ELECTRICITY AND JOURNALISM.
The modern age of electricity was ushered in during Mr. Coffin's early
manhood. The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous
system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors
of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England,
become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off
writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the
first to experiment with the new power--old as eternity, but only
slowly revealed to man--was Carleton's brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G.
Farmer, whose services to science have never yet been adequately set
forth.
This inventor in 1851 invited Mr. Coffin to leave the farm
temporarily, to construct a line of wire connecting the telegraphs of
Boston with the Cambridge observatory, for the purpose of giving
uniform time to the railroads. In this Carleton was so successful
that, in the winter and spring of 1852, he was employed by Mr. Moses
Farmer to construct the telegraph fire alarm, which had been invented
by his brother-in-law. The work was completed in the month of May, and
Charles Carleton Coffin gave the first alarm of fire ever transmitted
by the electric apparatus. The system was a great curiosity, and many
distinguished men of this country, and from Europe, especially from
Russia and France, came to inspect its working.
Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy, who had returned
from his brilliant expedition in Antarctic regions, but who had not
yet made himself notorious by a capture of the Confederate
commissioners, proposed to use this electric system in ascertaining
the velocity of sound. Cannon were stationed at various points, the
Navy Yard, Fort Constitution, South Boston, and at the Observatory, in
front of which was an apparatus and telegraph connecting with the
central office. Each cannon, when fired, heated the circuit. Each
listener at the various points was to snap a circuit key the moment
the sound reached him. In the central office was a chronograph which
registered each discharge in succession. The distances from each
cannon muzzle had been obtained by triangulation. In the calm, still
night, Commodore Wilkes and Professor Farmer stood in the cupola of
the State House with the chronograph, holding their watches, and
noting the successive flashes.
The experiments were not very satisfactory. Mr. Coffin, perhaps,
possibly, because he was not a skilled artillerist, had the mortifying
experience of seeing the apparatus in front of his cannon blown into
fragments, but he made notes of the other reports. After a series of
trials, the approximate result was obtained, that in a moderately
humid atmosphere the velocity of sound was a little under nine hundred
feet per second.
The exactions of the fire alarm service, owing to its crude
construction, which compelled the attendants to be ever on the alert,
told severely on Carleton's' nervous system. He therefore resigned in
October, and went to Cincinnati to get the system introduced there.
Herds of hogs then roamed the streets, picking up their living around
the grain houses, and in the gutters. After three weeks of exhibition
and canvassing, he found that Cincinnati was not yet ready for such a
novelty, and so he returned to Boston.
The following winter was passed in Boscawen without financially
remunerative employment, but in earnest study, though in the spring a
supply of money came pleasantly and unexpectedly. He undertook to
negotiate a patent for an invention of Professor Farmer's, and after
considerable time disposed of it to a New York gentleman. Carleton's
net profits were $1,850.
This was an immense sum to him, and he once more resolved to try
Boston, and did so. He made his home, however, in Malden, renting half
of a small house on Washington Street. Having inked his pen on
agricultural subjects, descriptive pieces, and even on a few poems, he
took up newspaper work. Entering the office of the Boston _Journal_ he
worked without pay, giving the _Journal_ three months' service in
writing editorials, and reporting meetings. This was simply to educate
himself as a journalist. At that time very few reporters were employed
on the daily papers. What he says of this work had better be told in
his own words:
"It was three months of hard study and work. I saw that what the
public wanted was news in condensed form; that the day for stately
editorials was passing away; that short statements and arguments,
which went like an arrow straight to the mark, were what the public
would be likely to read. I formed my style of writing with that in
view. I avoided long sentences. I thought that I went too far in the
other direction and clipped my sentences too short, and did not give
sufficient ornamentation, but I determined to use words of Saxon
rather than of Latin or Norman origin, to use 'begin,' instead of
'commence,' as stronger and more forcible.
"I selected the speeches of Webster, Lord Erskine, Burke, and other
English writers, for careful analysis, but soon discarded Brougham and
Burke. I derived great benefit from Erskine and Webster, for incisive
and strong statement,--also Shakespeare and Milton. At that time I
read again and again the rhapsodies of Christopher North, Professor
Wilson, and the 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' and found great delight, also,
in reading Bryant's poems.
"It was the period of white heat in the anti-slavery struggle, when
the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an
anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The
anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace,--red hot,--white
hot,--clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and
ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp
statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and
speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a
reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour,
otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to
study stenography, but the system then in use was complex and
inadequate,--hard to learn. I was informed by several stenographers
that if I wanted a condensed report it would be far better to give the
spirit, rather than attempt the letter."
During the summer of 1854, Mrs. Coffin being in poor health, they
visited Saratoga together, passed several weeks at the Springs, and
visited the battle-field where his grandfather, Eliphalet Kilborn,
had fought. Carleton picked up a bullet just uncovered by the plow,
and in that bright and beautiful summer's day the whole scene of 1777
came back before him. From the author's map in "Burgoyne's Defence,"
giving a meagre sketch of the battle, he was able to retrace the
general lines of the American breastworks. This was the first of
scores of careful study on the spot and reproduction in imagination of
famous battles, which Carleton made and enjoyed during his life.
He was also present at the International Exhibition in New York,
seeing, on the opening day, President Franklin Pierce and his Cabinet.
The popular idol of the hour was General Winfield Scott, of an
imposing personal appearance which was set off by a showy uniform. He
was the hero of the two wars, and expected to be President. In
personal vanity, in bravery, and in military science, Scott was
without a superior, one of the ablest officers whose names adorn the
long and brilliant roll of the United States regular army.
Carleton wrote of General Scott: "A man of great egotism, an able
general, but who never had any chance of an election. He was the last
candidate of a dying political party which never was aggressive and
which was going down under the slave power, to which it had allied
itself."
Mr. Coffin writes further: "The passage of the Compromise Measures of
1850 gave great offence to the radical wing of the anti-slavery party.
The members of that wing were very bitter towards Daniel Webster for
his part in its passage. I was heart and soul in sympathy with the
grand idea of anti-slavery, but did not believe in fierce denunciation
as the best argument. I did not like the compromise, and hated the
odious fugitive slave law, but I nevertheless believed that Mr.
Webster was sincere in his desire to avert impending trouble. I
learned from Hon. G. W. Nesmith, of Franklin, president of the
Northern railroad, that Mr. Webster felt very keenly the assaults upon
him, and the manifest alienation of his old friends. Mr. Nesmith
suggested that his old-time neighbors in Boscawen and Salisbury should
send him a letter expressive of their appreciation of his efforts to
harmonize the country, and that the proper person to write the
letter was the Rev. Mr. Price, ex-pastor of the Congregational church
in West Boscawen, in whom the county had great confidence. A few days
later, at the invitation of Mr. Price, I went over the rough draft
with him in his study. The letter was circulated for signatures by
Worcester Webster, of Boscawen, distantly related to Daniel. It is in
the published works of the great statesman, edited by Mr. Everett,
together with his reply."
In May, 1854, Carleton saw the Potomac and the Capitol at Washington
for the first time. The enlargement of the house of the National
Legislature had not yet begun. He studied the paintings in the
rotunda, which were to him a revelation of artistic power. He spent a
long time before Prof. Robert W. Weir's picture of the departure of
the Pilgrims for Delfshaven.
Here are some of his impressions of the overgrown village and of the
characters he met:
"Washington was a straggling city, thoroughly Southern. There was not
a decent hotel. The National was regarded as the best. Nearly all the
public men were in boarding-houses. I stopped at the Kirkwood, then
regarded as very good. The furniture was old; there was scarcely a
whole chair in the parlor or dining-room. It was the period of the
Kansas struggle. The passions of men were at a white heat. The typical
Southern man wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. Many had long hair and
loose flowing neckties. There was insolence and swagger in their
deportment towards Northern men.
"I spent much time in the gallery of the Senate. Thomas Benton, of
Missouri, was perhaps the most notable man in the Senate. Slidell, of
Louisiana, whom I had seen in New Hampshire the winter before,
speaking for the Democracy, and Toombs, of Georgia, were strongly
marked characters. Toombs made a speech doubling up his fists as if
about to knock some one down."
From Washington, Carleton went to Harrisburg, noticing, as he passed
over the railway, the difference between free and slave territory. "A
half dozen miles from the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania
was sufficient to change the characteristics of the country." The
Pennsylvania railway had just been opened, and Altoona was just
starting. Carleton visited the iron and other industries at Pittsburg,
and described his journey and impressions in a series of letters to
the Boston _Journal_. Having inherited from his father eighty acres of
land in Central Illinois, near the town of Lincoln, he went out to
visit it. At Chicago, a bustling place of 25,000 inhabitants, he found
the mud knee-deep. Great crowds of emigrants were arriving and
departing. Going south to La Salle he took steamer on the Illinois
River to Peoria, reaching there Saturday night. Not willing to travel
on Sunday, he went ashore. After attending service at church, he asked
the privilege of playing on the organ. A few minutes later, he found a
large audience listening with apparent pleasure.