Massachusetts colony. While Boston was clearly marked for prominence in
the colony because of its geographical position, there was not at first
the intention to make it the seat of government. It was too open to
attack from the sea; a position farther inland could be more easily
defended, not indeed from the Indians, but from the enemy most to be
dreaded,--the war-ships of an irate and hostile motherland. Accordingly
Governor John Winthrop and his assistants, shortly after the planting of
Boston, journeyed in the shallop of the ship in which they had come from
England, four miles up the Charles River behind Boston until they came
to a meadow gently sloping to the riverside, backed by rounded hills and
protected by wide-spreading salt marshes. There on the 28th of
December, 1630, they landed and fixed the seat of their government. To
quote the old chronicle:
[Illustration: HOME OF LONGFELLOW.]
“They rather made choice to enter further among the Indians than to
hazard the fury of malignant adversaries who might pursue them, and
therefore chose a place situated upon Charles River, between
Charlestown and Watertown, where they erected a towne called
Newtowne, and where they gathered the 8th Church of Christ.”
It was agreed that the Governor, John Winthrop, the Deputy Governor,
Thomas Dudley, and all the councillors, except John Endicott, who had
already settled at Salem, should build and occupy houses at Newtowne,
but this agreement was never carried out. Winthrop, Dudley and
Bradstreet built houses, and the General Court of the colony met
alternately at Newtowne and at Boston until 1638, when it finally
settled in Boston. Yet in spite of the superior advantages of Boston the
new settlement evidently flourished, for in 1633 a traveller--the writer
of _New England’s Prospect_--describes the village as “one of the
neatest and best compacted towns in New England, having many fair
structures, with many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants, most
of them, are rich and well stored with cattle of all sorts.”
This is doubtless an extravagant picture and true only in comparison
with some of the neighboring plantations which were not so favorably
situated. Newtowne was really a crude and straggling settlement made up
of some sixty or seventy log cabins or poor frame houses stretching
along a road which skirted the river marshes and of which the
wanderings were prescribed more by the devious channel of the Charles
than by mathematical exactness. The meeting-house, built of rough-hewn
boards with the crevices sealed with mud, stood at the crossing of the
road with the path that led down to the river, where there was a ladder
for the convenience of landing. So primitive was the place that Thomas
Dudley, the chief man of the town, writing home, could say, “I have no
table nor any place to write in than by the fireside on my knee.” Such
was the splendor of the whilom capital of New England.
Like most of the Massachusetts towns, Cambridge began as a church.
Though Dudley and Bradstreet and Haynes were high in the councils of the
infant commonwealth, holding successively or simultaneously the offices
of governor and military chief, yet the leading personality of the
village was the minister. The roll of Cambridge ministers begins with
the great name of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, and the man
who first visioned and did much to make possible our American democracy.
Hooker, with his congregation from Braintree, in Essex, England, came to
Massachusetts in 1632, and after a short stay at Mount Wollaston,
settled at Newtowne, raising the population to nearly five hundred
souls. But the stay of the Braintree church was short. Some adventurous
spirits had penetrated the wilderness of the interior until they
discovered the charm and fertility of the valley of the Connecticut, and
soon Hooker and his company were impelled by “the strong bent of their
spirits” to remove thither. They alleged, in petitioning the General
Court for permission to remove, that their cattle were cramped for room
in Newtowne, and that it behooved the English colonists to keep the
Dutch out of Connecticut; but the real motive of the exodus was
doubtless ecclesiastical. Hooker did not find himself altogether in
accord with the Boston teacher, John Cotton. “Two such eminent stars,”
says Hubbard, writing in 1682, “both of the first magnitude, though of
different influence, could not well continue in one and the same orb.”
Hooker took the more liberal side in the antinomian controversy which
had already begun to make trouble, and his subsequent conduct of affairs
in Connecticut shows that he did not approve the Massachusetts policy of
restricting the suffrage to church members. In the spring of 1636,
therefore, Hooker and most of his congregation sold their possessions,
and driving one hundred and sixty cattle before them, went on their way
to the planting of Hartford and the founding of a new commonwealth.
This was the first of many separations by which Cambridge has become the
mother of many sturdy children. The original boundaries of the town
stretched from Dedham on the south all the way to the Merrimac River on
the north. Gradually, by the gathering of new churches and peaceable
partition, this territory has been divided, and out of the original
Newtowne have been formed, besides the present Cambridge, Billerica,
Bedford, Lexington, Arlington, Brighton and Newton. Governors Dudley and
Bradstreet removed to Ipswich, and Simon Willard went to be the chief
layman of Concord and a famous builder and defender of towns.
The rude houses of Hooker’s congregation were bought by a newly arrived
company, the flock of the Rev. Thomas Shepard. This firm but gentle
leader, who left a deep impress on the habit of the town, was a youth of
thirty-one, and a graduate, like many of the Massachusetts leaders, of
Emanuel College, at Cambridge. He came to New England with a company of
earnest followers, actuated, as he wrote, by desire for “the fruition of
God’s ordinances. Though my motives were mixed, and I looked much to my
own quiet, yet the Lord let me see the glory of liberty in New England,
and made me purpose to live among God’s people as one come from the dead
to His praise.” His brave young wife died “in unspeakable joy” only a
fortnight after his settlement at Cambridge, and was soon followed by
the chief man of his flock and his closest friend, Roger Harlakenden,
another godly youth of the manly type of English pioneers. At once, too,
Shepard was plunged into the stormy debates of the antinomian
controversy which nearly caused a permanent division in the
Congregational churches. The general election of 1637, which was held on
the Common at Newtowne, was a tumultuous gathering, and discussion over
the merits of “grace” and “works” ran high till John Wilson, minister of
the Boston church, climbed up into a big oak tree, and made a speech
which carried the day for John Winthrop to the confusion of the
heretical disciples of Anne Hutchinson. Through these stormy waters
Shepard
[Illustration: “THE MUSES’ FACTORIES.”--LOWELL.]
steered his course so discreetly that he came into high favor among all
people as a sound and vigilant minister, and Cotton Mather tells us that
“it was with a respect unto this vigilancy and the enlightening and
powerful ministry of Mr. Shepard, that, when the foundation of a college
was to be laid, Cambridge, rather than any other place, was pitched upon
to be the seat of that happy seminary.”
The founding of Harvard College by the little colony was surely one of
the most heroic, devout and fruitful events of American history. Upon
the main entrance to the college grounds is written to-day an
inscription taken from one of the earliest chronicles, entitled _New
England’s First Fruits_. We read that:
“After God had carried us safe to New England and wee had builded
our houses and provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared
convenient places for God’s worship and settled the Civil
Government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after
was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to
leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present
ministers shall lie in the dust.”
Accordingly, on the 28th day of October, 1636, Sir Harry Vane--Milton’s
“Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old”--being the Governor,
the General Court of the colony passed the following memorable vote:
“The Court agrees to give £400 towards a school or college--whereof £200
shall be paid the next year and £200 when the work is finished.” In the
following year this vote was supplemented by a further order that the
college “is ordered to be at Newtowne, and that Newtowne shall
henceforth be called Cambridge.” This is the significant act that marks
the distinction between the Puritan colony and all pioneer settlements
based on material foundations. For a like spirit under like
circumstances history will be searched in vain. Never were the bases of
such a structure laid by a community of men so poor, and under such
sullen and averted stars. The colony was nothing but a handful of
settlers barely clinging to the wind-swept coast; it was feeble and
insignificant, in danger from Indians on the one hand and foreign foes
on the other; it was in throes of dissension on the matter of heresy
which threatened to divide it permanently, yet so resolved were the
people that “the Commonwealth be furnished with knowing and
understanding men and the churches with an able ministry,” that they
voted the entire annual income of the colony to establish a place of
learning. Said Lowell:
“This act is second in real import to none that has happened in the
Western hemisphere. The material growth of the colonies would have
brought about their political separation from the mother country in
the fulness of time, but the founding of the first college here
saved New England from becoming a mere geographical expression. It
did more, it insured our intellectual independence of the old
world. That independence has been long in coming, but the chief
names of those who have hastened its coming are written on the roll
of Harvard College.”
But even the self-sacrificing zeal of the colonists would have been
almost unavailing had it not been for the coming to Massachusetts at
this time of a young Puritan minister, another graduate of Emanuel, upon
whom death had already set his seal. Says the chronicler:
“As we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work,
it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. John Harvard, a
godly gentleman and a lover of learning then living amongst us, to
bequeath the one half of his estate, in all about £1700, toward the
erection of the college, and all his library.”
Was ever a gift so marvellously multiplied as the bequest of this
obscure young scholar?
[Illustration: STATUE OF JOHN HARVARD AND MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD
COLLEGE.]
By this one decisive act of public-spirited and well-directed
munificence this youth made for himself an imperishable name and
enrolled himself among the foremost of the benefactors of humanity. In
acknowledgment of Harvard’s bequest the General Court voted in 1638
“that the College at Cambridge be called Harvard College.”
It is the presence of the college that has given distinctive atmosphere
to Cambridge. The character of the place has been determined by the fact
that for more than two centuries and a half it has been the home of
succeeding generations of men devoted not to trade and manufacture, but
to the cultivation of the intellectual and spiritual elements in human
life. Over the college gate stands an iron cross and upon the gate-post
is the seal of the college with “Veritas” written across its open books.
The Harvard life and spirit and teaching are all adapted to lead young
men to the love and service of truth and to send them out to a ministry
as wide and varied as the needs of humanity. The influence of the
scholars and teachers and administrators that have been drawn into the
service of the college is paramount, even if it is unconsciously
exercised and felt, in the community about the college. Here have always
been--inevitable in a town which is the resort of the chosen youth of
the country--a healthy, wholesome independence of spirit and a
high-minded earnestness. Here has always been the refined simplicity of
life natural to a community composed of, or influenced by, men of quiet
tastes and modest incomes. Here is that touch of sentiment which binds
men to the place of their education and to the memories and friendships
of youth. Here are the associations with great events and names which
inspire patriotism and ambition of worthy service. Then, too, it has
been said:
“Cambridge is an interesting place to live in because the poetry of
Holmes, Longfellow and Lowell has touched with the light of genius
some of its streets, houses, churches and graveyards, and made
familiar to the imaginations of thousands of persons who never saw
them, its rivers, marshes and bridges. It adds to the interest of
living in any place that famous authors have walked in its streets,
and loved its highways and byways, and written of its elms, willows
and ‘spreading chestnut tree,’ of its robins and herons. The very
names of Cambridge streets remind the dwellers in it of the
biographies of Sparks, the sermons of Walker, the law-books of
Story, the orations of Everett, and the presidencies of Dunster,
Chauncy, Willard, Kirkland and Quincy.”
The place is not unworthy of the wealth of affection and poetic tribute
that has been lavished upon it. The old Puritan church records, with
their quaint entries about heresies and witchcraft, about ordinations
where “four gallons of wine” and bushels of wheat and malt and
hundredweights of beef and mutton were consumed, and about funerals
conducted with solemn pomp; and the town records with notes about the
“Palisadoe” and the Common rights and “the Cowyard” and the building of
“The Great Bridge,”--a vast undertaking,--have more than merely
antiquarian interest, for they reveal the intelligent and sturdy
democracy and broad principles of government upon which the American
republic rests.
But if these ancient records seem uninviting, let the visitor turn to
the annals of the stirring time of the Revolution. General Gage called
Harvard College “that nest of sedition.” In that nest were hatched John
Hancock, James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Joseph Warren and many
another of the patriot leaders. The town was the abode of many of the
leading Tory families, but as early as 1765 the town-meeting voted “that
(with all humility) it is the opinion of the town that
[Illustration: HOLWORTHY HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE.]
the inhabitants of this Province have a legal claim to all the natural,
inherent, constitutional rights of Englishmen and--that the Stamp Act is
an infraction upon these rights.” And after an argument on the merits of
the question it was further ordered “that this vote be recorded in the
Town Book, that the children yet unborn may see the desire their
ancestors had for their freedom and happiness.” For the next ten years
there is scarcely a proceeding in the preliminary debates and contests
that led up to open revolution that is not illustrated in the
resolutions recorded by the Cambridge town clerk. Vote followed vote, as
the restrictive measures of Parliament irritated the townsmen, till at
the town-meeting of 1773 it was resolved “that this town--is ready on
the shortest notice, to join with the town of Boston and other towns, in
any measures that may be thought proper, to deliver ourselves and
posterity from slavery.” The 2d of September, 1774, just escaped the
historic importance of April 19th in the next year. On that day several
thousand men gathered on Cambridge Common and proceeded in orderly
fashion to force the resignation of two of His Majesty’s privy
councillors,
[Illustration: HOME OF LOWELL.]
and then, marching up Brattle Street to the house of the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, Thomas Oliver--the house that was
afterwards the home in succession of Elbridge Gerry, Rev. Charles Lowell
and his son James Russell Lowell--they extorted from him, too, a pledge
to resign. “My house in Cambridge,” he wrote, “being surrounded by about
four thousand men, I sign my name--Thomas Oliver.” Both the first and
second of the Provincial Congresses met in Cambridge, and at last the
running battle of April 19, 1775, swept through the borders of the town.
Twenty-six Americans were killed within the boundaries of Cambridge, six
of them citizens of the place, and the American militia who followed the
British retreat from Concord on that momentous evening lay on their arms
at last on Cambridge Common.
For eleven months after the Concord fight, Cambridge was a fortified
camp. The college buildings, the Episcopal church and the larger houses
were occupied as barracks. General Ward established his headquarters in
the gambrel-roofed house which was afterwards the birthplace of Oliver
Wendell Holmes. On the lawn before the house, in the hush of the June
evening, Prescott’s men were drawn up, while President Langdon of the
college, in cap and gown, prayed for the success of their arms ere they
marched to Bunker Hill. Two weeks later Washington reached the camp, and
on July 3d, under the spreading elm at the western end of the Common,
unsheathed his sword and, as the inscription reads, “took command of the
American Army.” Washington lived
[Illustration: WASHINGTON ELM.]
for a while in the president’s house, but soon made his headquarters in
the fine old mansion of the Vassalls which was later the home of
Longfellow.
After March, 1776, when Boston was finally evacuated by the British,
Cambridge ceased to be involved in the military events of the
Revolution, but in 1777 the captured troops of Burgoyne were quartered
in the town, the soldiers swinging their hammocks in the college
buildings and the officers occupying the deserted mansions of “Tory
Row.” Burgoyne lived in the house sometimes called, in derision of its
first clerical occupant, “The Bishop’s Palace,” and Riedesel and his
accomplished wife in the Lechmere house. “Never have I chanced,” wrote
Madame Riedesel, “upon such a charming situation,” and never has our
colonial life been more charmingly described than by this brave and
vivacious German lady in the letters written from her pleasant prison to
her distant home.
For fifty years after the Revolutionary epoch, Cambridge was a country
town of quiet habits, its only distinguishing characteristic being the
scholastic and literary atmosphere that hung about the college. It was a
good
[Illustration: J. R. Lowell.]
place to be born in, and it was surely good to live in the place where
Everett and Quincy ruled the academic world; where Longfellow wrote his
poetry, and Palfrey his history, and Sparks his biographies; where
Washington Allston painted and Margaret Fuller dreamed; where William
Story and Richard Dana and Lowell and Holmes and the rest walked to
church and stopped to gossip with the neighbors at the post-office.
“No town in this country,” says Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “has
been the occasion of two literary descriptions more likely to
become classic than two which bear reference to the Cambridge of
fifty years ago. One of these is Lowell’s well-known _Fireside
Travels_ and the other is the scarcely less racy chapter in the
_Harvard Book_, contributed by John Holmes, younger brother of the
‘Autocrat.’”
To these happy descriptions we may now add the accounts of Colonel
Higginson’s boyhood in his _Cheerful Yesterdays_, and Dr. Holmes’s
loving story of his birthplace in the _Poet at the Breakfast Table_.
“Cambridge,” wrote Lowell, “was still a country village with its
own habits and traditions, not yet feeling too strongly the force
of suburban gravitation. Approaching it from the west, by what was
then called the New Road, you would pause on the brow of Symond’s
Hill to
[Illustration: GYMNASIUM, HARVARD COLLEGE.]
enjoy a view singularly soothing and placid. In front of you lay
the town, tufted with elms, lindens, and horse-chestnuts, which had
seen Massachusetts a colony, and were fortunately unable to
emigrate with the Tories, by whom, or by whose fathers, they were
planted. Over it rose the noisy belfry of the College, the square,
brown tower of the Episcopal Church, and the slim, yellow spire of
the parish meeting-house. On your right the Charles slipped
smoothly through green and purple salt meadows, darkened here and
there with the blossoming black grass as with a stranded
cloud-shadow. To your left upon the Old Road you saw some
half-dozen dignified old houses of the colonial time, all
comfortably fronting southward.... We called it ‘the Village’ then,
and it was essentially an English village--quiet, unspeculative,
without enterprise, sufficing to itself, and only showing such
differences from the original type as the public school and the
system of town government might superinduce. A few houses, chiefly
old, stood around the bare common, with ample elbow-room, and old
women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows
from which they had watched Lord Percy’s artillery rumble by to
Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia general who
had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. The hooks were to be
seen from which had swung the hammocks of Burgoyne’s captive
red-coats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed
clothes in the town spring, clear as that of Bandusia. One coach
sufficed for all the travel to the metropolis.”
Cambridge is no longer the idyllic village of Lowell’s boyhood, but a
great suburban city bustling with many activities. So rapid has been the
growth that Lowell on his return from Europe in 1889 wrote:
“I feel somehow as if Charon had ferried me the wrong way, and yet
it is into a world of ghosts that he has brought me. I hardly know
the old road, a street now, that I have paced so many years, for
the new houses. My old homestead seems to have a puzzled look in
its eyes as it looks down--a trifle superciliously methinks--on
these upstarts.
“The old English elms in front of my house haven’t changed. A
trifle thicker in the waist, perhaps, as is the wont of prosperous
elders, but looking just as I first saw them seventy years ago, and
it is balm to my eyes. I am by no means sure that it is wise to
love the accustomed and familiar as much as I do, but it is
pleasant and gives a unity to life which trying can’t accomplish.”
Cambridge is to-day the abode of as happy, comfortable and progressive a
people as the world contains. It presents a unique example in this
country of a city thoroughly well governed. It is now a quarter-century
since partisanship has been tolerated in city affairs. In the City Hall,
erected under the administration of Mayor William E. Russell, who here
got his training for the splendid service he afterward rendered to the
State, and might, had his
[Illustration: WILLIAM E. RUSSELL.]