The changes in the militia system of Massachusetts within my memory
have been great, but in my judgment not materially for the better.
There are always those who are anxious to tinker existing methods of
doing things and
“Who are apt to view their sires
In the light of fools and liars,”
and the organization of the militia has not escaped their meddlesome
hand. Under the militia law in force when I was a boy, every man
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was enrolled, and was
required to appear at an annual inspection and drill. The volunteer
militia and some specified persons, were exempted from this service.
These enrolled men were called militia men, and on the day fixed by
law those in Plymouth appeared on Training Green, and after being
duly inspected, were generally dismissed. But this was not invariably
the case. I remember one year when a newly chosen captain determined
to exact of his company all the duties, which the spirit, if not
the letter, of the law required. Much to the discomfort of his men
he marched them through town and nearly out to Seaside, and made
it known that the legal fine would be imposed on all delinquents.
I have a distinct recollection of their march up North street,
their line extending in single file from Water to Court street. The
younger men in the ranks enjoyed the fun, each carrying his musket
as was convenient to himself, and some wearing knapsacks of domestic
manufacture, displaying devices intended to excite the applause of
the accompanying crowd. Apples and peanuts were freely indulged in,
while long nine cigars and pipes of extraordinary proportions left a
trail of smoke like the steam from a locomotive. It was not, however,
the law, but the method of enforcing it, which made the annual
inspection a farce, and if it be necessary to inculcate a martial
spirit in the community and maintain a volunteer militia, it would
be well to revive the old law and re-establish the old militia from
which volunteers could be drawn.
Under the old system, the volunteer militia was in a healthy
condition, and was at the height of its glory when the Civil War
broke out. It was divided into divisions, brigades and regiments, and
for many years there were in Plymouth an infantry and an artillery
company; an infantry and artillery company in Abington, and infantry
companies in Carver, Plympton, Halifax, Middleboro, Bridgewater,
and I think Hingham. There were in those days annual brigade or
regimental musters, and the musterfield in Plymouth was what is
now the Robbins’ field, opposite to the house of Gideon F. Holmes.
Those musters were great occasions for the boys, and we were always
on hand, not caring whether school kept or not. We carried out our
programme for the day to the minutest detail. We were on hand in
Town square when the Carver company abandoned their wagons and began
their march to the tented field. We then inspected the caparisoned
horses of Col. Thomas Weston of Middleboro and his staff in the
yard of Bradford’s tavern, and when under escort of the Standish
Guards and the Plymouth Artillery, they marched to the music of the
Plymouth Band, we followed, and perhaps reached the field in time to
witness the arrival of the Halifax Light Infantry and the Plympton
Rifle Rangers. A few cents in our pockets were sufficient to carry
us through the day. The company drills, the dress parade and the
sham fight received our careful attention, and the casualties in the
last were on one occasion less than they would have been had not a
ramrod fired by a careless soldier found a target in a distant barn.
When I recall my experience at muster I am reminded of a remark
made by Edward Trowbridge Dana, a brother of the late Richard H.
Dana, after a service at the old Trinity church in Summer street,
in Boston, in which Bishop Eastburn officiated. The Bishop was an
Englishman, a handsome man, and splendid horseman, whom I have often
seen riding in Boston streets wearing top boots, and looking as if he
had been accustomed to following the hounds. He was as showy in the
pulpit as in the saddle, and impressed his hearers more by his voice
and gestures than by the matter of his discourse. On the occasion
referred to, Dana, when asked by a friend on coming out of church,
how he liked the Bishop, replied, “I feel as I used to when a boy on
the muster field, belly full of watermelon, and head full of bass
drum.” It was at one of the musters above referred to held in Dedham
that a new, slangy name was introduced. It was when the temperance
movement was active, and the sale of intoxicating liquor was kept as
much as possible out of public sight. One of the side show tents at
the muster in question exhibited over its entrance a large canvass
bearing a picture of a striped pig, which could be seen for a fee of
ninepence. This new zoological specimen attracted great attention,
and crowds learned novel lessons in Natural History. The exit from
the tent was in the rear, and it was observed that every zoological
student came out wiping his lips, while a large number returned for a
second sight of the “critter.”
I have said that at the time the Civil War broke out the volunteer
militia was in its prime. Under the law each company furnished its
own uniforms, while the state furnished to the privates arms and
equipments. Such men as George T. Bigelow, afterwards Chief Justice
of the Supreme Judicial Court, Lincoln Flagg Brigham, afterwards
Chief Justice of the Superior Court, Ivers J. Austin, John C. Park,
and Elbridge Gerry Austin, attorneys at law, Newell A. Thompson,
merchant, and Charles O. Rogers, editor of the Boston _Journal_, were
captains of companies. With a population in the state of less than
thirteen hundred thousand, the militia force was 5,593 officers and
men, while in 1905, with a population of three millions, it is no
larger, which is equivalent to a falling off of fifty per cent. The
idea underlying the plan of the reformers of the militia was to bring
it up to the standard of the regular army, which any practical man
must see cannot be done, with volunteer enlistments, small pay and an
exaction of service which busy men cannot afford to render. The first
blow struck at the life of the militia by the meddlers, was to make
the regiment instead of the company the unit of organization, and
have all the companies in the regiment uniformed alike.
Under this system the individuality of the company was lost at once,
its pride and _esprit de corps_ were extinguished. Even the names
of company commanders became practically unknown, and as galley
convicts are known by their number, the companies were only known
by their letter. Before the war every boy in Boston knew the New
England Guards, the City Guards, the Boston Light Infantry, and
the Fusileers, and as each paraded in the streets, every man was
ambitious to have his company excel in numbers, in dress, and in
march. On one occasion the Boston Light Infantry with Dodworth’s
Band marched up State street one hundred and seventeen strong,
and the next day the City Guards with the Brigade Band marched up
the same street with one hundred and eighteen in the ranks. The
flourishing condition of the Independent Corps of Cadets, shows what
the Volunteer Militia might have been without the so-called reform
to which I have alluded. The death blow to the volunteer militia was
struck when the present armory law was enacted. The requirement that
towns, in which companies are chartered, shall furnish armories, has
extinguished the militia in the towns, in only five of which, out
of three hundred and twenty-one, companies now exist. To make the
army law the more destructive in its effect on the militia, the most
extravagant demands were made by the authorities for accommodations,
in many instances including the equipment of club houses, which
towns with a due view to economy were not disposed to meet. Aside
from all other considerations the armory law is not only oppressive
in its operations, but it violates the underlying principles of our
constitution, to wit: equality of taxation and the enactment of equal
laws, inasmuch as it imposes for the support of a state institution,
burdens on a few towns and exempts all the rest. It is not an answer
to this objection to say that towns incurring armory expenses receive
certain reimbursements from the state, inasmuch as the reimbursement
ceases with company disbandments, and towns losing it are left
with an armory on their hands for the erection of which they have
incurred large expense; and inasmuch, also, as the towns maintaining
armories, are also taxed for their share of the reimbursements. It
is not a rash prophecy that if the present militia laws continue in
operation, not many years will elapse before militia organizations
will be confined to the cities of the Commonwealth. In closing the
foregoing narrative concerning the militia, it will be proper to
refer more particularly to the Plymouth volunteer companies. The
Plymouth Artillery was organized January 7, 1777. Thos. Mayhew was
the first commander, and as far as I have been able to ascertain,
it was commanded afterwards until its disbandment about the year
1850 by the following captains: Geo. Drew, 1804-09; Wm. Davis,
1810-15; Southworth Shaw, 1816-20; John Sampson, 1821-24; Nathaniel
Wood, 1825; Joseph Allen, 1826-29; David Bradford, 1830-32; Eleazer
Stephens Bartlett, 1833-35; Wm. Parsons, 1836-39; Ephriam Holmes,
1840-41; David Holmes, 1842; Wendell Hall, 1843-45; Samuel West
Bagnall, 1846-47; Ebenezer S. Griffin, 1848; and Lt. Robert Finney,
1849. The field pieces furnished to the company by the state were
kept for many years in a gun house located by permission of the town
on the northeast corner of Training Green, which on the disbandment
of the company was sold to Henry Whiting, Jr., who made of it the
house in which he lived and died on the east side of Sandwich street,
next to the south corner of Winter street.
The Standish Guards was chartered in 1818, and its commanders up to
the time of its disbandment in 1883 were: Coomer Weston, Bridgham
Russell, James G. Gleason, John Bartlett, Wm. T. Drew, Jeremiah
Farris, Coomer Weston, Jr., Barnabas Churchill, Benjamin Bagnall,
Sylvanus H. Churchill, Charles Raymond, Joseph W. Collingwood,
Charles C. Doten, Josiah R. Drew, Stephen C. Phinney, Herbert
Morissey and Joseph W. Hunting. The present Plymouth company was
chartered in 1888, and attached as Company D to the Fifth Regiment.
In 1770 a powder house was built by the town at the northwesterly
end of Burial Hill, which was removed within the memory of the
present generation. It was intended as a place of deposit for powder
belonging to the town, but a vote was passed by the town requiring
all powder brought into town by any person to be placed in it,
excepting amounts not exceeding fifty pounds in the hands of any
trader, and twenty pounds in the hands of any other inhabitant. The
tablet containing an inscription, which was originally placed in the
wall of the building is now in Pilgrim Hall.
I do not intend to say much more concerning Boston, but as every
eastern Massachusetts person looks on that city as his own, I have
ventured to say more than I otherwise would. Until about the time
of the Revolution there were no sidewalks in the city, and most of
the streets were paved with cobble stones and sloped toward the
centre, thus forming a surface drain. That style of street was
rather Dutch than English, and may still be seen in Holland. It was
universal in New York until the middle of the eighteenth century,
when Madam Provost laid down flagstones called walking-sides, for the
convenience of visitors to her business offices. The surface drainage
above referred to was universal in Plymouth until after South Pond
water was introduced in 1855, when the numerous wells in town were
converted into cesspools, and initiated the first step in the present
sewage system of the town.
Before leaving Boston a few words about its theatres and its harbor
and navigation will not be out of place. The first theatre was
established in 1792 in Hawley street, but though its representations
were advertised as moral lectures, it was suppressed as violating
the law. The law was repealed in the same year, and on the 3rd of
February, 1794, the Federal street theatre, on the corner of Franklin
and Federal streets was opened, and burned in 1798. It was at once
rebuilt and reopened in the same year, continuing until 1833, under
various managers as a popular resort. During its career Edmund
Kean, Macready, J. B. Booth, and John Howard Payne, appeared on its
stage, and in 1832 I attended a performance there by the Ravels in
a play called “The Skaters of Smolenska,” of which I have a vivid
recollection. In later years I had the pleasure of an intimate
acquaintance with John Howard Payne, who at the age of twenty created
a sensation in the theatrical world under the soubriquet of the
youthful Roscius, and who later was the author of “Sweet Home.” He
was born in Easthampton, Long Island, June 9, 1792, and appeared at
the Park theatre in New York, February 24, 1809, as “Young Norval.”
On June 4, 1813, he appeared at the Drury Lane Theatre in London.
He left the stage after a few years, but remained in London engaged
in writing plays, among which were “Brutus,” which still holds its
place on the stage, “Therese” and “Charles the Second.” He also
wrote “Clari, or the Maid of Milan,” which was produced as an opera,
and contained the song which gave him special distinction. In 1832
he returned to the United States, and in 1841 was appointed Consul
at Tunis. On his removal from office by Polk in 1846, he started
for home, but lingered in Paris while efforts were making for his
restoration to the Consulate. In the autumn of that year I formed
an acquaintance with him, which became intimate. We were in the
habit of dining together frequently at Tavernier’s restaurant
in the Palais Royal, and one day while we were strolling through
the quadrangle of the Palais where fountains were playing, bands
performing, and children amusing themselves, he called my attention
to a round window in the rear attic of the Palais, where, separated
from the main building, rooms were let for various purposes, and
said, “In that room with a scene like this before my eyes, I wrote
‘Home Sweet Home.’” He further said that he had come over from London
discouraged, in want and almost in despair, and with the thought of
home the words came to his lips and were uttered like a sigh for the
scenes of his youth, which he feared he should never see again. He
was restored to his Consulate, and died in Tunis, April 10, 1852. How
easy it is to imagine him looking from that window on the gay scenes
below and uttering the words:
“An exile from home, pleasure dazzles in vain,
Ah, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds, singing sweetly that came to my call,
Give me them and that peace of mind dearer than all.”
His body was brought home and buried, I think, in Washington.
In 1827 the Tremont theatre was built and opened on the 24th of
September. In 1842 it was sold to the Baptist Society, of which Rev.
Dr. Colver was pastor. In 1831 a building on Traverse street, known
as the American amphitheatre was built by W. and T. L. Stewart,
which was opened in July as the Warren Theatre, but replaced in 1836
by the National Theatre, which was burned in April, 1852. It was
again rebuilt, and finally destroyed March 24, 1863. In January,
1836, the Lion Theatre was opened on Washington street, on the site
of the present Keith’s Theatre, and later as the Melodeon, was the
scene of performances by Macready, Charlotte Cushman and others.
In 1841 the Eagle Theatre was built on the corner of Haverhill and
Traverse streets, but was soon abandoned. In 1841 the Boston Museum
was established on the corner of Tremont and Bromfield streets, and
in 1846 was removed to the site which it recently occupied north
of King’s Chapel Burial ground. During the Millerite excitement in
1843, the Miller Tabernacle was built on Howard street, and converted
into the theatre called the Howard Athenæum, in 1845. It was opened
October 13 in that year, and was burned in February, 1846, in which
year the present Howard Anthenæum was built. In 1848 the Beach Street
Museum was erected, but had a short life. The present Boston Theatre
was built in 1854, and at that time was exceeded in capacity by only
six theatres in the world. To return to the Federal street theatre,
which I have said was abandoned for dramatic purposes in 1833, the
building passed in 1834 into the possession of the Academy of Music,
and was called the Odeon. In 1846 it was leased for a time again as
a theatre, and was afterwards occasionally used for short seasons by
Italian Opera companies, by the Central Church, and by the Lowell
Institute, until it was taken down in 1852.
In connection with the theatres it will not be out of place to
speak of Concert Hall, which once stood on the corner of Hanover
and Court streets, built about 1750, and taken down a few years ago
to widen the first mentioned street. Before and during and after
the Revolution it was a famous place for concerts, balls and other
entertainments. I have a card of invitation issued by the officers
of the French fleet, then in Boston harbor, to a ball to be held
there. It is printed on the back of a playing card, showing the
straits to which Boston was reduced during the Revolution. In my
boyhood I saw there an exhibition by Maelzel of his famous diorama of
the “Conflagration of Moscow,” and of his “automaton chess player,”
which beat Boston’s best players, but was finally discovered to have
a small humped-backed dwarf concealed inside. There, also, I saw an
exhibition of legerdemain by a colored man named Richard Potter, who
also exhibited in Pilgrim Hall about 1831. He was born in Hopkinton,
Mass., on the estate of Sir Harry Frankland, one of whose slaves
named Dinah, and brought from Guinea, was his mother. After attending
school he went to England with a Mr. Skinner of Roxbury, and there
learned the magician’s art. In 1836 Concert Hall was taken by Peter
B. Brigham, and occupied as a hostelry, where could be found the best
oysters and the most famous drinks. He was notable for the concoction
of new alcoholic mixtures, to which he gave such names as “Tip and
Ty,” “I. O. U.,” “Paris White,” “Fiscal Agent,” “Free Soiler,” “Same
Old Coon,” “Clay Smash,” “Webster eye-opener,” and “Deacon Grant.”
He made a fortune, a large part of which was bequeathed for the
erection of a hospital now building.
It may be asked how, before the introduction of railroads, the
producers in remote sections of New England found a market. Every
valley and hillside yielded bountiful crops, and every water
privilege had its little mill, and of course the farmer and
manufacturer depended for returns from their labor on the markets
of the seaboard. The market gardeners of Waltham and Brighton and
Cambridge found no difficulty in supplying daily the markets of
Boston, and the brigs, schooners and sloops, plying as packets
between Boston and the various ports along the shores of New
England, brought to the metropolis the products of a considerable
territory lying along the banks and head waters of the Penobscot,
the Kennebec, Merrimac and Connecticut rivers. But the large
district beyond the reach of these outlets was obliged to largely
depend on teams and baggage wagons for transportation. While I was
in college, from 1838 to 1842, there was a ceaseless procession of
these teams passing through Cambridge from Vermont, New Hampshire
and distant parts of northern Massachusetts. They brought butter,
cheese, lard, eggs, poultry, potatoes, apples, cider, hams, pork,
shoes, wooden ware, chairs, and other articles of the field and shop,
and returned with supplies needed at home. Teamsters put up their
teams at one of the numerous taverns in the immediate neighborhood
of Boston and, discharging their freight in the city early the next
morning, reloaded their wagons and returned to their putting up
place, starting for home the next day. The taverns, which depended
for support almost entirely on these teamsters, were the Norfolk
House in Roxbury, the Cattle Fair Hotel in Brighton, the Punch-bowl
in Brookline, Porter’s Tavern in North Cambridge, and others in
Cambridgeport, Medford, Watertown, Waltham, East Cambridge and
Charlestown. The best known of these were Porter’s and the Cattle
Fair, and hardly a night did they fail to find numerous patrons who
sat around a huge wood fire playing checkers or loosening their
tongues with plentiful libations of mulled wine or flip. In the
vicinity of Porter’s there was for some years a race course, which
afforded to the students of Harvard frequent opportunities to violate
the rules of the college. Both at Porter’s and the Cattle Fair
house weekly cattle fairs were held, and cattle, horses and sheep
and hogs, were sold to customers, who with fat wallets had come from
many scores of towns to buy. These customers were market men and
stable keepers from towns within a radius of at least fifty miles,
and drove their purchases home over the roads and yarded them until
ready for slaughter or sale. I have heard it said that no keener eye,
or shrewder judgment of the value of a fat yoke of oxen than those
of the late Amasa Holmes of Plymouth were to be found in the cattle
yards of Cambridge and Brighton.
Having referred to the taverns in the vicinity of Boston, supported
by the commerce on the road, and by the cattle fairs, I am led to
speak of the hotel system in Boston, as I remember it seventy years
ago, when the population was eighty thousand. At that time, omitting
only very small taverns, I remember Doolittle’s Tavern in Cambridge
street, the Pemberton House in Howard street, the Pavilion, the
Albion and the Tremont House in Tremont street, the New England House
in Clinton street, two taverns near Haymarket Square, the American
and Webster Houses in Hanover street, Wilde’s Tavern in Elm street,
the City Tavern in Brattle street, the Stackpole House on the corner
of Milk and Devonshire streets, the Exchange Coffee House in Congress
Square, the Pearl Street House on the upper corner of Milk and Pearl
streets, the Commercial Coffee House on the lower corner of Milk
and Battery March streets, the Bromfield House on the south side of
Bromfield street, the Marlboro Hotel in Washington street, nearly
opposite Franklin street, the Washington House on the east side
of Washington street, a little south of Milk street, and the Lamb
Tavern on or near the site of the present Boston Theatre. The United
States Hotel which comes a little within the seventy years, was built
by a company not far from 1840 on land bought of the South Cove
Company. The South Cove Company owned flats bought of the city in
1833, extending from Essex street to the old Federal street bridge,
measuring about seventy-three acres, and bounded on the west by
Harrison avenue as far as Dover street bridge, including lands which
for many years were the sites of the Boston and Albany and Old Colony
Railroad stations. While workmen were excavating for the foundations
of the United States Hotel, I remember seeing in the trench the
timbers of an old wharf. Some of the houses I have mentioned have
been historic. Paran Stevens, who kept the New England House, was
engaged to keep the Revere House, when it was opened in 1844, and
was the landlord later of the Tremont House, the Battle House in
Mobile, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, in the last of which
he made an ample fortune. The Tremont House was opened by Dwight
Boyden in 1829, and with the exception of Mr. Stevens, he alone made
the house profitable. The United States Hotel was opened and kept
some years by Albert Clark and Ralph W. Holman. Mr. Clark went from
the United States to the Brevoort House in New York, and retired a
millionaire. Up to the time during the Civil War, when the cost of
living was advanced, the highest price per day for transients was two
dollars, but on the claim that the cost of maintaining a boarder had
doubled, the daily charge was doubled, and consequently the profits
were also doubled. In 1845 I boarded at the United States Hotel, and
paid for room and board five dollars a week, and during the winters
of 1858 and 1859, while in the Senate, I boarded at the Tremont House
and paid for board and room eight dollars per week. It is true that
the comforts and conveniences in hotels have vastly improved. It
is difficult to realize that at that time a visit to the lavatory
involved in the winter an uncomfortable, if not dangerous exposure
to the outer air. The sewage arrangements for hotels as for other
houses, were entirely inadequate to the demands of the city, and the
vaults were emptied by teams from Brighton, which were not permitted
to enter the city until ten o’clock at night. In very many private
yards there were pumps in close proximity to these vaults, and it
is a wonder that the health of the city was not seriously impaired.
The teams I have referred to were nightly strung along on Cambridge
bridge, waiting for the hour, and were called by the college boys,
“Brighton Artillery.” The sewage question was an unsolved one in
Boston for many years, and the necessity of ventilating sewers was
little realized or understood. When water closets and set bowls were
introduced, it was supposed that traps with standing water would
prevent the passage of deleterious gas. It was, however, discovered
at last, that while odors might thus be excluded, the dangerous
gases, which were inodorous, could not be kept back by water. Thus
two things became necessary, to wit, individual ventilators connected
with bathroom plumbing, and a proper ventilation of public sewers.
I remember that many years ago the city Government in response to
complaints of water spouts which discharged their water on the
sidewalks, passed an ordinance requiring all spouts to enter the
sewers. The Board of Health at once protested against the adoption
of such an arrangement on the ground that spouts would discharge
sewer gases through the house gutters in the immediate vicinity of
sleeping room windows; but it was soon discovered that such a general
ventilation of the sewers prevented the formation of gases, and was a
conservator of health.