[Illustration: R. Badger]
MEMOIR OF REV. JOSEPH BADGER.
BY E. G. HOLLAND.
FOURTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
C. S. FRANCIS AND CO., 252 BROADWAY.
BOSTON: BENJAMIN H. GREENE, 124 WASHINGTON ST.
1854.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
MRS. ELIZA M. BADGER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Western District of New York.
DAMRELL & MOORE,
PRINTERS,
16 Devonshire Street, Boston.
PREFACE
The present volume is the Memoir of a man and a minister whose character
was strikingly individual, whose services to Religion in its more
liberal and unsectarian form were large and successful; and in the
denomination to which he belonged, no man was more generally known, and
none, we believe, ever acted a more prominent and effective part. The
writer of this has endeavored to set forth the life and sentiments of
Mr. Badger, to a large extent in his own language. Much of his journal
must be new even to old acquaintance, as it was written many years ago,
and no part of it has ever been published. To those who would be pleased
to read the outlines of the greatest theological reformation among the
masses which the nineteenth century may justly claim, we trust this
volume will be welcome; likewise to all those who may be liberal and
evangelical Christians. Aged men, contemporaries with him, will rejoice
in the revival of past scenes, and the young will be taught, encouraged,
and warned by the paternal voices of the departed.
Two classes of great men figure effectively on the stage of the world.
One class are strongest in writing. Their written words embody the
entire elegance and power of their minds. Such were Webster and
Channing. The other class are strongest in speech. Their personal
presence, their spontaneous eloquence in oral discourse, alone express
their mind and heart. Such were Clay, Henry, and Whitfield. To the
latter classification Mr. Badger unquestionably belongs. Though the
marks of superiority are variously apparent in his papers, it was in the
more natural medium of oral speech that his genius shone. Having now
completed the task demanded by my duty to the family of Mr. Badger, I
would, in the name of the self-sacrificing, trusting faith of which he
was no common example, send forth this volume to the world, hoping that
in an ease-loving age, the presentation of a Lutheran force in the
example of a son of New Hampshire may serve to awaken in others a
kindred energy.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.
II. CHILDHOOD.
III. YOUTH AND EDUCATION.
IV. CONVERSION.
V. CALL TO AND ENTRANCE UPON THE MINISTRY.
VI. PUBLIC LABORS IN THE PROVINCE.
VII. TOUR TO NEW ENGLAND, AND PUBLIC LABORS.
VIII. ORDINATION AND PUBLIC LABORS.
IX. PUBLIC LABORS--MARRIAGE--TRAVELS.
X. LABORS AND SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN NEW YORK.
XI. THOUGHTS AND INCIDENTS OF 1819 AND 1820.
XII. WRITINGS--MARRIAGE--TRAVELS.
XIII. CORRESPONDENCE--VISITS AT ANGELICA WITH D. D. HOW, THE
MURDERER--SERMON AT THE GALLOWS.
XIV. JOURNEY AT THE SOUTH--PUBLISHED JOURNAL.
XV. MINISTRY AT BOSTON.
XVI. FOUR MONTHS' LABOR IN THE COUNTIES OF ONONDAGA AND CAYUGA, NEW
YORK, IN 1828 AND 1829, WITH OTHER PARTS OF HIS PUBLIC LIFE, EXTENDING
TO MAY, 1832.
XVII. EDITORIAL LIFE.
XVIII. GENERAL VIEWS.
XIX. MINISTRY--PUBLISHED WRITINGS AND IMPORTANT EVENTS FROM MAY, 1839,
TO MARCH, 1848.
XX. RETIRED LIFE--READING--TRAVELS--DEPARTURE--1848 TO 1852.
XXI. OUTLINES OF CHARACTER.
XXII. ADDRESSES--SERMONS--REMINISCENCES--VIEWS OF CONTEMPORARIES.
XXIII. REFLECTIONS.
MEMOIR.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.
In so young a world as America, it has been held unsuitable for persons
to spend much time in the tracing of pedigree, or to found important
claims on family descent; nor can it accord less with the common sense
of mankind than with the republican genius of the world, to say, that
every genuine claim to human esteem is founded in character. In this is
rooted every quality that can, of right, command the reverence of man.
But, as character is not exactly isolated and independent of ancestral
fountains, from which the innate impulses, capacity, and tendency to
good and evil have flown, the subject of ancestry justly belongs to the
history of every man's mind and life. Our ancestors flow in our veins.
We retain them more or less in our characters always, so that the great
stress which different countries have put upon this theme, rests on
other than artificial and ostentatious reasons. In nature, below man,
the various circuits and orders of being do nothing more than to repeat
ancestral forms and habits, to which the sweet rose, the eagle, and the
strong-armed oak, are perpetual witnesses; and though man, by his
God-like faculty of will is lifted out, in a great measure, from this
necessity, he is so far a derivation from the past, that he ought to be
seen in his connections with it. We therefore introduce the subject of
Mr. Badger's ancestry as the chief part of the first chapter of this
book.
Joseph Badger, the subject of this memoir, was a native of Gilmanton,
Strafford county, New Hampshire, born August 16th, 1792. From an early
manuscript of his I copy the following lines:--
"My father, Peaslee Badger, was born at Haverhill, Mass.,
1756. He was the son of General Joseph Badger, who was a
native of that place. When my father was nine years of age,
his father removed to Gilmanton, N. H., where his family
was settled, and where my grandsire, General Joseph, ended
his days in peace, in the year of our Lord 1803. The good
instruction I received from him, before my ninth year, will
never be effaced from my memory. His name will long be held
in remembrance as a peacemaker, and a great statesman.
Every recollection of him is a fulfilment of the sacred
passage--'The memory of the righteous is blessed.'
"In 1781, my father was married to Lydia Kelley, born in
Lee, N. H., 1759. She was the daughter of Philip Kelley,
who, in the triumphs of faith, departed this life the 11th
of June, 1800, at New Hampton, N. H. For the space of
thirty-six years my father resided at Gilmanton. In our
family were nine children, five sons and four daughters. I
was the fourth son, and the old general, of whom I have
already spoken, selected me as the one to bear up his name.
I was accordingly named for him; but alas! I fear I have
fallen greatly below his excellent examples."
Among his ancestors, there can be no doubt, that he most resembled, in
mind and body, the venerable man whose name he bore. The personal form
of Gen. Joseph Badger, as described in history, in which he is
represented as nearly six feet in stature, somewhat corpulent, light and
fair in complexion, and of dignified manners, answers most aptly to the
subject of this memoir; nor is the correspondence less perfect, when his
mental qualities of foresight, order, firmness, tact, and generosity are
considered. "As a military man," says the faithful pen of history,
"General Badger was commanding in his person, well skilled in the
science of military tactics, expert as an officer, and courageous and
faithful in the performance of every trust. With him order was law,
rights were most sacred, and the discharge of duty was never to be
neglected."
Hundreds, into whose hands this volume will fall, will never forget the
promptness and the courageous efficiency with which Rev. Joseph Badger
met every public duty, and every great emergency; and though his field
was the ministry, and his soldierly skill that which referred to the
Cross, none who ever knew him can cease to remember the ready, natural,
and commanding generalship by which his entire action and influence in
the world were distinguished. He did not float with the wave of
circumstance, but carefully laid out his labors into system, always
having a purpose and a plan; and not unfrequently did his active energy
and position in life, amidst many difficulties, remind one of a
campaign. No mind, acting in the same sphere, was ever more productive
in ways and means. Though a clergyman, he was a general, and one, we
should say, of no common tact and skill.
His father, Major Peaslee Badger, with whom the writer of this memoir
was acquainted, was a man of strong mental powers, quick perceptions,
and of great vivacity. The quality last named, for which the subject of
these biographical sketches was so generally distinguished, is readily
traceable to his father; and the same remark in regard to quickness of
perception might also apply, but for the fact that the mind of the son
was more intuitive, and that he possessed both the qualities spoken of
in a greater degree. Joseph Badger, though at heart deeply imbued with
the solemnity and importance of all that belongs to the Gospel of human
salvation, was no anchorite in spirit, no desponding meditator on man or
his lot; he wore no formalities of a pretending sanctity. He had the
good fortune never to have lost his naturalness; and I think I never saw
one in whose nature was treasured a greater fulness of social life. It
was apparent that Major Badger had a memory that was strong even in
advanced years; that he was a general reader, and had reflected very
independently; that, though capable of tender emotions and kindness of
heart, the intellect had pretty full ascendency over his sympathetic
nature; and that, in social feeling, in affection, in fineness of
nature, and in general sympathy, his son possessed the richer
inheritance.
His mother was a Christian, and judging from her letters, was an
affectionate woman, of good plain sense, and rich in sympathy and
maternal care. Father, mother and son are now in the spiritual world.[1]
As there are several public men wearing the family name of Badger, and
as there are different branches of the same original family that in an
early day exchanged their home in England for the then comparative
wilderness of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, in obedience to the
spirit of adventure that drew, in those times, the most earnest and
enterprising persons to the New World, I have thought it proper briefly
to present the lineage of Rev. Joseph Badger from the settlement of the
first family of this name in Massachusetts; in doing which I shall not
rely on uncertain tradition, but on the published history of Gilmanton,
N. H., and on the Memoir of Hon. Joseph Badger, both of which are now
before me. From these authorities it appears that the Badger family is
of English origin, that its founder was Giles Badger,[2] who settled at
Newbury, Mass., previous to June 30, in 1643, only twenty-three years
after the landing of the Pilgrims. His son, John Badger, a man of much
respectability in his day, was by his first wife, the father of four
children, only three of whom, John, Sarah and James, lived to arrive at
years of responsibility, the first having died in infancy. His first
wife, Elizabeth, died April 8th, 1669. By his second wife, Hannah Swett,
to whom he was married February 23d, 1671, he had Stephen, Hannah,
Nathaniel, Mary, Elizabeth, Ruth, Joseph, Daniel, Abigail and Lydia.
Both of the parents died in 1691. John Badger, Jr., a merchant in
Newbury, married Miss Rebecca Brown, October 5, 1691; their children
were John, James, Elizabeth, Stephen, _Joseph_, Benjamin and Dorothy.
Joseph was born in 1698.
Joseph Badger, son of John Badger, Jr., was a merchant, in Haverhill,
Mass.,[3] and married Hannah, daughter of Col. Nathaniel Peaslee. Among
his seven children was General Joseph Badger, whose usefulness and
excellence of character are strongly expressed in the pages before me.
He married Hannah Pearson, January 31st, 1740; their children were
twelve in number, among whom was Major Peaslee Badger, the father of the
subject of this memoir, and the Hon. Joseph Badger, Jr., the father of
Hon. William Badger, late Governor of New Hampshire. Several of this
name have been distinguished for ability, and have held important
positions of public duty. Some have been active in the defence of their
country, some in the cause of education, the administration of justice,
and the affairs of political life; and like the distinguished men of New
Hampshire generally, they mostly seem to have had strong natures, with
characters marked by native vigor and original force.
South of the White Mountains some fifty miles, and near the Lake and
River Winnipiseogee, is the old town of Gilmanton. As the mind of Mr.
Badger, during his childhood in this place, was lastingly impressed by
the society and instruction of his uncle, I have thought best to copy
the presentation of his character as found in the published history of
Gilmanton.
"In the early settlement of Gilmanton," says Mr. Lancaster,
"no individual was more distinguished than Gen. Joseph
Badger. He was born in Haverhill, Mass., Jan. 11, 1722; and
was the eldest child of Joseph Badger, a merchant in that
place, who was one of the wealthiest and most influential
men of that town. In the time of the Revolution, he was an
active and efficient officer, was muster-master of the
troops raised in this section of the State, and was
employed in furnishing supplies for the army. He was a
member of the Provincial Congress, and a member of the
Convention that adopted the Constitution. He was appointed
Brigadier General June 27th, 1780, and Judge of Probate for
Strafford county, December 6th, 1784. He was also a member
of the State Council in 1784, 1790, and 1791.
"He was a uniform friend and supporter of the institutions
of learning and religion. He not only provided for the
education of his own children by procuring private
teachers, but he also took a lively interest in the early
establishment of common schools for the education of
children generally. Not content with such efforts merely,
he did much in founding and erecting the Academy in
Gilmanton, which has been already a great blessing to the
place and the vicinity. He was one of the most generous
contributors to its funds, and was one of its Trustees, and
the President of the Board of Trust until his death.
Instructed in his childhood, by pious parents, in the
principles of religion, he early appreciated the blessings
of the Christian ministry. Having become the subject of
divine grace, he publicly professed religion, and espoused
the cause of Christ. As he was a generous supporter of the
institutions of the Gospel, so to his hospitable mansion
the ministers of religion always found a most hearty
welcome. While the rich and great honored him, the poor
held him in remembrance for his generous liberality. His
whole life was marked by wisdom, prudence, integrity,
firmness, and benevolence. Great consistency was manifested
in all his deportment. He died April 4th, 1803, in the 82d
year of his age--ripe in years, ripe in character and
reputation, and ripe as a Christian. The text selected for
his funeral sermon was strikingly characteristic of the
man. 'And behold, there was a man named Joseph, a
counsellor, and he was a good man and a just.'"
Rev. Joseph Badger had indeed a noble ancestry; and, in natural ability,
in creative and executive intellect, in force of character and in
general usefulness, he is probably unexcelled by the worthy examples
that in past time may have shed honor upon the name. I have dwelt thus
long on the parentage and ancestry of Mr. B., not because I regard the
tenacity of the Jewish race on the subject of lineage, nor the general
excess of oriental homage to departed fathers, but because we appreciate
the law of cause and effect, as it is manifested in the course of
hereditary descent, which forbids that any man's written history shall
begin like the priesthood of Melchizedek, successionless and without
descent.
In approaching another chapter, the early life of Mr. Badger, perhaps
nothing is more strikingly appropriate to the reader than the
exclamation which stands as the first line of an old manuscript from his
own pen, with which he begins his personal narrative, viz.: "_What a
mystery is Life!_" Ah! who can wrestle with this wonder so as to exhaust
it of its marvellousness? Who can explain the innate genius, and
impulse, with the endless play of outward circumstance, that so
constantly drive these human myriads on to their various destiny?
Scribes can record what outwardly transpires; and even the reason can do
nothing more than to look through the cluster of outward development we
call man's history, to its centre in the inward life, where, though it
may see the harmonious relationship of the facts to the soul whence they
have flown; where, though it may perceive the combination of mental and
moral qualities that make up the man, it is at last obliged to own the
impenetrability of the veil that hides the _genius_ that has taken
individual form for some end of its own; and through the whole drama of
man it owns that life is enacted in the temple of mystery. Mr. Badger's
written journal, among its opening paragraphs, has the following
quotation:
"'Tis Heaven's decree, in mercy, that mankind
Should to their future destiny be blind;
Impatient man rejects his present state,
With eager steps to meet approaching fate,
Yet would the future, in perspective cast,
Display the exact resemblance of the past;
When o'er the stage of human life we range,
The _scenes_ continue but the _actors_ change."