THE CIVIL WAR
The most prosperous and active years in the history of the Cape--those
from the thirties to the fifties--were not occupied exclusively
with building bridges and dikes, erecting factories and salt works,
drying codfish, and greeting deep-water shipmasters on their return
from the antipodes. Such activities were marred by a less desirable
manifestation of energy--schism in the churches. Not that schism was
anything new or particularly undesirable. Usually it is an indication
that progress is in the offing. Furthermore, this particular rift in
the ranks of the church was brought about by a sufficiently righteous
motive on the part of those who left the fold. They refused to support
any longer a church which preached Christianity on the one hand and on
the other received into membership men who tolerated slavery. Those
who broke away were called ‘Come-Outers’ (or ‘Comers Out’), a name
which was not restricted to these groups of Abolitionists, but had been
given pretty generally to all who for any reason had seceded from an
established church.
The Come-Outers were not essentially riotous or seditious people. They
merely had the courage of their convictions and refused to remain loyal
to a church whose tenets they believed were unchristian. The two camps
would doubtless have rubbed along with no more friction than is usual
between dissenting organizations, if it had not been for agitators from
elsewhere. Such agitators there were, of course, all over New England,
and occasionally a band of them invaded the Cape. They did not come
often, for the Cape was out of their way; but when they did arrive,
trouble was sure to follow.
The most sensational instance of such a visit occurred in Harwich in
1848. A report had been spread in anti-slavery circles in Boston that
a Harwich coasting captain, whose name is not recorded, had taken one
hundred dollars from a Negro in Norfolk to bring him and a friend North
on his schooner, and had then seized him and had him advertised as a
runaway slave. Such indignation was aroused by this outrage that a
group of distinguished Boston Abolitionists visited Harwich and held an
indignation meeting. Among them were Parker Pillsbury, Stephen Foster,
and Lucy Stone. No building in Harwich, or for that matter on the Cape,
was big enough to hold the crowd that assembled; men and women poured
in from the neighboring towns until, according to one estimate, three
thousand had gathered in the grove where the convention was held.
The first speaker was Parker Pillsbury--a young enthusiast whose
emotions were stronger than his judgment. His share in the programme
was to state the case against the captain of the schooner, without
mentioning his name. Writing of the event thirty-three years later,
when time and age, if not the Civil War itself, should have somewhat
calmed his ardor, Pillsbury calls the Captain’s deed one ‘that no
Modoc nor Apache Indian under Heaven would ever have done! In cold,
unprovoked blood--never!’ Such ringing phrases written in his old age
give some notion of what Pillsbury’s oratorical style must have been
in his youth. It is no wonder that his speech started a tumult which
subsided only when the Captain himself took the platform and said
that a friend had just told him that he had been accused of stealing.
Pillsbury hedged, declaring that he had named no names and had not used
the word ‘steal.’ But the Captain demanded a hearing, and the crowd
became silent.
The Captain’s speech was a striking example of the perfectly natural
moral blindness that afflicted so many otherwise estimable and pious
citizens when they looked at slavery or were mixed up in the slave
trade. The phenomenon has not disappeared with the abolition of this
particular business: most men are still able to close the shutter
that blots from the mental vision a view of the suffering that their
profitable ruthlessness creates, and if they keep the shutter closed
long enough, they may even forget that there is any suffering and so
finally become unaware of any wrongdoing. Something of the sort, at
all events, had taken place in the soul of the Harwich Captain. He
seems to have pigeonholed his religion even more successfully than
most people do nowadays. He calmly told the story from his own point
of view, contradicting nothing that Pillsbury had accused him of,
and on concluding, took a seat on the platform. One of Pillsbury’s
accusations, which the Captain admitted, was that he was a member in
good standing of the Baptist Church. Taking this admission as his
text, the next speaker, Stephen Foster, launched forth on an invective
that evoked from Pillsbury the admiring comment that he seemed to be
‘Father of the seven thunders of Patmos.’ There is little doubt that
the tribute is deserved, for his speech provoked such a riot that
Pillsbury says, ‘I have seen many mobs and riots in my more than forty
years of humble service in the cause of Freedom and Humanity. But I
never encountered one more desperate in determination, nor fiendish in
spirit, than was that in Harwich, in the year 1848.’
It started when some of the Captain’s friends in the crowd stormed
round the platform, calling on him to pitch Foster down to them; but
the Captain, who had not commanded vessels in vain, kept calm and
told the rioters that he had no need of their interference. Shortly
afterwards he left the scene. Foster went on with his speech, declaring
that any church which admitted such men as members was no less than
the ‘bulwark of American Slavery.’ This was too much for the Harwich
Baptists. One of them, ‘a member of the Orthodox Church, who had just
come from his meeting (and it was said from the Sacrament) leaped like
a lion on to the platform. His eyes flashed fury if not fire; his teeth
and fists were clenched, and he seemed a spirit from the pit, who might
have been commissioned to lead its myrmidons in a deadly fray for such
a faith and such a church as his.... His first note was a shriek;
“It’s a lie; what you say is a lie; a damned lie! and I’ll defend the
church!”’
He had plenty of support. A group of fanatics jumped to the platform,
seized Pillsbury and hurled him to the ground with kicks and blows.
Two Harwich Abolitionists, Captain Chase and Captain Smith, who had
been seated near him, sprang to his defense and were knocked senseless.
Another speaker, William Wells Brown, was thrown over the back of the
platform, and Foster, the blasts of whose eloquence had kicked up
this ugly sea, was rescued from his assailants only after his ‘Sunday
frock coat had been rent in twain from bottom to top, and his body
considerably battered and bruised.’
Thus ended a lurid Anti-Slavery Convention. Certain inferences may be
drawn from the proceedings.
Seafaring is a broad school where men see customs that are not their
own and learn tolerance. Not all Cape shipmasters approved of slavery
(Sandwich and Barnstable had anti-slavery societies as early as 1837),
but they did approve of minding their own business and letting the
slave-owner mind his. There is much to censure in this attitude; it
is not one that hastens the millennium; it seems even to suggest that
the millennium had arrived and had taken different forms in different
places: slaves for the Virginia planter; smart crews for the New
England shipmaster. And this view--too tolerant to commend itself in
the High Court of Progress--may account not only for the placidity of
many Cape Abolitionists, but also for the stubborn stand-patters in
the church, who, with an inconsistency almost too perfect for human
beings to have achieved, regarded the Come Outers as traitors and the
Southerners as within their rights.
Some of the seafaring Abolitionists adopted other measures to show
their convictions, and used their vessels to bring slaves North to
safety. Among these kind-hearted smugglers was George Lovell, of
Osterville, who died in 1861. He was a wealthy and very influential
South Side shipowner with strong anti-slavery convictions. It was
quite natural, therefore, that he should slip a runaway on board one
of his vessels in Norfolk or Savannah now and then, and land him some
dark night on the free soil of Cape Cod. The slaves made their way
across the Cape, via a pretty well-established ‘underground railroad,’
to Barnstable, where they were always welcome guests at the houses
of Ezekiel Thacher and Alvin Howes. Yet the atmosphere of these New
England homes seems not always to have proved congenial to the Negroes;
for they frequently sought their own level in some hang-out in the
woods on Mary Dunn’s road, where rum and a less rarefied environment
put them more at their ease.
So matters stood when the opening shot at Fort Sumter cleared the
air for all Cape-Codders. Faced by a common enemy, Come Outer and
stand-patter alike forgot their differences and joined forces for the
coming struggle. The war found greater favor on the Cape than any war
had found before. It has been shown with what difficulty men were
drafted for Canada to fight the French and Indians. The Revolution
revealed Tories in almost every town. The War of 1812 found the Cape
hot and rebellious toward the Administration. But when, in 1861,
President Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers, the Cape
responded with an enthusiasm that, coming from a maritime community,
was surprising. War meant that long-voyage trading could be carried on
only at great risk; that whalemen stood an excellent chance of being
captured on their way home from the Pacific, and that fishermen would
find their old markets closed.
Early in the war, R. B. Forbes, that saltiest of Bostonians, found
leisure, while patrolling Cape Cod Bay and the North Shore in his
four launches, to comment on the effect the war was having on Cape
fishermen. He writes:
BARNSTABLE BAY, _July 8, 1861_
I have visited Salem, Beverly, Gloucester, Provincetown,
Barnstable.... In all these ports and many others there are hundreds
of vessels laying idle and thousands of men, second to none in
loyalty, second to none in experience of our Southern Coast, and
second to none in all the elements which constitute the accomplished
seaman--excepting only a want of knowledge of the art of war....
Their fish markets are cut off, and the stock of last season is on
hand to a considerable amount, unsold and unsaleable; ... At this
moment I have in view from my Yacht a hundred sail, more or less, in
Provincetown, Wellfleet and Truro laid up for want of work to do.
Confronted with the prospect of such hard times as Captain Forbes
describes, the Cape yet went willingly to war. Sandwich led the way,
and on May 8, 1861--about three weeks after Lincoln first called for
volunteers--an enthusiastic company that gave itself the name of the
Sandwich Guards marched to Boston under the command of Captain Charles
Chipman. This organization was the fourth volunteer company in the
State to report for service. It was immediately sent to Fortress Monroe
and later took part in a number of engagements, including the battles
of Antietam and Fredericksburg. The other towns responded valiantly,
in almost every case exceeding their quota of men. Provincetown
contributed $45,000 and sent two hundred and fifty men, fifty-seven
over her quota. Barnstable raised $58,000 and exceeded her quota of
men by thirty-five, sending two hundred and seventy-two in all. The
prosperity of Harwich is shown by her three hundred and forty-one
enlistments and $54,000. The total number of soldiers from the Cape
was approximately twenty-five hundred, and her contribution in money
amounted to about half a million, $90,000 of which was subsequently
refunded.
The Cape’s most distinguished army officer was Major Joseph E. Hamblin.
He was born in Yarmouth, where he spent his youth; then he moved to
Boston, and at the outbreak of the war he was in business in New
York. Beginning as Adjutant of the Fifth New York Volunteers, he was
within two years promoted to the ranks of Major, Lieutenant-Colonel,
and Colonel. He took part in the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, not to mention half a dozen minor
engagements. As Colonel at the battle of Cedar Creek, though he had
received two wounds early in the fight, he held on and was instrumental
in turning apparent defeat into victory. After this engagement, Colonel
Hamblin, on Sheridan’s recommendation, was promoted to the rank of
Brigadier-General, and for brilliant service at Sailor’s Creek, he was
brevetted Major-General. He died in 1870 and lies in the family tomb in
Yarmouthport.
The sea was, of course, the most appropriate theater for Cape
activities during the war, and the only reason why more local names are
not found in the naval records is that a large part of the country’s
merchant marine was still dodging the Confederates at sea--with
Cape-Codders on the quarterdecks. But, even so, a good many Cape men
enlisted in the navy. Some of them, indeed, were steered into it. As
early as May, 1862, Charles F. Swift offered a set of resolutions in a
Yarmouth town meeting to the effect that, since the enemy had showed
signs of sending out ‘piratical crafts’ to prey upon the commerce of
the country, it was especially proper for the citizens of Yarmouth,
whose pursuits and training were largely maritime, to ‘lend cheerful
aid in bringing these pests of the ocean to condign punishment.’ These
resolutions were not without effect, for fifteen Yarmouth men served
their country as officers in the navy, and three acted as pilots in
Southern waters.
The effect that the war had on the Cape was to hasten the decline which
had already almost imperceptibly begun. No community that depends on
the sea for its prosperity can flourish long after it is driven from
the sea, and, bit by bit, changing economic conditions were forcing
Cape-Codders ashore. Whaling had been virtually abandoned except at
Provincetown; fishermen had to begin again with new schooners or else
give up entirely; and now the props were being knocked out from under
the last and proudest business of Cape men--the merchant marine.
No wonder contemporary writers believed the war to be the cause of
all their evils. There was probably not a man on the Cape who did
not mistakenly curse Jeff Davis as the cause of the hard times--and
undeniably the circumstantial evidence against him was strong.
Before the war, business had been good; even in the late fifties
most shipmasters had had enough to do. Then four years of war, when
cargo-carrying was exciting work; and after the war, bad times indeed.
The war stood squarely between the good times and the bad; so the war
got the blame.
No bright spot appeared, even on the distant horizon; more and more
capital kept heading westward; less and less toward the sea and the
ships. The inevitable came. Young Cape-Codders, realizing that the sea
had failed them, moved inland and became manufacturers or bankers.
Writing in 1884, Shebnah Rich says:
Some of the Cape towns have been reduced more than half, Truro
among the number.... I have counted fourteen houses in a little
neighborhood nestled prettily enough for an artist’s pencil. For
forty years not a house had been added or removed.... The next turn
of the road opened another picture, where I counted a dozen houses,
and in imagination, a dozen more, that had been moved away within as
many years. The population of Truro ... in 1860 was 1883 ... in 1880
less than 1000. Over one hundred families from Truro now reside in
Somerville.
What a falling off was there! The fate of Truro is no solitary
instance. In the thirty years that followed the war, the population of
the whole Cape shrank from 36,000 to 27,000. It has dropped another
thousand since, but the damage was done with the first exodus. The Cape
has by this time grown used to commercial insignificance. If there
had never been a Civil War, this resignation might not yet have been
achieved. But the same end would have been reached ultimately and from
exactly the same causes.