[Illustration: Copyright, 1891, by A. S. Burbank.
_Frontispiece._ PLYMOUTH IN 1622.]
American Historic Towns
HISTORIC TOWNS
OF
NEW ENGLAND
Edited by
LYMAN P. POWELL
Illustrated
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1898
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
[Illustration]
PREFACE
In July, 1893, while the first Summer Meeting of the American Society
for the Extension of University Teaching was in session at the
University of Pennsylvania, I conducted the students, in trips taken
from week to week, to historic spots in Philadelphia, the battle-fields
of the Brandywine and of Germantown, and to the site of the winter camp
at Valley Forge. The experiment was brought to the attention of Dr.
Albert Shaw, and at his instance I made a plea through the pages of _The
American Monthly Review of Reviews_, October, 1893, for the revival of
the mediæval pilgrimage, and for its adaptation to educational and
patriotic uses. After pointing out some of the advantages of visits paid
under competent guidance and with reverent spirit to spots made sacred
by high thinking and self-forgetful living, I suggested a ten days’
pilgrimage in the footsteps of George Washington.
The suggestion took root in the public mind. Leading journals commended
the idea. New England people, already acquainted with the thought of
local historical excursions, hailed the proposed pilgrimage with
enthusiasm. Men and women from a score of States avowed their eagerness
to make the experiment; and at the close of the University Extension
Summer Meeting of July, 1894, in which I had lectured on American
history, I found myself conducting for the University Extension Society
a pilgrimage, starting from Philadelphia, to Hartford, Boston,
Cambridge, Lexington, Concord, Salem, Plymouth, Newburg, West Point,
Tarrytown, Tappan, New York, Princeton, and Trenton.
The press contributed with discrimination the publicity essential to
success. Every community visited rendered intelligent and generous
co-operation. And surely no pilgrims, mediæval or modern, ever had such
leadership; for among our cicerones and patriotic orators were: Col. T.
W. Higginson, Drs. Edward Everett Hale and Talcott Williams, Hon.
Hampton L. Carson, Messrs. Charles Dudley Warner, Richard Watson Gilder,
Charles Carlton Coffin, Frank B. Sanborn, Edwin D. Mead, Hezekiah
Butterworth, George P. Morris, Professors W. P. Trent, William M.
Sloane, W. W. Goodwin, E. S. Morse, Brig.-Gen. O. B. Ernst, Major
Marshall H. Bright, and Rev. William E. Barton.
I had planned in the months that followed to publish a souvenir volume
containing the more important addresses made by distinguished men on the
historic significance of the places visited; but as the happy experience
receded into the past a larger thought laid hold of me. Why not sometime
in the infrequent leisure of a busy minister’s life edit a series of
volumes on _American Historic Towns_? Kingsley’s novels were written
amid parish duties, and Dr. McCook has found time, amid exacting
ministerial duties, to make perhaps the most searching study ever made
by an American of the habits of spiders. Medical experts agree
concerning the value of a wholesome avocation to the man who takes his
vocation seriously; and congregations are quick to give ear to the
earnest preacher whose sermons betray a large outlook on life.
A series of illustrated volumes on _American Historic Towns_, edited
with intelligence, would prove a unique and important contribution to
historical literature. To the pious pilgrim to historic shrines the
series would, perhaps, give the perspective that every pilgrim needs,
and furnish information that no guide-book ever offers. To those who
have to stay at home the illustrated volumes would present some
compensation for the sacrifice, and would help to satisfy a recognized
need. The volumes would probably quicken public interest in our historic
past, and contribute to the making of another kind of patriotism than
that Dr. Johnson had in mind when he defined it as the “last refuge of a
scoundrel.”
I foresaw some at least of the serious difficulties that await the
editor of such a series. If all the towns for which antiquarians and
local enthusiasts would fain find room should be included, the series
would be too long. A staff of contributors must be secured, possessing
literary skill, historical insight, the antiquarian’s patience, and
enough confidence in the highest success of the series to be prepared to
waive any requirement of adequate pecuniary compensation. Space must be
apportioned with impartial but not unsympathetic hand, and the
illustrations selected with due discrimination. And, finally, publishers
were to be found willing to assume the expense required for the
production in suitable form of a series for which no one could with
accuracy forecast the sale.
The last and perhaps most serious difficulty was removed almost a year
ago when Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons expressed a willingness to take the
commercial risk involved in publishing the present volume, which will,
it is hoped, be the first of a series. Contributors were then found
whose work has, I trust, secured for the undertaking an auspicious
beginning. Critics inclined at first glance to speak harshly of the
differences among the contributors in style and in literary method are
advised to withhold judgment till a closer reading has made clear, as it
will, the fundamental differences there are among the towns themselves
in history and in spirit. Adequate reasons which need not be stated here
have made it advisable to omit Lexington, Groton, Portsmouth, the Mystic
towns, and other towns which would naturally be included in a later
volume on New England Towns, in case the publication should be
continued.
So many have co-operated in the making of this book that I will not
undertake to name them all. But I cannot forbear to acknowledge the
valuable assistance I have received at every stage of the work from Mr.
G. H. Putnam, Mr. George P. Morris, associate editor of _The
Congregationalist_, and Miss Gertrude Wilson, instructor in history at
the historic Emma Willard School. The Century Company has, in the
preparation of the first chapter on Boston and the chapter on Newport,
kindly allowed the use of certain illustrations and portions of articles
on Boston and Newport, which have appeared in _St. Nicholas_ and old
_Scribner’s_ respectively. Some of the illustrations for the Portland
chapter have been furnished by Lamson, the Portland photographer.
The Essex Institute, with characteristic generosity, has loaned most of
the cuts for the Salem chapter. The Ohio State Archæological and
Historical Society has allowed the reproduction from _The Ohio
Quarterly_ of some of the designs in the Rutland chapter, while certain
of the illustrations in the Cape Cod Towns chapter appeared first in
_Falmouth Illustrated_.
Conscious of the editorial shortcomings of the volume, I still dare to
hope that it may have such a cordial reception as will justify the
publication at some time of a volume on Historic Towns of the Middle
States.
LYMAN P. POWELL
AMBLER, PENNSYLVANIA
September 21, 1898.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION George Perry Morris 1
PORTLAND Samuel T. Pickard 53
RUTLAND, MASS. Edwin D. Mead 81
SALEM George Dimmick Latimer 121
BOSTON {Thomas Wentworth Higginson 167
{Edward Everett Hale 187
CAMBRIDGE Samuel A. Eliot 211
CONCORD Frank B. Sanborn 243
PLYMOUTH Ellen Watson 299
CAPE COD TOWNS Katharine Lee Bates 345
DEERFIELD George Sheldon 403
NEWPORT Susan Coolidge 443
PROVIDENCE William B. Weeden 475
HARTFORD Mary K. Talcott 507
NEW HAVEN Frederick H. Cogswell 553
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Plymouth in 1622[1] _Frontispiece_
PORTLAND
WHITE HEAD, CUSHING ISLAND 55
DEERING’S WOODS 59
Showing brook which the soldiers had to ford in the fight
with the Indians in 1689.
FIRST PARISH CHURCH 63
Containing the Mowatt cannon-ball.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF LONGFELLOW 67
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 73
N. P. WILLIS 77
RUTLAND
DR. CUTLER’S CHURCH AND PARSONAGE AT IPSWICH HAMLET,
1787[2] 83
VIEW OF RUTLAND STREET[3] 85
MANASSEH CUTLER[4] 91
NATHAN DANE[5] 92
RUFUS PUTNAM[6] 95
SITE OF MARIETTA AND HARMAR, 1788[7] 101
THE “CENTRAL TREE”[8] 103
THE OLD RUTLAND INN[9] 104
VIEW OF RUTLAND CENTRE FROM MUSCHOPAUGE HILL[10] 107
BRITISH BARRACKS[11] 112
THE RUFUS PUTNAM HOUSE[12] 114
SALEM
GOVERNOR ENDICOTT’S SUN-DIAL AND SWORD[13] 122
THE FIRST MEETING-HOUSE, 1634-39[14] 123
GOVERNOR SIMON BRADSTREET[15] 125
GOVERNOR JOHN ENDICOTT[16] 126
THE PICKERING FIREBACK[17] 128
OLD CRADLE[18] 131
THE ROGER WILLIAMS’ OR “WITCH HOUSE”[19] 137
WITCH PINS[20] 142
TIMOTHY PICKERING 153
SOME OLD DOORWAYS[21] 155
BOWDITCH DESK AND QUADRANT[22] 158
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 160
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 163
From an engraving from a painting by C. G. Thompson.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE--BIRTHPLACE OF HAWTHORNE--HOUSE
OF THE SEVEN GABLES--GRIMSHAWE HOUSE--THE
OLD TOWN PUMP[23] 165
SEAL OF THE CITY OF SALEM[24] 166
BOSTON
SUCCORY OR “BOSTON WEED” 167
TRINITY CHURCH[25] 169
BOSTON IN 1757 172
From a drawing by Governor Pownall.
“OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE”[26] 175
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 177
PUBLIC LIBRARY 179
MAP OF BOSTON IN 1722 180
CHARLES SUMNER 182
PHILLIPS BROOKS 184
FANEUIL HALL IN THE 18TH CENTURY 189
GOVERNOR THOMAS HUTCHINSON 190
From a portrait in possession of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, once the property of Jonathan Mayhew.
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH IN ITS PRESENT CONDITION. BUILT
IN 1729 193
OLD STATE HOUSE 197
JAMES OTIS 199
SAMUEL ADAMS 201
BOSTON MASSACRE 203
From a painting by A. Chappel.
LANDING OF BRITISH TROOPS AT BOSTON, 1768 205
MAP OF BOSTON IN 1775 206
THE FROG POND ON THE COMMON AS IT NOW APPEARS 209
SEAL OF THE CITY OF BOSTON 210
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD COLLEGE GATE 213
HOME OF LONGFELLOW 215
“THE MUSES’ FACTORIES.”--LOWELL 221
STATUE OF JOHN HARVARD AND MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD
COLLEGE 225
HOLWORTHY HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE 229
HOME OF LOWELL 231
WASHINGTON ELM 233
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 235
GYMNASIUM, HARVARD COLLEGE 237
WILLIAM E. RUSSELL 240
CONCORD
CONCORD RIVER, BY THOREAU’S LANDING 245
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1858) 252
From a sketch by Rowse.
THE LIGHT AT THE BRIDGE[27] 255
Redrawn from Ralph Earle’s sketch of 1775.
THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, APRIL 19, 1775 263
From an old print.
MUSKETS OF CAPTAIN JOHN PARKER 266
THE MINUTE-MAN[28] 269
French’s first statue.
HAWTHORNE’S OLD MANSE 274
REVOLUTIONARY INN[29] 277
HENRY THOREAU (1857)[30] 280
GRAVES OF THE EMERSON FAMILY 283
HOME OF EMERSON 287
A. BRONSON ALCOTT (1875)[31] 292
LOUISE M. ALCOTT 295
SEAL OF THE CITY OF CONCORD 297
PLYMOUTH
FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM GOVERNOR BRADFORD’S MANUSCRIPT,
“PLIMOTH PLANTATION” 301
The original is now in the Boston State House.
PULPIT ROCK, CLARKE’S ISLAND[32] 302
THE EARLY NORMAN DOORWAY AT AUSTERFIELD CHURCH 305
THE OLD FORT AND FIRST MEETING-HOUSE, ON BURIAL
HILL, 1621[33] 307
GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW[34] 313
THE HARBOR[35] 321
PLYMOUTH IN 1622[36] 323
THE “MAYFLOWER” IN PLYMOUTH HARBOR[37] 333
From the painting by W. F. Halsall, in Pilgrim Hall.
THE OLD COLONY SEAL 334
THE LANDING OF THE FATHERS, PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22,
1620 335
Copied from an old painting on glass.
THE FULLER CRADLE 337
AN OLD ENGLISH SPINNING-WHEEL 338
THE DOTEN HOUSE, 1660[38] 339
The oldest house in Plymouth.
THE GRAVE OF DR. FRANCIS LE BARRAN, THE NAMELESS
NOBLEMAN[39] 342
SEAL OF THE CITY OF PLYMOUTH 343
CAPE COD TOWNS
THE BEACH, FALMOUTH[40] 347
MAP OF CAPE COD SECTION[41] 349
PROVINCETOWN 355
WHARVES AT PROVINCETOWN 359
PROVINCETOWN IN 1839 363
From an old drawing.
HIGHLAND LIGHT 371
OYSTER POINT, WELLFLEET 373
BISHOP AND CLERK LIGHT, HYANNIS 376
OLD WINDMILL, EASTHAM 378
RUINS OF THE CHATHAM LIGHT 383
LIFE-SAVING STATION AT WELLFLEET 386
BASS RIVER BRIDGE, SOUTH YARMOUTH 387
BARNSTABLE INN 389
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF FALMOUTH[42] 395
THE VILLAGE GREEN[43] 397
SHIRICK’S POND, FALMOUTH[44] 399
THE WHALE-SHIP “COMMODORE MORRIS” AND THE FALMOUTH
CAPTAINS WHO SAILED IN HER[45] 401
DEERFIELD
OLD DEERFIELD STREET, 1671-1898 405
FRARY HOUSE, 1698 408
Oldest in the county.
THIRD MEETING-HOUSE, 1695-1729 419
(Old Indian house on the right.)
PARSON WILLIAMS’S HOUSE 421
Built by the town, 1707--standing 1898.
DOOR OF “OLD INDIAN HOUSE” HACKED BY INDIANS 423
Now in Memorial Hall.
TOMBSTONES OF REV. JOHN WILLIAMS AND HIS WIFE 425
STEPHEN WILLIAMS, 1693-1782 428
A captive of February 29, 1703-4.
GEORGE FULLER, 1822-1884 437
BUFFET FROM “PARSON WILLIAMS’S” HOUSE 439
Now in Memorial Hall.
NEWPORT
THE OLD STONE MILL 445
NEWPORT IN 1795[46] 447
GEORGE BERKELEY, DEAN OF DERRY[47] 451
WHITEHALL, THE BERKELEY RESIDENCE, BUILT 1729 453
“PURGATORY”[48] 457
ROCHAMBEAU’S HEADQUARTERS[49] 459
LIFE MASK OF WASHINGTON[50] 463
Made by Houdon in 1785.
THE PARSONAGE OF MRS. STOWE’S “MINISTER’S WOOING”[51] 466
DOORWAY OF OLD HOUSE ON THAMES STREET[52] 468
GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE[53] 471
From one of Malbone’s best miniatures.
SEAL OF THE CITY OF NEWPORT 473
PROVIDENCE
VIEW OF PROVIDENCE 477
From the south.
ROGER WILLIAMS RECEIVED BY THE INDIANS 479
From a design by A. H. Wray.
THE ROGER WILLIAMS MONUMENT 483
STEPHEN HOPKINS[54] 490
BROWN UNIVERSITY 493
FRANCIS WAYLAND 499
THE CAPITOL 503
SEAL OF THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE 506
HARTFORD
MAIN STREET 509
OLD CENTER BURYING-GROUND 513
THE CHARTER OAK 520
OLD STATE HOUSE, NOW CITY HALL 529
Built in 1794.
STATUE OF ISRAEL PUTNAM 539
J. Q. A. Ward, sculptor.
KENEY MEMORIAL TOWER[55] 541
THE CAPITOL 543
SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL ARCH 545
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 546
DR. HORACE BUSHNELL 547
From a crayon drawing by S. W. Rowse.
J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL, LL.D. 549
ARMS OF THE CITY OF HARTFORD 551
NEW HAVEN
TEMPLE STREET 555
JOHN DAVENPORT 557
From a portrait in possession of Yale College.
ROGER SHERMAN[56] 561
Photographed from statue on the east front of the Capitol
at Hartford.
JUDGES’ CAVE 567
A HUMANE ENEMY 571
PHELPS HALL 573
OSBORN HALL 577
THE ART BUILDING 579
NOAH WEBSTER[57] 581
ELI WHITNEY 583
EAST ROCK PARK 585
SEAL OF THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN 586
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
BY GEORGE PERRY MORRIS
From the earliest days of the New England Colonies down to the present
time, those European analysts of our national life, whose opinions have
been based on personal observation, have usually conceded that in New
England towns and villages one might, at almost any period of their
history, find a higher average degree of physical comfort, intelligence
and mental attainment, and political liberty and power than was or is to
be found in any other communities of Christendom. Thus Alexis de
Tocqueville, in 1835, wrote:
“The existence of the townships of New England is, in general, a
happy one. Their government is suited to their tastes, and chosen
by themselves.... The conduct of local business is easy.... No
tradition exists of a distinction of ranks; no portion of the
community is tempted to oppress the remainder; and the abuses
which may injure isolated individuals are forgotten in the general
contentment which prevails.... The native of New England is
attached to his township because it is independent and free; his
co-operation in its affairs ensures his attachment to its interest;
the well-being it affords him secures his affection, and its
welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions. He
takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practises the art
of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms
himself to those forms which can alone ensure the steady progress
of liberty; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order,
comprehends the union of the balance of powers, and collects clear
practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his
rights.”[58]
If this be true, the question inevitably arises, how has it come to
pass? New England, as a whole, is far from fertile. Its winters are long
and severe. Of mineral wealth it has little. The raw materials for its
countless factories and mills, the fuel for its factories, homes, and
railroads, must be obtained in the territory south and west of the
Hudson River. The cereals which furnish the staple diet of its people
come from Western plains. Its best blood and brawn have gone to found
commonwealths ranging from the Alleghany to the Sierra Nevada mountains,
and, into towns once populated and dominated by the purest of English
stock, there have come Irish from Ireland and Canada, French by way of
Canada, Portuguese, Italians, and Jews from Russia, so that, in 1890,
the alien male adult population of the several States was found by the
Federal census takers to be, in Maine, 51.43 per cent.; New Hampshire,
50.5 per cent.; Vermont, 41.25 per cent.; Massachusetts, 46.10 per
cent.; Rhode Island, 49.78 per cent.; Connecticut, 36.52 per cent.
And yet, notwithstanding these economic disadvantages, this depletion of
a population inheriting noble ideals, and the infusion of a class of
settlers holding, in many instances, political and religious convictions
quite at variance with those of the founders of the colonies, the “type”
persists. The New England towns are still unlike, and in some respects
superior to, those of other sections of the country. The New England
States still lead in reformatory legislation. New England’s approval or
disapproval of ideas affecting national destiny still has weight with
Congress and Presidents altogether disproportionate to the number of her
representatives in Congress or her votes in the Electoral College.
If one will walk about New England towns one will find in each a church,
a town-house, and a school, and in most of them a railroad station and a
factory. In the majority of them there will also be a public library,
small perhaps and usually housed in the town-house, but open to all, and
supported from the public funds. In the larger towns, especially in
those where manufacturing is a prominent factor in the communal
prosperity, a hospital, supported by public taxation, is open to all. In
almost every town there is a grass-covered, tree-shaded “common,” which
serves as a village or town park, and on it usually stand memorial
tablets or statues testifying to the valor of the dead who went forth to
fight in the War of the Revolution or in the Civil War.
The church symbolizes that belief in God and that disposition to obey
His will and law which the noblest and wisest men of all ages and climes
have agreed upon as the _sine qua non_ of civic as well as of individual
prosperity, and in this instance it also stands for that separation of
Church and State which our national experience--and that of Canada and
the Australian Colonies as well--shows to be the ideal relation. That
for a time, in the early days of Massachusetts and Connecticut, there
was an unsuccessful attempt to preserve a union of State and Church, an
attempt which had for some of its least commendable incidents the
wholesale hanging of men and women for witchcraft, the expulsion of
Quakers, and the ostracism or exclusion of Roman Catholics and
Anglicans, is not to be denied.
That the people of New England have been duly conscientious is apparent
by the multiplication of churches at home, and by their never-ceasing,
overflowing gifts to establish churches, colleges, schools, and
Christian missions in the South and West and in foreign lands. It is
from the thrifty, prosperous, philanthropic New Englander that the
treasuries of the great Protestant missionary and educational societies
receive their largest average per-capita gifts, and it is to New England
that the steps of the Western and Southern educator still turn for
endowments which his State may not, or the people cannot, or do not,
give.
Peopled by inhabitants given over to introspection, and as fond of
theology as the Scotch, the early New England communities were intensely
religious and sectarian. God to them was a Personal Sovereign,
intimately concerned with their daily life. They were His chosen people,
and, as such, pledged to obedience to His service. The Church was His
Bride; the clergyman was His spokesman, and received the
deference--social as well as official--which was due to one so augustly
commissioned. The social as well as the intellectual life of the
community centred almost exclusively in the life of the church and the
sermons of its clergy. Sectarian animosities were the inevitable product
of a mistaken emphasis put upon the form or utterance of truth, rather
than upon truth itself; or, to put it differently, of a provincialism
and narrowness of vision that made it impossible for the many to
understand that truth is many-sided, that men are different
temperamentally, that revelation is continuous and progressive, and that
religion is not theology. Communities exist in New England where the old
view still obtains, where sectarianism is as rampant as ever, where the
clergyman is the social autocrat as well as the shepherd of souls. But
such towns are becoming fewer and fewer as the years go by, and of
towns of the newer type, where the church is recognized as only one of
the many agents which God has for ushering in His Kingdom on earth, New
England now has quite as many, probably, as are to be found elsewhere.
To those interested in the theological and religious history of
English-speaking peoples, certain New England towns have a peculiar
fascination and value as environments which have affected character.
Northampton, Massachusetts, will ever be a Mecca because of the
identification of Jonathan Edwards with the town. Concord, in the same
commonwealth, has not only the unique glory that belongs to a town where
national history has been made and the best American literature of its
class written by Hawthorne and Thoreau, but also it is the town where
Emerson’s ministerial ancestors lived, where he flowered out and became
that grey-eyed seer
Who in pastoral Concord ways
With Plato and Hafiz walked.
Newport, Rhode Island, with all its present pre-eminence as a place
where “Fashion is a potency ... making it hard to judge between the
temporary and the lasting,” will ever remain most worthy of resort
because it was the birthplace of William Ellery Channing, and, for
thirty years, was the home of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins, both eminent
as theologians and as brave pioneer antagonists of human slavery. Dr.
Hopkins was the model for the New England pastor described by Harriet
Beecher Stowe in _The Minister’s Wooing_. Northfield, Massachusetts, is
known to thousands of Christians the world over, who have never seen its
rare beauty of river and landscape, because a boy, one Dwight L. Moody,
was born and bred there, and has become the greatest evangelist of
modern times. Litchfield, Connecticut, is famous as the birthplace of
Henry Ward Beecher, and if one wishes flash-light pictures of New
England ecclesiastical and social life at the beginning of this century,
let one read the autobiographic records of Lyman, Henry Ward, Harriet,
and Catherine E. Beecher.
Portland, Maine, is known to thousands throughout the English-speaking
world, who are ignorant of every other fact in its long and honorable
history, because Francis E. Clark there conceived and began that
movement to enlist young people in active Christian service, which is
now known as the International Young People’s Society of Christian
Endeavor, with 54,191 local societies, and more than three and one
quarter million adherents enrolled, Russia alone, of the nations of the
earth, being without a society now. Hartford, Connecticut, with a
discernment and gratitude not always displayed by municipalities, has
named its beautiful municipal park after Horace Bushnell, for many years
its most eminent divine and “first citizen.”
Salem, fascinating as it is because of its connection with the
witchcraft delusion and the early Puritan theocracy; because of its
being for a time the home of Hawthorne, who has preserved its ancient
local color and atmosphere in his fiction; and because of its ancient
glory as a seaport town, whence departed a fleet of sailing craft that
made Salem known throughout the world, in places where Boston and New
York were then unknown, nevertheless derives its chief glory from the
fact that it was the town where Roger Williams, the Welsh statesman and
prophet, found a church willing to sit at his feet. The church’s
loyalty, however, gave way at last to the resistless pressure of the
civil authorities and the zealous ecclesiastical tyrants of the Puritan
commonwealth, and it permitted him to depart, to establish in Rhode
Island a community based upon the principle of entire liberty of
conscience, and majority rule in secular affairs. Massachusetts’ loss
and the world’s gain are thus summed up by Gervinus the German
historian:
“The theories of freedom in Church and State, taught in the schools
of philosophy in Europe, were here [Rhode Island] brought into
practice in the government of a small community. It was prophesied
that the democratic attempts to obtain universal suffrage, a
general elective franchise, annual parliaments, entire religious
freedom, and the Miltonian right of schism would be of short
duration. But these institutions have not only maintained
themselves here, but have spread over the whole Union. They have
superseded the aristocratic commencements of Carolina and of New
York, the High-Church party in Virginia, the theocracy in
Massachusetts, and the monarchy throughout America; they have given
laws to one quarter of the globe, and, dreaded for their moral
influence, they stand in the background of every democratic
struggle in Europe.”
Boston, with all her glories, has none of which she is more proud, than
the fact that within her borders Phillips Brooks was born and labored
most of his life. Those who came within his range of influence said of
him, as Father Taylor said of Emerson, “He might think this or that, but
he was more like Jesus Christ than any one he had ever known.”
To mention Roger Williams, Jonathan Edwards, William Ellery Channing,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips
Brooks, Francis E. Clark, and Dwight L. Moody, is to name the greatest
spiritual forces which New England has known, and towns fed with manna
by such prophets have not failed to indicate the influence of
personality in transforming environment.
The “town-house,” or town-hall, of the New England town or village, in
its architecture, is a modern structure, often as simple, unpretentious,
and unornamented as the “meeting-house” near which it usually stands on
the village green or “town common.” It is the arena wherein rich and
poor, educated and illiterate, wise and foolish, meet, at least
annually, and as much oftener as occasion demands, to decide those
questions of Home Rule which are most vital to all concerned. Education,
wealth, moral worth, shrewd native sense, oratory, gifts of persuasion,
the stirrings of ambition, civic pride, thrift, foresight, all have
their due weight in this forum, this “school as well as source of
democracy”--as Mr. Bryce aptly phrases it. But when the vote is taken,
the blacksmith and the bank president, the master and the servant, the
principal of the high school and the loafer around the village bar stand
on precisely the same footing. The vote of one is as decisive as that of
the other,--no less, no more.
Debate and procedure which have the qualitative character are followed
by voting of the quantitative character, and the result represents
average intelligence and capacity for self-government. But that result,
because it is the product of the expressed will of all, has an authority
more enduring and inspiring than any that the autocracies, oligarchies,
or constitutional monarchies of Europe have ever displayed or now
possess.
Using the town-meeting as a rapier, Samuel Adams
“fenced with the British ministry; it was the claymore with which
he smote their counsels; it was the harp of a thousand strings that
he swept into a burst of passionate defiance, or an electric call
to arms, or a proud pæan of exulting triumph, defiance, challenge,
and exultation--all lifting the continent to independence. His
indomitable will and command of the popular confidence played
Boston against London, the provincial town-meeting against the
royal Parliament, Faneuil Hall against St. Stephen’s.”[59]
This popular government not only enabled the New England Colonies to
lead all the others in the War of the Revolution, it also furnished men
and ideas for the formidable task of constitution-making after the
Revolution was over and independence won. As early as 1773, the rustic
Solons of the town of Mendon, Massachusetts, had resolved in
town-meeting:
“That all men have an equal right to life, liberty, and property.
“Therefore all just and lawful government must originate in the
free consent of the people.
“That a right to liberty and property, which are natural means of
self-preservation, is absolutely inalienable, and can never
lawfully be given up by ourselves or taken from us by others.”
Naturally, a section of the country where such sentiments were held by
village Hampdens had a preponderant influence, when the time came to
draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the
readiness of the towns to submit to taxation and to give their sons when
the call to arms came is a matter of unimpeachable record. In the army
of 231,791 soldiers, furnished by the Thirteen Colonies to combat the
forces of Great Britain in the Revolution, the four New England Colonies
sent 118,251 men, Massachusetts contributing 67,907, Connecticut 31,939,
New Hampshire 12,497, and Rhode Island 5,908.
In the War of 1812, New England, as a section, was not very
enthusiastic, but her quota of troops was, nevertheless, forthcoming. In
the Civil War, 1861-65, her troops were the first to respond to the call
of President Lincoln, and, out of 2,778,304 men who enlisted, 363,161
came from New England. Of these, Massachusetts furnished 146,730, Maine
70,107, Connecticut 55,864, New Hampshire 33,937, Vermont 33,288, and
Rhode Island 23,236. In fact, surveying the history of New England towns
from the time when they contributed their quota of men and money to the
aid of the Mother Country in her fight with France to decide who should
be supreme on the North American continent, down to the recent contest
between the United States and Spain, it can truthfully be said of their
democratic form of government that it “is the most powerful and flexible
in history. It has proved to be neither violent, cruel, nor impatient,
but fixed in purpose, faithful to its own officers, tolerant of vast
expense, of enormous losses, of torturing delays, and strongest at the
very points where fatal weakness was most suspected.” And this, be it
remembered, where “the poorest and most ignorant of every race ... are
the equal voters with the richest and most intelligent.” This, too,
where the newly landed, propertyless immigrant from Italy or Russia, if
able to comply with the generous provisions governing naturalization and
the exercise of the franchise, has the same potentiality at the polls as
the thrifty, well-to-do, heavily taxed citizen whose ancestors,
perchance, may have come over with the Pilgrims on _The Mayflower_.
Considered either in its origin or its development, the New England
town-meeting merits the study of all who are interested in the extension
of principles of democracy. The English settlers of New England were, as
Mr. Bryce says, “largely townsfolk, accustomed to municipal life and to
vestry meetings.” They brought with them, as an inheritance from their
Teutonic ancestors, a habit of self-rule which the peculiar isolation of
the colonies and the separate communities in the colonies strengthened;
hence a form of government in which the town was the unit evolved
inevitably.
The more mixed composition of the population in the Middle Atlantic
Colonies, for the same reason, inevitably caused a mixed type of
government to be created there, in which the county or shire divided the
authority with the town; while in the Southern Colonies the immigrants
were of such a character, and the economic conditions so different from
those in New England, that a more aristocratic form of government
evolved, semi-feudal in its type, and the county, rather than the town,
became the important minor political unit within the State, never,
however, having a vigorous independent life, the colony and afterward
the State becoming the source of authority and the end of government.
Long years afterward, in the Civil War, the two types of government
clashed, and the type prevailed which Thomas Jefferson praised and
wished transferred to Virginia, for, said he:
“Those wards called townships in New England are the vital principle of
their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever
devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government
and for its preservation.”
It is well, however, to note, that Mr. Charles Borgeaud, the eminent
Genevan historian, in his work on the _Rise of Modern Democracy_,
disputes the Teutonic origin of the town-meeting, and contends that it
must be credited to the democratic principles of the New Testament as
interpreted and accepted, first by the Brownists of England, and held
later by the Pilgrim Fathers and those of the Puritans who accepted the
Independent form of church government, rather than to any principle of
communal government first evolved by Teutons. He says:
“At the moment when the colonists of New England quitted the Mother
Country, whatever was left of that old self-government which had
been exercised by their forefathers was under the influence of the
general movement, and was undergoing aristocratic transformation.
The vestries, or meetings of the inhabitants of the parish, were
being replaced by committees known as select vestries, which were
originally elected, and then, before long, recruited by
co-optation. Had the American colonists purely and simply imitated
in their new country the system which they had seen at work in
England, they certainly would not have founded the democratic
government of the town-meeting. In order to explain their political
activity, we must take into account, and that largely, their
religious ideas. And we shall be naturally led to do this if we
remember that, in the beginning, each settlement or town was,
before all things, a congregation, and that the town-meeting was in
most cases the same thing as the assembly of the congregation. In
Virginia, where the colonists remained members of the Anglican
Church, there was no town-meeting, but only select vestries as in
England, and these had certainly lost all family likeness, if they
really were related to the _Thing_ and the _Tungemot_.”
In due time, when pioneers from New England found their way to the then
virgin lands of Central New York, the valley of the Ohio, and the
northern half of the vast valley of the Mississippi, they carried with
them the political and religious ideals of New England. Where they were
a large majority of the settlers within a given territory, or where at
the time when its organic structure was forming they dominated it, the
town was established as the political unit in the territory. Such was
the case in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Where New
England settlers joined with those from the Middle States, or the
border States of Kentucky and Virginia, they often found it necessary to
compromise on a system in which the county and the town were peers, as
in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. But, as experience has proved, the modified
township system, as it is found in Illinois and Michigan, is more
advantageous than the system of divided authority, and many of the
Western States are gradually adopting it, California, Nebraska, and the
Dakotas having recently made it either permissible or mandatory.
Nor are signs lacking that in the South, as its white population
increases by immigrants from the North, as the patriarchal and pastoral
type of civilization gives way to the modern industrial and corporate
type, as cities and towns multiply, and local as well as State pride has
free chance to develop, there will be an adoption of the modified
township system and a gradual abolition of the county system.
Among the changes of the last half-century in New England, one notable
one has been the tendency of the larger towns to adopt the city form of
government as soon as it was deemed that the increase of population
warranted the step and made it necessary. This fact, as well as the
marked increase of urban population in New England,[60] is counted by
some students of her social development as indicative of retrogression,
however inevitable. Certain it is, that if the town of Brookline, with
its population of 16,164, and its property valuation of $64,169,200,[61]
and annual appropriations of more than $900,000, can still work the
ancient machinery of the town-meeting without the slightest loss either
of a pecuniary or a civic sort, other towns, with a smaller population
and much smaller valuation of property, cannot reasonably claim that
mere physical growth is any warrant for the change from a system so
purely democratic to one less so and much more readily adapted to serve
the ends of partisan bosses and those who batten at the public crib.
The third of the indispensable and ever-present institutions found in
every New England town or village is the public school, open to all and
supported by all. Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jew, Caucasian and
African, French Canadian and Irish, Italian and Portuguese, English and
German, mingle in the school-room and learn the essential likeness of
each to the other, their common and peculiar gifts, and their common
duties to God and the State. No man in the community is so rich or
aristocratic as to escape taxation for support of the school, even
though his children may never darken the doors. No man in the community
is so humble or so poor as to be debarred from sending his children to
the highest as well as to the lowest grades. Unsectarian in the sense
that they derive support from taxpayers of all sects and inculcate the
dogmas of none, secular in the sense that religion is not a part of the
curriculum, they ever have been a bulwark to the cause of religion,
partly by reason of the example of the teaching force, who usually are
men and women with religious faith as well as mental attainment, and
partly because they have developed the rational powers of men, and thus
enabled them to discriminate between superstition and truth. Beginning,
in the more favored and advanced communities, with kindergarten
instruction for young children, and not ceasing until the youth or
maiden is prepared to enter the college or university, the State and the
town, co-operating together, make it possible for every parent to give
to his children, or for every ambitious or friendless boy or girl to
secure for himself or herself, at the public expense, a thorough
preparatory education. Nor is there any item of his yearly tax bill
which the typical New Englander pays with greater alacrity and more
certainty of belief as to its equity or economy than his annual
contribution for popular education. For it is ingrained in his very
being, woven into the texture of his life, to believe, as Garfield said,
that “next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education,
without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently
maintained.” Moreover, being shrewd as well as a man of high principles
and a lover of learning for its own sake, the New Englander is convinced
that it pays to be educated, and to have educated neighbors and
children. His reasoning takes this form: The more children in the
schools, the fewer youths and adults in the jails and poorhouses. The
better informed the mill operatives, the larger the output of the
mills. The higher the standard of living, the larger the demand for the
product of the soil and the loom, and the better the home market. The
more intelligent the voter, the less the seductive power of the
demagogue and the “political boss.” In short, the New England people
have always believed, and still believe, what the inscription on the
Public Library in Boston declares:
THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE
SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY.
That the policy has been a wise one, is indicated by New England’s share
in the various struggles for liberty which the country has seen, the
stability of all her institutions, her exemption from disorder and
industrial disputes which culminate in violence, her inhospitality to
“boss rule” in politics, and the thrift and prosperity of her citizens.
Historically speaking, the “public school” is a very ancient New England
institution. Boston had one as early as 1635, and in 1647 the General
Court of Massachusetts enacted:
“That to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of
our forefathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that
every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of
fifty households, shall appoint one to teach all children to write
and read; and when any town shall increase to the number of one
hundred families, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master
thereof to be able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted
for the University.”
Nine years earlier, in 1638, the same body had founded a college
(Harvard) at Cambridge, in order, as they said, that “the light of
learning might not go out, nor the study of God’s word perish.” These
two acts of the General Court may be reckoned as the germs from which
has developed that system of secondary and higher education which has
given Massachusetts the place of leader in the history of education in
America.
In 1645, Connecticut passed a law similar to the earlier Massachusetts
statute of 1642, but not until 1701 was Yale University founded at New
Haven. Rhode Island did not have a system of popular education until
just as the eighteenth century was closing. New Hampshire, Maine, and
Vermont accepted the Massachusetts methods and ideals, with some minor
variations.
Devout as were the founders of New England, it followed inevitably that
they should establish institutions where their children might obtain a
distinctly religious training as well as a general education. Thus, for
a long period of New England history, the Christian academy, under
denominational control, flourished just as it does now in the West, and
for much the same reason. As the public-school system has expanded, as
town after town has added the high school to the primary and grammar
school, as sectarian fences have toppled over or ceased to be
restrictive, the academy of the old type has ceased to play the part it
once did in New England life. But, in any survey of the history of
education in New England, it should not be overlooked. Many excellent
institutions of this type still survive to meet the demands of those
persons who either distrust the public high school, or else are unable
to send their children to one, owing to residence in towns where the
school system has not developed to that extent. But, as a rule, the New
England boy and girl, no matter what the social station or wealth of his
or her parent, still “derives his or her preparation for college or life
from the community in which he or she lives.” And, as Phillips Brooks
said in his address at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
Boston Latin School:
“That is the real heart of the whole matter.... It constitutes the
greatest claim of the public-school system. It represents the
fundamental idea of the town undertaking the education of her
children.... It educates the thought of law and obedience, the
sense of mingled love and fear, which is the true citizen’s true
emotion to his city. It educates this in the very lessons of the
school-room, and makes the person of the State the familiar master
of the grateful subject from his boyhood.... It is in the dignity
and breadth and seriousness which the sense that their town is
training them gives to their training, that the advantage of the
public-school boys over the boys of the best private schools always
consists.”
Emigrating westward, the pioneers from New England carried with them the
public school, the academy, and the college. Connecticut’s settlers in
the Western Reserve, Ohio, took with them conceptions of duty in this
respect, which profoundly affected the future history of the
commonwealth. Ohio has come to be, in this later day, what Virginia was
in the early history of the country--“The Mother of Presidents”--and has
more colleges within its borders than any State in the Union. It was a
Massachusetts soldier, Gen. Rufus Putnam of Rutland, a Congregational
clergyman, Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Hamilton, Massachusetts, and an
Ipswich, Massachusetts, lawyer, Nathan Dane, who founded Marietta, Ohio,
and induced Congress to put into the epoch-marking Ordinance of 1787
governing the Northwest Territory, this remarkable declaration and
article:
“Religion, and morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good
government and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of
education shall forever be encouraged.”
As early as 1797, Muskingum Academy was founded in the territory
conceded, and in due time came Marietta, Oberlin, Wabash, Illinois,
Knox, Beloit, Olivet, and Ripon Colleges, all Christian institutions
within the territory originally governed by the Ordinance of 1787.
Precisely similar has been the record of New England emigrants beyond
the Mississippi. Wherever they have settled and shaped the civic ideals,
whether in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, or
in California, there they have laid the foundations of a free
public-school system, and of academies and colleges controlled by
Christian educators and trustees. Nor do they cease to believe in the
academy and the college now that the competition of the State university
in the States of the interior and the West is so intense, and the
reliance of the treasuries of these Western Christian institutions upon
the gifts of their friends in New England increases rather than abates.
Impressed with the need, in all sections of the country, of a
well-instructed and intelligent electorate, and convinced that the South
was too poor to provide for itself the schools that its unfortunate
illiterate whites and blacks needed, New Englanders early began to
contribute to the support of academies and colleges in the South. Not
always welcomed by the ruling class, the pioneers in this work
persevered, and many of them have lived long enough to receive the
thanks of those who at first despised and scorned them. Millions of
dollars have gone from New England for the founding and support of such
institutions as Berea College, Kentucky; Atlanta University, Georgia;
Hampton Institute, Virginia; Fisk University, Tennessee; and Tuskeegee
Institute, Alabama. Three New Englanders, George Peabody of Danvers,
Mass., John F. Slater of Norwich, Conn., and Daniel Hand of Guilford,
Conn., have given between them $5,100,000 in bequests or donations for
the establishment or assistance of schools, colleges, and training
schools for teachers in the South. The Peabody Education Fund, from 1868
to 1897, distributed in the South, from its income alone, a sum
amounting to $2,478,527.