, often showed traces of the power of genuine old ballads, both in the substance and the phraseology of which our fore- fathers from England were naturally steeped. Many of them, though called songs, were not actually set to music

281

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and sung, being scattered in print rather than transmitted orally from singer to singer. So much in demand they were, however, that this feature did not detract from their popularity, especially when they dealt with local events. Of such, the broadsides of Thomas Shaw, of Standish, Maine, are an example. His great specialty was “mournful songs,” which in some cases ran into two or three editions, numbering several thousand copies. Dull- est of the dull and interminably long drawn out they certainly are, but no worse in this respect than the work of Lawrence Price, an English broadside writer of the seventeenth century, some of whose verses are to be found in Child’s collection of English and Scottish Pop- ular Ballads. Shaw may well be called an American Law- rence Price, being one of the very earliest broadside writers in this country. His first song, called “1776,” tells of his march from Maine with friends and neighbors to join Washington’s army in Cambridge, and of the year spent there under conditions that offered many temptations to sin, though, in spite of them, as he proud- ly avers, he still remembered his God throughout that hard, long year. When first ordered out on guard, the raw Maine soldiers found the unaccustomed work very difficult, but fortunately, according to Shaw, the British fired so high that he could do more staring than firing back at them. Apparently he entertained no very good opinion of the British in Boston when he wrote:

From Boston they have bombs — From Beacon Hill were shot — Intending for to kill us,

But found out they could not.

— = oo - =

VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON 283

After forcing the British to evacuate, the Yankees marched into Boston only to find, as Shaw wrote, that the Boston bakers pressed them “very short,” and they soon grew faint from hunger because their “food was naught.” Perhaps a hunger march along Beacon Hill might have brought better results than now.

Shaw did not write much about Washington, but so many of his contemporaries did, that there arose a large body of broadside verse and local song dealing with various events of his life. Much of this has undoubt- edly perished, but a considerable amount can still be found. Contemporary songs handed down tradition- ally in families or among friends, are, however, very rare and nowadays seldom discovered. Even our old- est singers, who still remember and sing many an old song, however fragmentary, can not recall any songs about Washington, though they have often “hearn tell o’ them.” The present writer has, nevertheless, been so fortunate as to discover a few which, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, have been orally trans- mitted from generation to generation since the time of the Revolution.

The first song, here printed for the first time, so far as is known, unless, as is likely, it circulated as a broad- side long since lost, is especially appropriate this year. It is a contemporary, and possibly a purely local, ac- count, perpetuated orally in Maine, of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. More or less changed and shortened, probably, in its passage from singer to singer, it may be only the torso of the original, still it has the genuine stuff of the good old ballad. This shows itself not only in a crude simplicity and ruggedness, an im- personal style, and traces of incremental repetition, but

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also in the characteristically rapid movement from point to point in the story without waste of words, and a fa- miliar, somewhat stereotyped phraseology suggestive of those commonplaces of expression that occur so fre- quently in old ballads. Furthermore, in the sharp despair and pathos of a trapped and trembling foe as he looks toward his hesitating army, this song seems to preserve something of the spirit and the atmosphere that attach to many of the ancient ballads. No modern war song, however spirited, has quite the same tone —the same compelling force and appeal. This early American song, for all its uncouthness, is certainly akin to the ballad type. As Cornwallis

He looked to the East, he saw Washington advance,

He looked to the West, he espied the flag of France,

Beside he saw bold Countergrass [Comte de Grasse ] come float- ing down the bay,

we must feel that here indeed is a situation that may well have inspired many a country poet to try his hand at de- scribing it after the manner of those verses which were so familiar to him in colonial days.

The first two lines of the song, considered by the singer who sang it from memory as it was taught him in childhood, as a fragment of the first stanza, were more probably a refrain, just the sort that would carry a group of old-time singers off their feet. Nor is it hard to im- agine them, elated as they were by the news of so im- portant a victory, singing, with all the force that they could muster:

Hurrah for America, the news are very fine, We’ve taken another prisoner worth thirty of Bugwine.

The whole song, as far as remembered by the singer, follows:

VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON 285

SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS TO WASHINGTON*

Hurrah for America, the news are very fine, We’ve taken another prisoner, worth thirty of Bugwine.

You’ ve all heard of Lord Cornwallis, that British champion,

Shed blood in every nation where’er he did pursue;

We marched all our marches with guns and with fire,

We marched all our marches to quench the British ire;

We marched them down to Yorktown and placed our guards all round,

”T was there we set our cannon and fortified the ground.

He looked to the East, he saw Washington advance,

He looked to the West, he espied the flag of France;

Beside he saw bold Countergrass come floating down the bay, This fellow he arose trembling but could not get away.

He cried to his army, “Where has your courage fled?

Has your flesh all turned to clay?

If so, we must surrender, and to Amerikay.”

Cornwallis he is taken, his race it is quite run,

He yielded himself a prisoner to our bold Washington;

He surrendered his whole army, nine thousand men in all, And a large amount of shipping to Countergrass did fall.

Between such a song as the foregoing and that more fa- miliar, amusing one called “The Dance,” so popular among the soldiers in the Revolutionary War, the con- trast is not only striking but noteworthy:

Cornwallis jigged with young Fayette But suffered in his fame, sir,

1 As sung by Mr. MacLellan Gilchrist, of Thomaston, Maine.

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and then took as partner,

Washington, Columbia’s son, Whom easy nature taught, sir,

That grace, which can’t by fame be won, Or Plutus’ gold be bought, sir.

One is reminded of the remark in Lowell’s Biglow Papers, when, in speaking of the fun to be had on July Fourth at the re-enactment of Cornwallis’s surrender, called “The Cornwallis,” it is said, “i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn. But their és fun to a Cornwallis I aint agoin’ to deny it.”

After the death of Washington the poetic muse worked busily in many places. One of the songs was taken down from the singing of Mary Soper Carr, who died in 1869, aged seventy-two years, by her grand- daughter, Mrs. Susie Carr Young, of Brewer, Maine, through whose untiring efforts for many years a very large number of valuable old songs and ballads have been saved. This song unquestionably dates back to 1799 and has been passed down orally in the Soper family ever since. Through the kindness of Mrs. Young, it is here reproduced for the first time.

WASHINGTON, MY SON

A LAMENTATION

1 How sad was the morning, how sable the sky,

Grief burned in my bosom and tears in my eye;

A sackcloth of sorrow hung over my son,

I lament the sad loss of my great Washington — Washington, Washington, oh! what shall I do for my son?

VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON

2 When Britain, proud Britain, invaded our land, He then was first chosen the chief in command, He beat the brave warriors all by his great skill, — Now where is the man that his station can fill? Oh, I fear, greatly fear, he lives not on this hemisphere.

3 *Twas on his firm shoulders the government lay; Peace reign’d triumphant while he bore the sway: A hero, a statesman, a sage all in one, I lament the sad loss of my brave Washington — Washington! Oh, my son! O, what shall I do for my son?

4 When Gabriel, proud Gabriel, let fly the bold dart, Right through the center of his gallant heart, A sackcloth of sorrow hung over my son, I lament the sad loss of my great Washington — Washington! Washington! Oh, what shall I do for my son?

Many of the eulogies of Washington that continued to be written for some time after his death were not songs but, like much eighteenth-century poetry, bom- bastic attempts at the epic style. Such is one delivered at the old First Meeting House in Topsham, Maine, by the Reverend Jonathan Ellis in February, 1800. Over five hundred lines long, it is, today, though tedious read- ing, of real interest, and a few parts are certainly worth quoting to show what the typical oration for Washington was like. The original manuscript, a few lines from which were printed in Griffith’s Poets of Maine, is in the Pejepscot Historical Society in Brunswick, the Curator of which very kindly granted permission to use whatever parts of it might be of interest. The opening lines follow:

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THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Ye who have often heard his praises sung,

In strains sublime, by many an abler tongue, Now hear my death taught muse her grief impart, A grief deep felt by every patriot heart.

At your request I tremblingly essay.

Columbia mourns; her Washington’s no more, To bless with counsel or protect her shore. Anguish unfeigned now prompts the willing sigh; Now tears spontaneous tremble in the eye:

Ages to come shall know the pain we feel;

A thousand bards our cause of grief reveal:

Ages to come, while virtue has a friend,

Or all that gives renown on earth shall end, Shall annual plaints and annual tribute bring, Reherse his death, our country’s and his fair glory sing. From the fair rising to the setting sun,

Talk o’er his worth, and mourn for Washington. Ah, who his worth is able to express,

Whom heaven bestowed to save us and to bless. Had I an hundred mouths, an hundred tongues, Organs of steel, and adamantine lungs, Impossible his deeds of worth to name,

Which place him peerless on the roll of fame.

The poem then goes on to tell of Washington’s part in the French and Indian wars, in which

No danger aw’d him at no toil he griev’d; His duty mov’d him and his zeal achiev’d.

And in these wars, also, as Washington discovered,

All arts were practised such as Frenchmen know To dupe our sage and make the tribes our foe; But this in vain, his penetrating ken,

Explor’d the wiles of savages and men,

With manly fortitude, on virtue’s base,

He stood erect, nor left the dangerous place Till his high charge had faithfully fulfild.

VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON 289

From this point on, the story of the early wars is con- tinued, with glimpses of Washington’s life in retirement at Mount Vernon, where

He taught men culture, op’d new paths to gain, Reliev’d the laborer from useless pain.

All his wise projects to improvement tended, Made art a handmaid or with labor blended. To increase the quantity of human bliss,

And more diffuse the means of happiness.

He practised industry, this virtue taught,

By his example, full of wisdom fraught;

He honor’d all who acted well their part, Embrac’d the virtuous with an ardent heart, Wish’d every method might be well pursu’d, Design’d for public or for private good, Wish’d every virtue might the soul expand, And long distinguish this, heaven’s favor’d land.

The picture of Washington at Mount Vernon, living simply in full enjoyment of the pleasant rural scenes described by the poet, and doing all in his power to in- crease human welfare and happiness, is followed by brief accounts of his marriage and social life up to the time when, much to his sorrow, he was again called to leave his home and lead an army against Great Britain. One passage, only, from the account of the Revolution- ary War, which evidently taxed to the utmost the powers of the preacher-poet, will suffice as a fair example of his ability to express the mind of the people on their great leader:

Th’ historic pen shall faithfully declare, His painful service thro’ our eight year war,

His martial prowess, theme of every tongue, By other bard, shall be more fully sung,

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How he the foe compel’d to take their flight,

In boisterous March from Boston’s pleasant site ;

How at New York his prudence...’d [legible] the war; How fickle fortune frown’d upon his ear;

How Fabian like he led Britania’s host,

A fruitless circuit long the rugged coast;

How sickness in his camp spread dire dismay,

And death her numerous victims bore away.

Now war o’er Hudson’s stream extends her fare, And wintry camps along the Delaware;

Here British cantonments diffusely spread, Our force too weak to give them cause for dread.

At Trenton Hesse’s mercenary band Kept Christmas holyday in freedom’s land,

Our Hero watch’d the favorable hour,

Cross’d the deep stream, tho wind and tempest roar, Chang’d their rude glee to unsuspected pain,

And in subjection led their captured train.

Here turn’d the tide of war, now heaven smil’d, And Britain found their high rais’d hope beguil’d. The tidings flew, new energy they give,

And drooping spirits now again revive.

The following year with better omen came, An army’s rais’d that first deserv’d the name: Our Hero’s plans are into system bro’t,

And future battles now are better fought.

Witness the scenes which on this change ensu’d, When our troops fought and Bourgoyne’s host subdued ; Witness’d th’ event on Monmouth’s sultry plain, Tho’ Lee prov’d base, our arms the victory gain; Witness’d the Britons, and their rallyings cease, Till Yorktown’s conquest turn’d their tho’ts to peace. Less frequent hence the roar of war is heard, Which wak’d our country’s care the nation’s dread, Till the blest day when welcome peace her wand Extended o’er Columbia’s happy land.

Now veteran soldiers leave the toil of arms,

To greet their friends and cultivate their farms,

VERSES ABOUT WASHINGTON 291

To enjoy as citizens those blessings dear; Fatigue and danger bo’t, with many a scar: Now round their firesides tell of battles won, In raptures tell and boast of Washington.

There follows Washington’s prayer of gratitude to heaven for help in time of war and victory, ending with a supplication for Divine guidance in time of peace in order that the land may prosper:

O Sire of men, prolong what thou hast given, Long may our country feel the smiles of heaven, May order, virtue, justice lead the way,

And on our Empire make a cloudless day: Secure from factions and licentious arts,

May freemen act with dignity their parts;

Till time shall cease may independence won, With blood and toil be safely handed down,

And following ages reap the boon we tast

Till conflagration spreads her general waste.

Before resigning his “mighty trust,” Washington

To every State his counsel he consign’d, Warns them against the ills that party breeds, Exhorts to candid patriotic deeds,

To give their constant and united aid,

To that weak bond in war’s confusion made, Until convine’d ’twas proper to amend,

Or form one new, more equal to the end.

Then comes the poet’s account of the organization of the United States, followed by the call of Washington to

lead in peace the nation whose freedom he had won in war.

See him the savior of Columbia’s Land,

Now meet [sic] out justice with a righteous hand, On foreign artifice indignant frown,

Just to all nations, faithful to_his own,

Best and unerring servant of the law,

The good man’s patron and the factions awe.

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After this long eulogy of Washington, ending, as the parson-poet would naturally have it, with pious reflec- tions on his great worth and the duty of American citi- zens to profit by his example and teach his precepts to their children, there occurs, at the close, what may seem (even in New England) an amusing, though wholly unintentional anti-climax:

While we our deep, our heart felt loss deplore, In sable grief which veils Columbia’s shore, In midst of sorrow let our thanks arise, To him who rules on earth, and rolls the skies, Tis he each blessing takes, each blessing gives, Tho’ Washington’s no more, our virtuous Adams lives.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE: COLONIAL AGENT

MARGUERITE APPLETON

N June, 1715, the Rhode Island Assembly voted that

on account of the “necessity there is for this colony to empower an agent in England to transact for this colony all their concerns which they have beyond the seas. . . Mr. Richard Partridge of London in Great Britain etc. ° be empowered to represent this colony before the King and Council. ...”* Thus began the unusually long and successful term of service of Partridge as the agent of Rhode Island.

The colony could hardly have been more fortunate in its choice. The son of William and Mary Partridge, Richard was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on December 9, -1681. A New Englander by birth and up- bringing, he understood colonial ideals thoroughly; by trade a London merchant, he was well acquainted, from his long association with men of affairs, with English traits of character and English habits of thought. Alert, industrious, resourceful, and practical, he possessed pre- cisely the right qualities for a colonial agent. His shrewd judgment was so widely respected that he was employed

1 Rhode Island Colonial Records, 1v, 187.

293

294 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

also at various times as agent for other colonies: for New York, in 1731; for the Jersies, in 1733; for Massachu- setts, in 1737; for Pennsylvania, in 1740; and for Con- necticut from 1750-1759."

Of his youth we know almost nothing, but it is safe to assume that he was brought up in comfortable circum- stances. His father’s business dealings with merchants in England, his friendship with the influential Sir Henry Ashurst, his commission for Lieutenant-Governor from 1696-1703, the lavish entertainment he gave Joseph Dudley on a visit to Portsmouth, his ability to set up his son, Richard, as a London merchant, and the marriage of his daughter to Jonathan Belcher —all these facts are evidence of a background of affluence and a certain dis- tinction.

When Richard Partridge received the appointment to represent Rhode Island, for which he was to have the modest salary of £40 a year, the colonial agency had be- come a settled institution. Although never an official member of the imperial machinery, by the beginning of the eighteenth century the agent was an indispensable link in the administration of the colonies across the sea. His tasks centered around the fundamental function of protecting the iriterests of the colony in the mother coun- try. To this end he kept close watch on the policies of the Home Government, and also on the activities of other colonial representatives. Not only did he prevent,

2 This essay is based almost exclusively on Partridge’s services as the colonial agent of Rhode Island. The reasons for this emphasis are two: in the first place, the sources for Rhode Island are copious; in the second place, as the text suggests, Partridge’s work for other colonies involved

him in no kind of problem he had not already tried to solve in behalf of Rhode Island.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 295

if possible, oppressive legislation, but averted so far as in his power any aggression on the part of the colony’s neighbors. Acting as the intermediary between two wide- ly separated members of the empire, in the performance of difficult and at times delicate tasks, he had often to be the interpreter of two sharply-contrasting philosophies of life, that of the Old World and the New. Almost his greatest asset consisted of a circle of acquaintances, and his best “hunting ground” lay in the personal conference.

For the first five years of his Rhode Island agency, Partridge was engaged in matters of minor significance, but in 1720 there occurred an important responsibility: the colony’s appeal to the Crown on the question of the Connecticut boundary. This controversy, originating in the disputed reading of the charters, had been more or less definitely settled in 1703. Nevertheless, no attempt had been made to run the line until 1719, when argu- ments between the surveyors re-opened the old quarrel. After a little correspondence with the Connecticut As- sembly, Rhode Island’s patience gave out, and she ap- pealed to the Home Government. Partridge prepared his first important assignment with care. He drew up a petition which rehearsed in detail the history of the case —the decision of the Royal Commission in 1685, the letter from Charles II confirming this, the fruitless ne- gotiations between the two colonies over a protracted period of time, and the recent agreement of 1703. The petition was accompanied by a map of the territory in question which indicated with red and green lines the claims of the respective communities, and with marginal notes, the grievances of Rhode Island. He further bul-

296

Island,

Rhode

case in clearly

warked his plea by “several affidavits from ancient in- habitants.”* A second memorial praying for relief was made ready, and a Rhode Islander who happened to be in England was secured as witness.

The decision of the Board of Trade was indeed a novel one. While favoring, in general, the claims of Rhode

the dispute be cut in the curious fashion of persuading both colonies to give up their charters and allow them- selves to be annexed to New Hampshire! Naturally this was rejected by Rhode Island, and Partridge was in- structed to prevent if possible the calamity of the loss of the charter. The matter was finally settled, in 1726, with the recommendation that the boundary for which

(and, incidentally, Partridge’s “red line” on the map) should be accepted.

Less than a decade later the Assembly asked the agent to seek an adjustment of the eastern boundary, which, on account of the extravagant claims of Massachusetts, had become the source of much trouble.* Little thinking that this controversy was to be prolonged for twelve years, Partridge drew up the first formal petition on the

trated by the fact that Senex, the best map engraver of the day, was commissioned to make it, and he retained as counsel, Ferdinando J. Paris, one of the ablest lawyers

Historical Manuscripts from H. B. M. State Paper Office relating to Rhode Island, 1618-1735, 1X, 587. Transcript in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island.

* Massachusetts laid claim to all the land on the east side of Narra- gansett Bay on the ground that it had been within the Plymouth Grant when that colony was merged with Massachusetts.

THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

the Board suggested that the Gordian knot of

Island had been fighting for over fifty years

1736. As before, he enclosed a map to show the area involved. His attention to detail is illus-

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 297

in London, whom Thomas Hutchinson characterized as, “one of the first rate and who had a peculiar talent at slurring the characters of his antagonists.”°

In 1738, the Board of Trade recommended that a boundary commission be appointed to hear the case in America. This was followed by the usual Order in Coun- cil, and Partridge was so eager to report it without loss of time to the Rhode Island Assembly that he obtained a “pri.” [ private? ] copy at the cost of 10s. 6d.°

As might be expected, the decision of the commission divided the territory between Rhode Island and Massa- chusetts, but neither colony was satisfied, and the matter was again laid before the Crown. Rhode Island voted £200 for the appeal and wrote to Partridge to start ne- gotiations at once; her neighbor, appropriating £600, promptly chose two agents to appeal from the decision, “every part of which is grievous and injurious.”

Partridge and his attorney, Mr. Paris, patiently tackled the subject once more. A new petition was pre- pared which explained the facts and set forth Rhode Is- land’s claims. Both agent and advocate were eager to forestall the Massachusetts petition, and both were pleased, after almost daily attendance at the Council Office, to discover that theirs had been made first.” At this time Partridge found himself in a peculiar position. While he was engaged in the Massachusetts dispute with Rhode Island, he was called in by Massachusetts to assist in her controversy with New Hampshire. Thus he saw

® Thomas Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1764), Il, 384.

® Rhode Island State Archives: Partridge Accounts. 7 Ibid.

298 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

that he was fighting for Massachusetts over her northern boundary while he was fighting against her over her southern boundary. Apparently, however, he could with- out inconvenience work both with and against Francis Wilkes, the Massachusetts agent, and he hastened to assure the Rhode Island Assembly that

. ». no consideration whatever shall byass me to forfeit the trust reposed in me, but my zeal for the interest and good of the col- ony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations shall be the same (without the least variation) as it has all along hitherto been.*

Action on the Rhode Island-Massachusetts appeal was delayed by the Board of Trade for two years — years during which Partridge and Paris spent infinite labor and care on the matter. There had been engaged a second lawyer, Counsellor Murray, who worked almost as hard as his chief. Mr. Paris made innumerable trips to the Council Office to keep track of the activities of his op- ponents. He wrote his briefs with the closest attention to details; he conferred frequently with Partridge; he read and re-read the papers filed by the Massachusetts agents, not hesitating to add remarks and marginal cor- rections in red ink to statements “shamefully false and corrupt”; he ordered more maps for distribution among the members of the committee in charge; and finally, to leave no stone unturned, he made twenty-three per- sonal calls on those gentlemen to answer questions and to press Rhode Island’s arguments.*

* Partridge to the Secretary of the colony of Rhode Island: G. S. Kimball, Correspondence of Colonial Governors (Boston, 1902), 1, 69-

® Rhode Island Archives: Partridge Accounts.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 299

When the hearings began, in 1744, the solicitor, ably seconded by Partridge, put up a bold fight. In his ac- counts for this year Partridge included “20 Guineas as a gratuity for service,” and “four presents of wine to a gentleman for service.”** Is it too much to assume that he did not always confine himself to strictly legal advice?

The Board of Trade confirmed the decision of the boundary commission of 1742, but Massachusetts re- fused to accept defeat, and demanded still another hear- ing of the whole case. Partridge, greatly alarmed — for he not only appreciated the extra expense involved, but feared that Rhode Island might now lose that strip of land once granted — filed a counter petition, first taking the precaution of getting private copies of the last two petitions of his antagonist." His argument that an appeal from an Order in Council would start a tedious and dan- gerous precedent seems to have won the day, for the request of Massachusetts was denied. In 1746, the Order in Council was issued to run the line as previously rec- ommended. Through his indefatigable work Rhode Is- land gained control of land three miles wide on her eastern bank, and thus to this day Narragansett Bay with its excellent harbor lies entirely within the state’s borders.

Meanwhile Partridge had been playing a prominent part in the bitter struggle over the Molasses Act. The result of years of agitation was a bill designed to produce a monopoly in sugar and molasses for the benefit of the West Indian merchants. When this bill was first intro- duced into Parliament, in 1731, it produced a storm of indignation from the northern colonies. At once three

1° Rhode Island Archives: Partridge Accounts. 11 [bid.

300 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

petitions, of which one was the work of Partridge, who was acting as the agent of New York and New Jersey in the emergency, were sent to the Board of Trade. In spite of the opposition of the northern colonies, the bill passed the House of Commons and was sent to the House of Lords. The situation now took on the character of a crisis, for the West Indians were well organized, and the proposed legislation seriously menaced the colonial trade in molasses, rum, and sugar. The powerful West Indian lobby was paralleled by the banding together of the agents of the continental colonies, and both sides worked frantically to influence the votes of Parliament. Partridge had a “pretty deal of discourse” with “our hearty friend, Oglethorpe,” and codperated with his colleagues by contributing to the mass of pamphlets that flooded Parliament. He helped to print and dis- tribute a document by a Captain Hall—thought val- uable because of its impartial reasoning. He secured the brain and pen of another pamphleteer, one Sim Clemens, who produced A Short Answer to an Elaborate Pam- phlet Entitled T he Importance of the Sugar Plantations, etc. Composed of Mamy Words, Much Malice, Very Little Argument and an Abundance of False Reasoning. In addition he had printed for distribution eight hun- dred “Cases.” These “Cases,” generally broadsides or single sheets, and filled with neatly-phrased arguments, were admirably suited for political purposes. Whether Partridge was himself the author of any of this prop- aganda it is impossible to tell, but undoubtedly he con- tributed his share of data and reasoning. As a New Eng- lander he could not fail to understand how deeply the bill would undermine the prosperity of Rhode Island.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 301

Though the bill failed of passage in 1731, Partridge wrote to the Rhode Island Assembly, “I am informed the Barbadians will have another push for it.”** He was right, and again it was necessary for the continental agents to bend all their efforts to defeat the bill. Partridge helped frame a document, sent to the Board of Trade, which was the combined work of the representatives of five northern colonies.” This was followed by a pam- phlet, written, perhaps, by the indefatigable agent, called The Case of the Northern Colonies.“ In it there was raised the favorite argument that if trade with the foreign West Indies were prohibited, the New England merchants, and particularly the Rhode Islanders, who were the great molasses carriers of the American colonies, faced financial ruin, because the sugar islands could neither supply sufficient produce to meet the demand, nor furnish a large enough market for North American goods. While the bill was under discussion, the Rhode Island agent was given the opportunity of appearing in person before the House of Lords. Of his work that day he said:

I will not say my appearing as counsel was the occasion of our success, but this I believe none will deny, but that the Lords gave as due attention to it as to any of the counsel that went before, and that after that day would hear no more of it, con- cluding that it was a bill not fit to pass.’

12 Partridge to Governor Jencks: Kimball, Correspondence of Colonial Governors, 1, 20.

13 It was entitled, Some Short Observations on, and Reasons in Answer to the Three Representations from the Assembly of Barbadoes, and the Islands of Antigua, and St. Christopher, for and on behalf of Several of the Northern Colonies, vizt. The Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.

14 A copy of a pamphlet with this same title is in the John Carter Brown Library. It seems highly probable that this one is the work of Partridge, though it is impossible to identify it positively.

15 Partridge to Deputy-Governor Wanton: Kimball, Correspondence of Colonial Governors, 1, 26.

302 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

In spite of a second failure, in 1733 the sugar planters brought the bill forward a third time. Once more the agents combined to fight it, but at last their opposition was overcome, and the Molasses Act, levying duties on foreign rum, sugar, and molasses, became a law.

Part of Partridge’s duties requiring more than the usual amount of drudgery were those which had to do with the agency in war time. As the eighteenth century was one of almost incessant warfare for England, it fell to the lot of the agent to carry on negotiations for Rhode Island for the War of the Austrian Succession, and one year of the Seven Years’ War. In both, the Home Gov- ernment employed the policy of requisition and reim- bursement. It promised to provide arms, ammunition, tents, and clothing, and to pay the soldiers while the colonies were to furnish men, food, and transportation. The system, clumsy even at best, involved an endless round of petitions, conferences, and irritating details.

When, in 1746, Partridge received the estimates for the expenses of the various campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession, he set to work without delay to se- cure payment. Difficulties arose, however, almost at once. Though possessing satisfactory credentials author- izing him to collect the money — he alone, of all the co- lonial representatives, had been forehanded enough to get them from the Rhode Island Assembly —he failed at first to present the proper vouchers at the hearings. When he finally received these, another obstacle in the shape of the question about paper currency suddenly ap- peared. This necessitated a second series of hearings, during which the matter of the war debts was thrust aside while Partridge, London merchants, and even the

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 303

Attorney-General thrashed out the whole problem be- fore the Board of Trade. The colony’s account for the expedition against Louisburg was £36,096 colonial cur- rency, and for the campaigns of the two following years £10,144 sterling, but although Partridge presented more than one memorial, he was unable to get the full amount. Even when the Board of Trade and the agent agreed on a compromise sum, his work was not finished, for the method of payment required more discussion and inter- viewing. Not until 1750 were the Louisburg claims settled.

Hardly had these tedious transactions been concluded when the Seven Years’ War broke out, bringing with it the same question of reimbursement. Again England promised to pay her colonies for their expenses, and again the matter resolved itself into a muddle of co- lonial claims and counter claims on the part of the Home Government. Vouchers for army supplies, muster rolls of regiments, receipts for officers’ pay, warrants for cash advanced — and all these in varying amounts of colonial currency — produced a terrifying problem in mathe- matics. The affair developed into a series of wearisome contests in which the long-suffering agents endeavored to keep the government from pruning the colonial fig- ures to a minimum. Every item of expense was scanned by the parsimonious eye of some committee member, and Partridge discovered to his chagrin that the Board of Trade sharply criticized Rhode Island for asking pay- ment for such luxuries as coffee, sugar, ham, soap, knives and forks, and the like.”* In spite of all his efforts he could not collect for such items.

16 Partridge to the Rhode Island Assembly: Kimball, Correspondence of Colonial Governors, 11, 314.

304 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

In 1750, Partridge accepted the agency for Connecti- cut, which he held until his death, nine years later. By this time he had probably acquired a wide reputation in his office. For thirty-five years he had served Rhode Is- land, acting also, in the meantime, for the Jerseys, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. He had been instrumental in settling both the Rhode Island boundary controversies, and had taken an active part in the strug- gle over the Molasses Act, all the time performing the thousand and one other tasks connected with the po- sition.

The negotiations which he carried on as Connecticut representative were, for the most part, much the same as those in which he had often been engaged. There was the dispute between Connecticut and Massachusetts over their dividing line; the quarrel between the colony and John Mason over the land claims of the Mohegan In- dians, which dragged on until 1771, the Saint Joseph and Helena aftair, which likewise was not settled until after Partridge’s time — not to speak of a revival of agi- tation of the West Indians over the Molasses Act. This law, which for twenty years had been practically a dead letter as far as the northern colonies were concerned, was now about to expire, and the sugar planters once more began loudly to advertise their grievances. The whole situation was argued out in a series of hearings, Partridge using all his energies in behalf of the New England colonies. He kept a keen eye on the trend of the discus- sions, but suspecting that nothing would come of them, reported to Governor Wolcott that “when the contest had continued about a month, the Board have given the West Indian gentlemen the goby. . . .””

17 The Wolcott Papers, 43: Partridge to Governor Wolcott.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 305

While at times Partridge was compelled to concentrate all his efforts on special issues, almost every month brought its quota of miscellaneous duties. One of these was acting as a clearing house of information for both the Home Government and the colony. He rarely failed to piece out the scanty knowledge of the Rhode Island Assembly with all sorts of data. News of current events both foreign and domestic, copies of Resolutions and votes of Parliament, copies of speeches, or public “prints” were regularly enclosed in his packet of letters, and once he sent a copy of a speech of the Speaker of the House of Commons to the Governor of Rhode Island simply because “it is what we can scarce ever or rarely obtain, it being something curious I send it thee thinking it might be acceptable.””* In 1744, his keen nose for prop- aganda led him to dispatch to the colony

. a small book wrote by Jer. Dummer in defense of the charter governments which I thought might be very proper to have reprinted with the amendments I have made to it on pages 18 and 27 ... in order to disperse amongst members of Parlia- ment at the next sessions which might be of service.’®

Sometimes he resorted to subterranean methods to ob- tain the information he desired. Presents of wine secured “services” from certain individuals, and dinner invita- tions to the coffee houses made valuable friends of others. A single item in his accounts for 1729 of £1 3s. 4d. fora “treat to a person who was serviceable in giving infor- mation in Parliamentary affairs” suggests to the imagi-

18 Partridge to Governor Wanton: Kimball, Correspondence of Co- lonial Governors, 1, 94.

19 Partridge to Governor Greene: [bid., 1, 256.

306 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

nation the alert agent entertaining some acquaintance whose tongue he was loosening with conviviality.”

In 1740, his success at getting inside knowledge acted as a boomerang. He was then the temporary agent for the Assembly of Pennsylvania when that body became involved in a quarrel with Governor Thomas over grants for the War of the Austrian Succession. Thomas wrote to the Board of Trade complaining about the Quakers and their penuriousness. Somehow or other Partridge got hold of a copy of the letter and dispatched it to the Assembly, which aroused the anger of that body to an even greater pitch. The Board of Trade, discovering Partridge’s conduct in the affair, demanded an explana- tion and, when he refused, prohibited him from trans- acting any business before it until he had apologized and made appropriate restitution to Governor Thomas.”

Much of the time he was merely on guard. Like Cavour, who went to “sniff the air” at the Congress of Paris in 1856, Partridge had a keen nose for any benefit to the colonies. Although by 1715 the greatest danger of parliamentary abrogation of the charters had passed, the privileged, and even the proprietary colonies never felt quite safe. When a bill for the better regulation of charter colonies was introduced into Parliament, Rhode Island was quick to take alarm, although the measure had for its primary object the aiding of South Carolina which was facing a war with the Yamasee Indians. In 1721, when the status of charter colonies was once more called in question, the colony implored her agent to pro- tect her interests. This particular danger disappeared,

2° Rhode Island Archives: Partridge Accounts.

210. M. Dickerson, American Colonial Government (Cleveland, 1912), 71, note,

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 307

but Rhode Island was in constant fear that in some way her privileges might be restricted, or the charter itself annulled. Partridge learned to maintain an attitude of perpetual vigilance.

So steeped was he in the belief in the sanctity of the Rhode Island charter that in 1742, he precipitated an apparently needless quarrel between the Assembly and Leonard Lockman, the recently-appointed deputy-judge of the Court of Admiralty of New England. Lockman’s appointment as naval officer by the Crown rather than by the Governor of Rhode Island seemed to the agent only another instance of infringement of charter rights. Therefore he petitioned against it and wrote to the As- sembly his views on the matter. The exact powers of the colonial governor in maritime affairs had long been a troublesome question, and the Rhode Islanders had never ceased to insist that the choice of naval officers lay with the governor. Partridge’s unwelcome news so in- censed the Assembly that a committee was promptly chosen to inspect Lockman’s patent. It is not surprising that its report upheld the governor’s privilege by de- claring that it was supported by Acts of Parliament,” and that at the same time £550 was voted “to be applied and expended in the just defense of the charter privi- leges of the colonies.”

Meanwhile the new deputy-judge performed his du- ties, to which the colony could not take exception. The situation demanded more tact than Lockman seems to have possessed, and his term of active service was marked by considerable friction and mutual dislike. Though he returned to England in 1742-3, he continued there the

22 Rhode Island Colonial Records, Vv, 71. 28 Ibid., 97.

308 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

battle over his appointment. In 1745, Partridge reported that “the matter of Lockman lyes entirely dormant,” but four years later the Assembly was still indulging in angry correspondence with him on the subject. Un- doubtedly, the real cause of opposition to Lockman lay in an inherent antagonism to the royal Court of Ad- miralty —a state of mind that was aggravated by Part- ridge’s misguided zeal in behalf of the charter.

As may be supposed, Partridge’s letters were almost always concerned with the business of the agency, yet not infrequently we catch glimpses of the man himself. His shrewdness, his diligence, his gentle pleas for money (which the colony chronically found hard to supply), his sense of humor, and ever and always his deep knowl- edge of the times and of the ins-and-outs of colonial ad- ministration crop out again and again. While represent- ing Rhode Island in the Massachusetts boundary con- troversy he once slyly remarked:

I understand that the Massachusetts agent has got some ac- count of violence used or committed by Rhode Island people on some of theirs, now if you can have any proofs of the like usage on their side, please let me have them.”

In 1740, he declared, that the “smart resolutions” in the House of Commons about the perennial problem of paper currency were introduced “more with a view to puzzle and perplex the Ministry and spirit up the plan- tations . . . than anything else.”* The provisions of the Molasses Act caused him to advance the argument which was to be vigorously urged thirty years later. He wrote to Governor Wanton:

*4 Partridge to the Rhode Island Assembly: Kimball, Correspondence of Colonial Governors, 1, 62.

25 Tbid., 153.

RICHARD PARTRIDGE 309

It [the tax on foreign molasses, rum, and sugar] may be drawn into a precedent for the future . . . that a British Parliament imposes a duty on the King’s subjects abroad who have no rep- resentatives in the state here, they may from 4d. advance to 20d. to £100—on different things, and so on ad infinitum which is an infringement on liberty and property, as I appre- hend a violation of the right of the subject.”

While carrying on, in 1759, the negotiations over the debt of the Seven Years’ War, Partridge was taken sick. A letter of March first mentions his illness, and speaks in unusually dubious terms of his recovery; it is obvious that he was not only ill but old. Two weeks later his friend, Joseph Sherwood, informed the Rhode Island Assembly of their agent’s death —an event wholly un- expected by his friends. Although he had been famous and successful in his office, he died insolvent.

Nothing throws more effective light on the manage- ment of the empire than the forty-four years’ service of Richard Partridge. In and out of the colonial offices he passed, encountering the armies of clerks, minor officials, and members of committees, attending hearings in the hope of furthering the interests of the colonies, keeping a watchful eye on bills and debates in Parliament, writing voluminous letters to his lawyers, and to his American correspondents. Faithful, resourceful, friendly, his was the hand that did much to facilitate the colonial admin- istration of the first British Empire.

26 Partridge to Governor Wanton: Kimball, Correspondence of Co- lonial Governors, 1, 153.

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS

A NEW ENGLAND BOY IN THE CIVIL WAR

EDITED BY CAROLINE B. SHERMAN

E who have lived in and near Virginia all our lives, who

love Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley, and in whom the name of Lee arouses a feeling of reverence, would hesitate to revive painful memories of the conflict that centered in the Old Dominion, did it not seem probable that this first-hand account is typical of the story of many another New England youth whose children and grandchildren are now among the readers of the New EnGLanp QuarTERLY.

Henry Elijah Alvord, who wrote these letters, was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1844. He entered Norwich University in 1860 and, near the close of his junior year, joined the students’ company of cavalry (Seventh Squad- ron, Rhode Island Cavalry). When the company was mustered out soon after the battle of Antietam, he returned to the uni- versity for graduation; and then, though but eighteen years of age, re-entered the army as second lieutenant in the Second Regiment of Massachusetts Cavalry Volunteers. The young soldier served actively in and near Virginia throughout the war. Promoted from time to time, he held the rank of major at the close of the war.

It adds to the interest of this series of letters that they cover the entire period of the conflict — from the time when the news of the fall of Fort Sumter infected the cadets at Norwich Uni- versity with the war fever, to the closing incident at Appo- mattox, with the letter writer, barely twenty-one years old, watching the house in which the opposing chieftains were ar- ranging the terms of surrender. Written only for the eyes of his family, the letters present a vivid, frank, and informal pic-

310

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 311

ture of life in camp and in the field. In them may be glimpsed both the human and inhuman aspects of modern warfare. The passage describing the mouldering battle ground of Bull Run anticipates, in a sense, the realism of Stephen Crane.

A few years after the close of the letters Major Alvord mar- ried Martha Swink, of Virginia, whom he had met during his campaigns. For her he acquired the large estate of Spring Hill Farm in Fairfax County, which had been the homestead of her family for more than a century. Throughout his life he con- sidered Spring Hill his permanent home, although he was buried at Greenfield, Massachusetts. After serving in the regular army in the West, chiefly on staff duty under Generals Hancock and Sheridan, he was stationed at the Massachusetts Agricultural College as military instructor, the first army officer detailed to an agricultural college for this service.

All of his later years were devoted entirely to the pursuits of peace. The old hope of replacing swords with plowshares seems literally to have been his, for his interests and studies turned so definitely to agriculture that we find him in charge of that phase of early Chautauqua work known as the “school of farm- ing” — probably the first agricultural correspondence course undertaken in this country. In 1880, he became professor of agriculture at the Massachusetts Agricultural College and later was elected director of the newly-established agricultural ex- periment station at Cornell University. Declining this position in order to accept the presidency of the Maryland Agricultural College, he organized that college and established the state agricultural experiment station. Later, besides serving other states in similar capacities, he was active in securing federal legislation relating to agriculture and in the formation and leadership of national agricultural associations. His last ten years were spent in the United States Department of Agricul- ture. He travelled extensively in rural Europe and held honors in several foreign agricultural societies. He was known every- where as one who had worked untiringly in the North and in the South, in this country and abroad, in the interests of a stable science of the land. He died in St. Louis on October 4, 1904.

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NorwicuH Mixrrary UNIversiry, APRIL 22, 1861

The past week has almost been a furlough to us all. The war fever rages here to such an extent that study has been at a great discount. On Sunday the telegrams announced the fact of Sum- ter’s surrender. We were all excited, could recite none Monday — must see the Boston Journal. The telegrams were corrobo- rated and a proclamation, a fine one, from President Lincoln. Then the question was, who will go? It was answered Wednes- day, and Thursday the cadets turned out en masse and escorted our tutor Shattuck to the Junction where we bid him farewell with tears in our eyes and our fists doubled up. As he went out of sight cheer upon cheer rose from us. He goes as staff officer to the gallant sixth regiment M. V. M., which was attacked the other day at Baltimore.

On the nineteenth day of April 1775 the first blood of the Revolution was shed by the sons of the old Bay State at Lex- ington. On the nineteenth day of April 1861 the first blood of the great southern insurrection was shed by the sons of Massa- chusetts at Baltimore and those killed at the latter place were from the vicinity of Lexington. The whole sixth regiment comes from that region. Massachusetts is always ahead!

In Samuel W. Shattuck, our tutor from Groton Massachu- setts we lost an excellent instructor and a better drill master than General Sackman. He did more for the good of the insti- tution during the two terms of his tutorship than the rest of the faculty have done in the last half dozen years.

Friday was pretty quiet but yesterday morning we raised a flag upon our staff amid cheers and a salute of 13 guns. Ewart of Ohio then delivered an oration. We finished this demon- stration at half past twelve noon. At two we assembled and re- ceived an invitation from the Dartmouth students to serve as escort for them in a similar demonstration on their common at 3 P.M. They got cartridges and horses for us and we detailed a gun squad and carried over one of our six-pounders. The rest

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of the cadets went as infantry and did escort duty. They raised two banners and we fired 34 guns for them. I had the responsible position on the gun it being number three — tender of the vent.

The infantry meanwhile saluted by presenting arms. Then a procession was formed and marched to the chapel of Old Dartmouth where we had the best seats given us and listened to speeches from two seniors. Then our Captain C. B. Stoughton was called on and spoke. Then the students en masse escorted us clear home, called on General Sackman and he spoke. Then miscellaneous speaking, cheering, etc. Then adjourned. This is the first time the Dartmouths and the Cadets have ever united in a demonstration. They have never before been on so friendly terms as now.

Rumors today say Washington is lost. If that is so we must have a bloody war and I must have my share of it before it is over!

Norwicu University, JUNE 10, 1862 [To his father.]

This is a letter on truly very important business.

An aid to General Sprague of Rhode Island (Colonel Gardner) is here. He desires to form a company of cavalry for three months service. The Junior classes of Dartmouth College and Norwich University are determined to form the company. Both faculties say that it shall not interfere with our courses at college, and three months will not much in- terfere. ‘The purpose is to be at Washington 3 months to relieve a regiment of well drilled troops to go into active service.

Three months will no more than drill us well. We are to learn Cavalry Tactics and that is about all besides what we see, no real service surely, it’s impossible. We have had this matter to think of for a few days and it seems now highly probable that we shall go. That is, enough from the two junior classes will go to break those classes up completely; those, with numerous

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freshmen, will form the Company — all students known well to each other, the officers all appointed by Sprague. We are all privates together. The enlisting papers are at Providence, R. I. There we are to go, if at all, and be mustered in.

Now there are fifteen in my class—eleven will pretty surely go, including myself . . . I have thought of it well, am not hasty, but wish to go with them. There is no time to waste thinking of it. We should all go tomorrow night. Thirty or forty will go then sure, the rest are to follow on Thursday or Friday P.M. at latest. It will be a great thing for us — cav- alry tactics and camp life at Washington. I can stand it three months sure. Will you give your consent? I am sorry you are not where you can see all the family to consult but there is not time for that—what say you? If you are willing please to telegraph so in so many words immediately — wait for nothing. If you will mot consent write to me at once that I may get the letter Thursday. Decide at once yes or no.

It is not a very grave matter. I will lose nothing here, it lasts till Sept. 10 or 12 only. Telegraph “yes” or write “no,”

to your affectionate son,

Henry E. Atvorp. WEDNESDAY MORNING.

I have “slept on it” another night — so have we all. Still we

say go.

Bounp FoR WASHINGTON.

June 19, 1862.

. . - At last I am off for the National Capitol [sic] via Prov- idence, R. I. We have a full company of seventy-nine men, students, cadets and a few friends of each. It is a fine set of fellows. I never expect to regret going.

I was very glad to find that most all of you favored my going....

We go as private soldiers in the hardest branch of the service. We doubt not we shall have a very “tough” time and expect to

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get heartily sick of it. I suspect there is but little real patriotism in the movement. Most go for novelty, for the sake of going. Still we hope to be useful.

Though we know nothing about it, we suppose we shall see no active service in the field, dont anticipate being under fire, but in and around Washington most or all of the time.

Think of me during the next three months not as at war, but as on a pleasant journey on horseback, a vacation of three months spent at Washington, and working my way along... .

Camp SIEGEL, WINCHESTER, VA. Jury 31, 1862.

You will see by this date that we have again changed our quarters. If when in the Army Reserve Corps of the Potomac we were not in active service, we certainly are now. . . . Satur- day we were transferred from General Sturgis’ Reserve Corps te General White’s Brigade. White, however, was not assigned a command till Saturday night. So Saturday night we were ordered to pack up ready to march at any time. Sunday morning the Major went to Washington and returned at noon with sealed marching orders. At 2 P. M. we struck tents, left Camp Eddy and marched through Alexandria, back to Washington. We arrived there and dismounted in a cattle pen at 6 P.M. At eleven at night we had loaded all our baggage, horses and selves in a long line of freight cars on the Baltimore road. There were twenty-five in my car, we were on hay lying “spoon fashion” across an old cattle car. ... At two P. M. we stopped at Sandy Hook and through some unknown cause we could not proceed, so six of us went off on a foraging expedition, and were gone till dark. We then went to sleep in our freight car and woke up Tuesday morning on the railroad bridge crossing the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry. We were there long enough to see all the public buildings, where John Brown lived, and was taken prisoner, where the Union troops burned the Arsenal and private buildings and destroyed the bridge. The whole village is a mass of ruins. It was shelled by the Federals from across

316 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the Potomac when Banks retreated. From H. F. we passed down the lovely valley of the Shenandoah, through Charles- town, Va. (where J. B. was hung) to Winchester. . . .

We are camped on a hill commanding the town and the General has orders to shell the town whenever he chooses. Sev- eral houses have been burned since we have been here, by Gen- eral White’s order. . . .

Bush-whackers are very plentiful around here and pickets are stationed in all directions from camp, out about four miles from us and about one mile apart. We are in a Brigade camp, 4 Regiments of Infantry, a Light Battery and our Squadron. The infantry are building a fort. We are on picket duty or off scouting, or searching houses, etc. . . .

Wednesday was spent in this scouting; we had almost reached Front Royal when we met a party of Illinois Cavalry return- ing, having in charge the very noted female spy and mail- carrier, Belle Boyd. They got her at Front Royal and found on her person thirty or forty letters, a six-shooter, etc. She is the most noted rebel spy out. They have been hunting for her for a month. You have probably often seen her name in the papers. ...

After we were all in line yesterday morning the Major with twenty men (including my classmate Sergeant Major Bush and myself) for his bodyguard, galloped out to the outer-picket and found quite a brisk skirmish, on a small scale, going on. [ Gives details. |

The Shenandoah Valley is beautiful and healthful. On the East is the Blue Ridge, to the West the Alleghanies. Our camp is on the homestead farm of the late Senator Mason of Virginia of M. C. Slidell notoriety.

Last night we were ordered to saddle at ten P. M. — took turns all night holding the horses at the tent door and we slept on our arms ready to mount in I minute. ...

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Norwicu Universiry, VERMONT, NoveMBER 5, 1862. [To his father.]

Monday’s Boston Journal, Page 2, Column 2, under the heading “The Texas Expedition” says “We understand Gov- ernor Andrew has with leave of War Department assigned to General Banks’ Expedition the 41st Regiment being the only 3 yrs. regiment remaining in the State. 3 batteries, 3 yrs. vol. artillery and 8 regiments nine months men.

It is also the Governor’s purpose to begin forthwith to raise a regiment of Cavalry for 3 years service, intended for the same expedition. .. .

You know as well as I do the character of Banks’ Expedi- tion. That it is eminently a New England expedition if not almost exclusively from Massachusetts. Its importance is ac- knowledged by all. It is directly under the direction of Gov- . ernor A. and General B., the former furnishing the men therefor, mostly Massachusetts regiments, the latter command- ing the expedition.

This new Cavalry regiment will probably be the last cavalry raised in Massachusetts and it is to be with Banks in Texas, the place of all places for cavalry to enjoy themselves, have health, and a wide and varied field of action.

Here then is a rare chance if it can be got. The question at once arises— is it not best for me to go with this 2nd Massa- chusetts Cavalry if I can get a place. The Adjutant’s berth is of course the desirable place; if I can get that had I not better take it? Not that I am uneasy here, unable to study after my summer’s work, but that I came back intending while I im- proved my time here, to keep my eyes open for all opportunities which might be worth my consideration.

Then first: — Can I be Adjutant of this new Cavalry corps and second:—If I can, had I not better go? No time is to be lost! .

If I am even to apply for a place it must be at once, no waiting a week to decide whether it is best to do it or no, and to ask everyone’s opinion.

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You see how I feel about it; what you think and do will settle the matter. If more cavalry go from Massachusetts (after this Corps) they will be part of the next draft probably, and

I must go again sometime.

Camp GaimsHaw, GLoucesTer Point, Vircinis, Sunpay, 1 Marcu 1863.

. . « We did nothing here last week. Got settled in camp, began to regulate things, and to drill some. . . . Theoretically the Paymaster will be here this week — when he will, in point of fact, honor us, remains to be seen. My bill against Uncle Sam is about $400.00.

As soon as we are well enough drilled and disciplined, we shall undoubtedly go out on picket and scouting beyond the lines, then we shall have sport. . . .

Though we are officers, and plenty of contraband cooks and runners are handy, we can’t get anything to eat. So far, the men have generally lived better than the officers. Those who like oysters can indulge freely — York River bivalves are the finest in the world —they are monsters. All kinds of ducks, wild geese, woodcock, and quail, rabbits too, abound here, but we must not shoot. . . .

We look for good weather e’er long — and action. We are in the Brigade of General Busteed of N. Y.—the great orator of the Sumner and Andrew school. . . .

Camp or DETACHMENT Seconp MassacHusETTs CAVALRY. Guoucesrer Pont, Vircinia, May 3, 1863.

. » « Each day of the advance of summer makes this spot more enchanting. Spring —so lovely in New England — is here all windy rain, but the approach of summer makes it a rival of New England. If instead of the deserted farms, the apparently barren plantations, once fertile in the extreme but devastated by

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slavery with a finishing touch of war, were in the high state of cultivation which peace and free labor would soon bring them to, I should, I fear, become too attached to this lovely place. As it is I realize its natural beauty more and more every day and try to appreciate it for the country does not contain a finer situation for a camp. Every thing here tends to make us con- tented and happy. I enjoy the life I am leading wonderfully, tho’ wish it could be enlivened by actual wer instead of “rumors of war.” ...

There are but three companies here at present, those com- manded by the pleasantest officers out of the five forming our detachment. The Major, with the Assistant Surgeon (H. Gamwell, M.D. of Huntington, Missouri), three Captains (Washburn, Rice, Holman) and four Lieutenants (Stone, Payson, Richards, and Alvord) are the officers now in camp. All are gentlemen. Four were educated abroad (two being Rugby boys) and are fine linguists— modern particularly. Greek, Latin, French, German, and Portuguese books abound in camp. . . . It would be very pleasant were it not for a sort of feeling which I necessarily have that to be considered quite the equal of the majority I should be a graduate of Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard.

I am quite surprised at one thing. It so happens that with one exception, all the officers of the most carefully officered bat- talion of the regiment are determined enemies of Governor Andrew and Company, Lincoln and Company, and especially anti-proclamationists. Consequently (?) all great friends of McClellan. Speaking of George B.—I think Hooker’s testi- mony will increase the former’s strength greatly. It reads as if specially intended — by its language, not its facts—to be the deathblow to McClellan. The latter’s testimony on the other hand must hurt him, he having such an apparent poor mem- ory of facts, and being so very careful in answers to questions. Hooker says he is infinitely superior as a General to Mc- Clellan or Burnside —I hope he will be able to prove that this month. . . .

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Tuesday about noon all the troops at the Post were reviewed by Secretary Seward and son, with the Prussian, Swedish, and Danish ministers. Thursday there was another review by Gov- ernor Cannon and Staff of Delaware. That day we were mus- tered for another two months pay. Only mustered, not paid. Notwithstanding the declarations from Washington, about reg- ular payments, we dont expect any more pay for months. . . .

Camp or DETACHMENT 2D MaAssaACHUsETTs CAVALRY West Port, Vircinia May 24, 1863.

Tho’ not in Richmond yet we are en route. I think I am right in saying that our detachment of three companies is nearer the rebel capitol [sic] than any other portion of our army. We form the outposts to this place and West Point I am sure is the place nearest Richmond now occupied by the Union troops.

Contrabands and deserting rebels are constantly coming to our lines and often bring Richmond papers — from the latter we learn that the holding of this Point by us is a source of great annoyance to the inhabitants of Richmond. . . .

No doubt they worry over our holding this place — as a base for future operations it is highly important; in case of a sudden second trial of a Peninsular campaign instead of the longer one via Fredericksburg and Richmond R. R. the possession of this place would be invaluable. We are all ready for the land- ing here of any number of men... .

Tuesday, I commanded the advanced picket or cavalry out- post. The reserve station is four or five miles beyond that. I was in the saddle about 24 of the 28 hours I was on duty and went far into rebeldom, getting acquainted with the country, roads, woods, farms, houses, and contrabands — picking up gen- eral information. I visited a plantation of four thousand acres owned by Robert E. Lee, Jr. (son of the rebel general-in- chief) and there had my first sight of slave field labor. On an immense cornfield was a row of thirty or forty negroes, male and female, of all ages, hoeing slowly, the overseer with broad-

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brimmed hat and cane standing behind, forcing the old and the little ones to keep up with the middle aged. This scene was but half a mile from one of my picket stations, yet the property of rebel general’s family was held in such respect by our generals that strict orders were issued to disturb nothing on the farm. But at last the overseer has been ordered to disappear — has done so—the slaves are freemen. They labor now for them- selves alone.

The country around here is beautiful — riding out beyond our lines I am quite reminded of rides in Massachusetts. The woods, although containing several varieties of trees not found in New England, are composed largely of oaks, with many hickories and some chestnuts — no maples. Pine woods are com- mon too—(southern pine mixed with spruce and cedar). The woods are now full of flowers — box flowers, wild honeysuckle, lupins, strawberries, blackberries, locusts, violets, and others I am unacquainted with. . . .

Yesterday as our daily mail boat, the “Swan” from York- town was coming up here, just as she turned a point in the south side of the river three miles from here a rebel battery of four guns opened a very rapid fire on her. I happened to be where I could see both beat and battery. . . . Every house within two miles was set on fire — about ten in all. One elegant private mansion of brick and stone furnished (a Lieutenant who was there says) in the most expensive and luxurious manner was found just abandoned — tea table all set, etc., etc. That shared the same fate. The gunboat went down with the mail boat this morning. ‘This is no doubt but the first of a series of attacks with which we shall be favored now.

Unrrep States GovERNMENT Farm, LEWINSVILLE, VIRGINIA, Sunpay, AuGusrt 23, 1863.

. . - Scarcely was I relieved from duty as Officer of the Day on Monday when I was detailed as Officer of Brigade Guard. (All the other officers but two or three unwell and on light duty

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were off with the Colonel and rest of command.) Had an easy time till about midnight when I was aroused by arrival of eleven rebel prisoners from the Colonel — Moseby and White’s guerillas. From that time till morning I was at work trudging between our camp and Centerville turning over the prisoners with their descriptive list to the Provost Guard House of Gen- eral King’s Division. Just before daylight an order came into camp for every available man to proceed immediately to join the Colonel. . .. About 300 men were raised. We started about sunrise. ... We travelled for twelve hours constantly, went to Leesburg and all around there everywhere. After it was pitch dark we travelled over horrid roads and down and up terribly steep ravines. We rested at night in a thick wood on a high point of the Bull Run Mountains. It was ten P.M. At 3 o'clock we were roused and started on. Just at daybreak we reached the long-sought-for place — the camp of the guerilla chiefs Lieu- tenant Colonel White and Major Mosby with their command— about 550 men. As luck would have it, a prisoner we had taken, a Mosby sergeant escaped from us. He reached his camp just before we did, so we were just too late. They were alarmed and just escaped. We had a skirmish, got a few men and some horses, the rest escaped to the recesses of Ashby’s Gap — there it was impossible to follow with success. . . . Friday morning our squadron under Captain Holman was ordered to duty at Fort Allen, Virginia — end of Chain Bridge, for a week. Yesterday morning I was placed in command of a detachment of forty men and a Lieutenant and sent here. It is an independent com- mand. ...

It is ten P.M. —I have just been notified to have my men saddle at once — am going after Mosby — orders from Head- quarters of Brigade. It is a foolhardy chase but I must go. There are Mosby excitements all around — every rebel on a horse or mule is “Mosby”. ... Monday, 10 A.M. Have just returned from a ride of twenty-five miles. We followed Moseby and 60 men closely over towards Fairfax Court House, then we got beyond our bounds and left him to the care of the troops over that way.

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Cavacry Camp, VIENNA, VIRGINIA Sunpay Ocroser 11, 1863.

. .. Friday about noon we received marching orders and in an hour the whole command, the available men of three regiments under Colonel Lowell started out with three days’ rations. We marched in the pouring rain until dark. We then stopped in a field of tall grass where we stood shivering and holding our horses until about 1 A.M. when the rain ceased and we built fires. At five we were started again and one of our first achieve- ments was swimming a deep creek much swollen by rain. All day we marched without halting, ate our hard bread and raw salt pork in the saddle. We traversed the country back and forth; at last found where the enemy lay (the guerilla chief- tain White, with two hundred and fifty men) and then turned back towards camp. Soon after dark the fires were replenished with light wood and we gradually and silently withdrew from the mount, remounted and turned towards Leesburg. Before midnight we swam two streams, about 1 A.M. we passed through Leesburg and at two bivouached [sic] a few miles be- yond the town. Before four we were again in the saddle and marching rapidly towards Snickersville, just below the Gap of the same name, in the Blue Ridge. But as fate would have it, we were fifteen minutes too late. White’s rear guard passed through the Gap just as we got in sight. It was useless to undertake to follow him into the mountains. We picked up a few of his stragglers and had a slight skirmish.

Monday morning we continued our camp-ward march by way of Bull Run. We crossed both the battlefields. The ground is strewn with old clothes, uniforms, parts of equipments, arms, etc. Pieces of shell and solid shot with cannister and grape are quite abundant and too frequently you see the parts of skeletons of both men and horses lying along the road. I counted six skulls. At intervals too, human hands and feet are seen pro- truding from insignificant mounds — soldiers’ graves. Man as a soldier, who is made so much of at home by the few and who is considered by the world in general, theoretically, to be in an

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exalted and honorable position, is practically of less account than the lowest animals. . . .

We are quite isolated and I fully anticipate a descent upon our camp by White, in force, some fine night when we are miles away running after Mosby or someone else. Should he do so he will clear out the camp finely.

Heap Quarters CavALry BricaDE Vienna, VIRGINIA January 24, 1864.

. . - Friday 15th I heard that a notorious guerilla was at his home somewhat sick — about five miles from camp. I got 25 men from the Colonel and permission to go after the man. I started at noon expecting to return before dark but one cir- cumstance after another kept leading me on and I rode thirty- five miles returning about two o’clock Saturday morning with three prisoners and two horses.

I had orders to arrest a certain citizen and bring him in. I stopped, going out, and did so. I found him in a home alone with his mother, an old helpless lady of eighty-five. Of course she was greatly alarmed at the idea of my taking her son. I thought it was very hard to leave her alone — the house had no other within a mile — but it was a simple case of unconditional orders, and with the thought that “such is civil war” I trotted off Mr. Hunt leaving his mother almost crazy. Returning at midnight, passing near the house, the man asked leave to go to see how his mother was and I went with him. We found the old lady crouched over a few warm ashes with not one stick of wood in the house, nothing to burn, and unable to get anything. I hesitated a moment between humanity and obedience. The condition of the old lady was too much for me. She begged me to let her son stay, and I did. The son agreed to be at my office next day at noon and I was surprised at finding him true to his word. Fortunately the Colonel did not ask for Mr. Hunt until that day after noon so he was already to be taken before him. He subsequently took the oath and went home. This is only an ordinary case. I, a few days ago, sent into Washington the

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father of a family of eleven children the oldest being but twelve, a girl, and the mother is sick in bed. But I had to do it. It seems to me sometimes that if a man is kept long enough in this part of Virginia at such a time he will forget what it is to feel at all.

Last Monday (the day it was published in Greenfield, by the way) Major Crowninshield said to me while talking over a little business, “Oh! Mr. Alvord —I have received notice that your commission as First Lieutenant has been issued in Massa- chusetts dated January 1, 1864.” I replied—“Ah! —a very ac- ceptable New Year’s gift, Major!” He supposed so. And so it is. All the fellows who went into the regiment as 2d’s when I did — Stone, Dabney, Richards, Sim, Manning —are 1st Lieuten- ants and it is pleasant to be placed on an equality with them. .. .

[Place and date lost. |

. » - The Invasion in Maryland is over apparently and Wash- ington, D. C., U.S. A. (that is, the Dirtiest City in the United States of America) still exists. But on the whole the affair should be considered one of the most disgraceful to our govern- ment that has occurred during the war. Two weeks ago today the news reached Washington that rebels in force were going towards Harper’s Ferry. A day or two later Martinsburg was lost, Harper’s Ferry abandoned and the enemy entered Mary- land. Two weeks ago today —the day on which we first got the news —I received through one of my detectives — spies if you prefer the name —a letter written at Richmond June 23d by a Colonel, commanding of brigade of South Carolina Cav- alry in which he said that his division was under orders to march to Harper’s Ferry, that rations had been issued, enough to go there — that they were then on the march, heading that way. He went on to state that the force was 50,000 strong and all veterans, mostly of Ewell’s Corps. In his opinion their ob- ject was to take Washington — that they knew it to be defended by a few undisciplined militia who would make no stand against such troops as the Stonewall Brigade, etc. He thought they

326 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY would not go to the Ferry but take a more direct route to the city and he expected to be with his friend (a lady) before the letter was.

I knew the letter to be genuine: I was personally acquainted — slightly — with the lady to whom it was written. I knew the Colonel well by name and knew that he wrote regularly to the lady. I usually have the letters examined before they reach her. This one I kept because it had in it valuable information. Knowing all these facts and that there was no doubt that this information was in the main correct, I took the letter to Colonel Lowell and explained the facts. I think he believed it also but

“not liking to endorse it entirely he forwarded the letter to Gen- eral Augur with a note which left me the [sic] shoulder it all. I was quite willing to do so— but alas! —I was merely a Lieu- tenant of no account — had undoubtedly been duped — the letter was probably written expressly to be sent to me — and with such impression it was cast aside or if sent at all to the War Depart- ment, no importance was attached to it. A day or two passed, but vague accounts came of the raid in Western Maryland — the Government seemed unable to determine the strength of the force —or if it did know it would not tell it, and I was laughed at about my false alarm. But I stuck to it and would not give in. A few days more and while the city of Washington was calmly sleeping —the War Department too apparently — an armed host encamped before the town — in fact entered its very suburbs.

Then all was intense alarm — there was a rush for the North, but railroads and telegraphs were cut and escape was impossible. All were panic stricken. Fortunately General Grant had learned that a strong force had left him — that the people here failed to find it out, and so he, without asking anyone’s advice sent up troops. The Sixth Corps arrived just in time —there was a short

fight just beyond the President’s House, the rebels heard the

well known yell of the “Fighting Sixth” and Washington was

saved. The next morning no rebels were in the vicinity of Washington.

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All now admit that had they made a dash the first day they reached the skirts of the city they could have entered it and temporarily held it, almost without opposition.

Of this fact there is not the slightest doubt. Neither is there any that the rebel force was many thousand strong and in- tended to take Washington until confounded by a charge from veterans where they only expected to find militia.

Some (copperheads) are foolish enough to say that the city was besieged for two days by five hundred men, but they are not listened to.

Someone blundered. With thirty thousand rebels in Mary- land a week our government neglected to learn the fact and we were told that it was all a hoax — merely a few guerillas near Hagerstown. It is shameful!

And now they will probably succeed in returning unharmed with millions worth of plunder and laughing over the scare they gave us and their success in breaking up Grant’s Army.

I wonder if anyone remembers a certain letter forwarded properly by an insignificant Provost Marshal, notifying the War Department of what was to come.

Where my regiment is I do not know. I am not with it — I do know that, and I am sorry for it. The regiment has gone in pursuit of the “invaders” with the Sixth Corps. Colonel Lowell reported to General Wright for temporary duty on last Wednesday and has command of several thousand cavalry — all in pursuit of the rebels. I have tried to get relieved and ordered to my regiment but have not been successful. . . .

Fats Cuurcn, Vircinia, May, (?) 1864.

... Grant seems to be doing tolerably well though he has a hard task before him. We don’t feel so elated here as you do in New England — we see how well matched he is by Lee. He has, as I suppose he must, “changed his base” to White House on the Pamunkey — and he is working around so as to advance on a line between White House and Richmond. . . . Banks, Butler,

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and Sigel are whipped and all dead men. I am sorry, especially for the two former. I believe Sigel to be a good fighting man and officer. Banks and Butler are fine executives but they missed it when they tried to be Generals in the field. The U. S. has lost two good men — in their proper sphere.

General Augur has sent for me to be in town tomorrow morning to devise with the Provost Marshal General of the Department and the General himself—a