NEW ENGLAND (1820-1830)
By geographical position, the land of the Puritans was devoted to
provincialism. While other sections merged into one another and even
had a west in their own midst, New England was obliged to cross
populous states in order to reach the regions into which national
life was expanding; and her sons who migrated found themselves under
conditions that weakened their old affiliations and linked their
fortunes with the section which they entered. The ocean had
dominated New England's interests and connected her with the Old
World; the fisheries and carrying--trade had engrossed her attention
until the embargo and the War of 1812 gave importance to her
manufactures. In spirit, also, New England was a section apart, The
impress of Puritanism was still strong upon her, and the unity of
her moral life was exceptional. Moreover, up to the beginning of the
decade with which we have to deal, New England had a population of
almost unmixed English origin, contrasting sharply, in this respect,
with the other sections. [Footnote: For the characteristics of New
England in colonial times, see Tyler, England in America, chaps,
xviii., xix.; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, chaps, xviii.,
xix.; Greene, Provincial America, chaps, xii., xiii., xvi.-xviii.;
Bassett, Federalist System, chaps, xi., xiii. (Am. Nation, IV., V.,
VI., XI.)].
With these peculiarities, New England often played an important
sectional role, not the least effective instance of which had been
her independent attitude in the War of 1812. [Footnote: Babcock, Am.
Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. ix.] By 1820, not only were
profound economic and social changes affecting the section, but its
relative importance as a factor in our political life was declining.
[Footnote: Adams, United States, IX., chaps, iv., vii.] The trans-
Allegheny states, which in 1790 reported only a little over one
hundred thousand souls, at a time when New England's population was
over one million, had in 1820 reached a population of nearly two
millions and a quarter, while New England had not much over a
million and a half. Ten years later, the latter section had less
than two millions, while the western states beyond the Alleghenies
had over three millions and a half, and the people northwest of the
Ohio River alone numbered nearly a million and a half. In 1820 the
total population of New England was about equal to the combined
population of New York and New Jersey; but its increase between 1820
and 1830 was hardly three hundred thousand, not much over half that
of New York, and less than the gain of Ohio. If Maine, the growing
state of the group, be excluded, the increase of the whole section
was less than that of the frontier state of Indiana. "Our New
England prosperity and importance are passing away," wrote Webster
at the beginning of the period. [Footnote: McMaster, Webster, 90.]
Were it not that New England was passing through a series of
revolutionary economic changes, not fully appreciated at that time,
doubtless the percentage of her growth would have been even more
unfavorable. As it was, the rise of new manufactures helped to save
her from becoming an entirely stationary section. In the course of
the preceding two decades, New England's shipping industry had
reached an extraordinary height, by reason of her control of the
neutral trade during the European wars. The close of that period saw
an apparent decline in her relative maritime power in the Union, but
the shipping and commercial interests were still strong. New England
possessed half the vessels owned in the United States and over half
the seamen. Massachusetts alone had a quarter of the ships of the
nation and over a third of the sailors. [Footnote: Pitkin,
Statistical View (ed. of 1835), 350.] Of the exports of the United
States in 1820, the statistics gave to New England about twenty per
cent., nine-tenths of which were from Massachusetts. [Footnote:
Shaler, United States, I., chap, x.; MacGregor, Commercial
Statistics of America, 41, 58, 63, 72, 126, 133.] This is rather an
under-estimate of the share of New England, because a portion of the
commerce fitted out by her capital and her ships sought the harbor
of New York.
Great as was New England's interest in the commercial policy of the
United States, the manufactures of the section rose to such
importance in the course of this decade that the policy of the
section was divided. The statistics of the manufactures of the
United States at the beginning and at the end of the period were so
defective that little dependence can be placed upon them for
details. But the figures for New England were more complete than for
the other regions; the product of her cotton mills increased in
value from two and one-half million dollars in 1820 to over fifteen
and one-half millions in 1831; and her woolen products rose from
less than a million dollars to over eleven million dollars. In
Massachusetts alone, in the same years, the increase in cottons was
from about seven hundred thousand dollars to over seven million
seven hundred thousand dollars; and in woolens, from less than three
hundred thousand dollars to over seven million three hundred
thousand dollars. [Footnote: See Secretary of Treasury, Report,
1854-1855, PP-, 87-92; "Treasury Report," in House Exec. Docs., 22
Cong., i Sess., I., No. 308.]
In brief, the period witnessed the transfer of the industrial center
of gravity from the harbors to the water-falls, from commerce and
navigation to manufactures. Besides the textile mills of Rhode
Island and Connecticut, the Merrimac mills grew rapidly around
Lowell, Massachusetts; the water-powers of New Hampshire became the
sites of factory towns, and the industrial revolution which, in the
time of the embargo, began to transfer industries from the household
to the factory, was rapidly carried on. A labor class began to
develop, farmers moved into towns, the daughters worked in the
mills. It was not long before Irish immigrants found their way to
the section and replaced the natives in the mills. The old social
and racial unity began to break down. [Footnote: Woollen, "Labor
Troubles between 1834 and 1837," in Yale Review, I., 87; Martineau,
Society in America, II., 227, 243, 246; Chevalier, Society, Manners,
and Politics, 137; Addison, Lucy Larcom, 6; Clay, Works, V., 467.]
Agriculture still occupied the larger number of New England people,
but it was relatively a declining interest. As early as 1794, Tench
Coxe had characterized New England as a completely settled region,
with the exception of Maine and Vermont. The generation that
followed saw an expansion of agricultural population until the best
valley lands were taken and the hill-sides were occupied by
struggling farmers. By 1830 New England was importing corn and flour
in large quantities from the other sections. The raising of cattle
and sheep increased as grain cultivation declined. The back-country
of Maine particularly was being occupied for cattle farms, and in
Vermont and the Berkshires there was, towards the close of the
decade, a marked tendency to combine the small farms into sheep
pastures. Thus, in the tariff agitation of the latter part of the
decade, these two areas of western New England showed a decided
sympathy with the interests of the wool-growers of the country at
large. This tendency also fostered emigration from New England,
since it diminished the number of small farms. By the sale of their
lands to their wealthier neighbors, the New England farmers were
able to go west with money to invest. [Footnote: Niles' Register,
XLIX., 68; Smith and Rann, Rutland County [Vt.], 166; Goodhue, Hist.
of Shoreham [Vt.], 59; Nat. Assoc. of Wool Manufacturers, Bulletin,
XXX., 47, 242, 261.]
In the outlying parts, like the back-country of Vermont, farmers
still lived under primitive industrial conditions, supporting the
family largely from the products of the farm, weaving and spinning
under the conditions of household industry that had characterized
the colonial period, slaughtering their cattle and hogs, and packing
their cheese. When the cold weather set in, caravans of Vermont
farmers passed, by sledges, to the commercial centers of New
England. [Footnote: Heaton, Story of Vermont, chap. vi.] But the
conditions of life were hard for the back-country farmer, and the
time was rapidly approaching when the attractions of the western
prairies would cause a great exodus from these regions.
While New England underwent the economic changes that have been
mentioned, a political revolution was also in progress. The old
Federalist party and Federalist ideas gradually gave way. Federalism
found its most complete expression in Connecticut, "the land of
steady habits," where "Innovation" had always been frowned upon by a
governing class in which the Congregational clergy were powerful.
Permanence in office and the influence of the clergy were prominent
characteristics of the Connecticut government. [Footnote: Dwight,
Travels, I., 262, 263, 291; Welling, "Conn. Federalism," in N. Y.
Hist. Soc., Address, 1890, pp. 39-41.] The ceremonies of the
counting of votes for governor indicated the position of the
dominant classes in this society. This solemnity was performed in
the church. "After the Representatives," wrote Dwight, the president
of Yale College, "walk the Preacher of the Day, and the Preacher of
the succeeding year: and a numerous body of the Clergy, usually more
than one hundred, close the procession." He notes that there were
several thousand spectators from all over the state, who were
perfectly decorous, not even engaging in noisy conversation, and
that a public dinner was regularly given by the state to the clergy
who were present at the election. [Footnote: Dwight, Travels, I.,
267.]
After the War of 1812, this dominance of the Congregational clergy
throughout the section was attacked by a combination of religious
and political forces. [Footnote: Schouler, United States, II., 282,
511, III., 52; Adams, United States, IX., 133.] There had been a
steady growth of denominations like the Baptists and Methodists in
New England. As a rule, these were located in the remoter and newer
communities, and, where they were strongest, there was certain to be
a considerable democratic influence. Not only did these
denominations tend to unite against the Federalists and the
Congregationalists, but they found useful allies in the members of
the old and influential Episcopal church, who had with them a common
grievance because of the relations between the state and
Congregationalism. Although the original support of the
Congregational clergy by public taxation had been modified by
successive acts of legislation in most of these states, so that
persons not of that church might make their legal contributions for
the support of their own clergy, [Footnote: Fearon, Sketches of
America, 114.] yet this had been achieved only recently and but
incompletely.
We find, therefore, that the alliance of Episcopalians and
Dissenters against the dominant clergy and the Federalists was the
key to internal politics at the opening of our period. "The old
political distinctions," wrote the editor of the Vermont Journal,
"seem to have given place to religious ones." But the religious
contentions were so closely interwoven with the struggle of New
England's democracy to throw off the control of the established
classes, that the contest was in reality rather more political and
social than religious. By her constitutional convention of 1818,
Connecticut practically disestablished the Congregational church and
did away with the old manner of choosing assistants. [Footnote:
Baldwin, "The Three Constitutions of Conn.," in New Haven Colony
Hist. Soc., Papers, V., 210-214.] In the election of 1820 the
Republican candidate for governor was elected by a decisive vote,
and all of Connecticut's representation in the lower house of
Congress was Republican, [Footnote: Niles' Register, XVIII., 128.]
although, in 1816, the Federalist candidate had been chosen by a
small majority. [Footnote: Adams, United States, IX., 133.] New
Hampshire's toleration act was passed in 1819, but she had achieved
her revolution as early as 1816, when a union of the anti-
Congregational denominations with the Republicans destroyed the
ascendancy of the Federalists and tried to break that party's
control of the educational center at Dartmouth College. [Footnote:
P. B. Sanborn, New Hampshire, 251 et seq.; Barstow, New Hampshire,
chaps, xi., xii.; Plumer, William Plumer, 437-460.]
The contest was not so clearly marked in Massachusetts as in the
other states, for the old centers of Congregational power, notably
Harvard College, had already begun to feel the liberalizing
influence of the Unitarian movement. Congregationalism in
Massachusetts divided into warring camps [Footnote: Walker, Cong.
Churches in the U.S., 303-308.] and was not in a position to
exercise the political power it had shown in other states of New
England. The discussion in that state between the Unitarian and
orthodox wings of the Congregational churches tended, on the whole,
to moderate the extreme views of each, as well as to prevent their
united domination. In her constitutional convention of 1820,
Massachusetts refused to do away with the advantage which the
Congregational church had in the matter of public support, and it
was not until 1833 that the other denominations secured the complete
separation of church and state. The moderate attitude of the
Federalists of the state lengthened their tenure of power. Governor
Brooks, elected by the Federalists in 1817, was a friend of Monroe,
and a moderate who often took Republicans for his counselors, a
genuine representative of what has been aptly termed the "Indian
summer of Federalism in Massachusetts."
The Republican party controlled the other states of the section, but
there was in New England, as a whole, a gradual decline and
absorption, rather than a destruction, of the Federalist party,
while, at the same time, marked internal political differences
constituted a basis for subsequent political conflicts. Just before
he took his seat in Congress in 1823, Webster lamented to Judge
Story that New England did not get out of the "dirty squabble of
local politics, and assert her proper character and consequence."
"We are disgraced," he said, "beyond help or hope by these things.
There is a Federal interest, a Democratic interest, a bankrupt
interest, an orthodox interest, and a middling interest; but I see
no national interest, nor any national feeling in the whole
matter."[Footnote: McMaster, Webster, 99.]
In general, northern New England--Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont-
-showed a distinct tendency towards Democracy; in southern New
England the fortifications of Federalism and Congregational power
lay in a wide belt along the Connecticut River, while along the sea-
coast and in the Berkshire region the Democratic forces showed
strength.
From the outlying rural forces, where Democracy was strong, the
settlement of New-Englanders in the middle west was to come. To
Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, who voiced the extreme
conservatism of Federal New England, the pioneers seemed unable to
live in regular society. "They are impatient of the restraints of
law, religion, and morality; grumble about the taxes, by which
Rulers, Ministers, and School-masters, are supported; and complain
incessantly, as well as bitterly, of the extortions of mechanics,
farmers, merchants, and physicians; to whom they are always
indebted. At the same time, they are usually possessed, in their own
view, of uncommon wisdom; understand medical science, politics, and
religion, better than those, who have studied them through life."
These restless men, with nothing to lose, who were delighted with
innovation, were, in his judgment, of the type that had ruined
Greece and Rome. "In mercy, therefore," exclaimed Dwight, "to the
sober, industrious, and well-disposed inhabitants, Providence has
opened in the vast western wilderness a retreat, sufficiently
alluring to draw them away from the land of their nativity. We have
many troubles even now; but we should have many more, if this body
of foresters had remained at home." [Footnote: Dwight, Travels, II.,
458-463.]
Perhaps the most striking feature of New England life was its
organization into communities. What impressed the traveler from
other sections or from the Old World was partly the small farms,
divided into petty fields by stone fences, but, above all, "the
clustering of habitations in villages instead of dispersing them at
intervals of a mile over the country." The spires of the white
churches of separate hamlets dotted the landscape. Simple comfort
and thrift were characteristic of the region. "Here," wrote a
Virginia planter, traveling in New England in the early thirties,
"is not apparent a hundredth part of the abject squalid poverty that
our State presents." [Footnote: "Minor's Journal," in Atlantic
Monthly, XXVI., 333.]
The morale of New England was distinctive. Puritanism had founded
the section, and two centuries of Calvinistic discipline had molded
the New England conscience. That serious self-consciousness, that
self-scrutiny, almost morbid at times, by which the Puritan tried to
solve the problem of his personal salvation, to determine whether he
was of the elect, [Footnote: Wendell, Cotton Mather, 6.] was
accompanied by an almost equal anxiety concerning the conduct of his
neighbors. The community life of New England emphasized this trait.
Tudor, who was not friendly to the ideals of the "land of steady
habits," criticized "the narrowing influence of local policy," and
lamented the "sort of habitual, pervading police, made up of
Calvinistic inquisition and village scrutiny" in Connecticut.
[Footnote: Tudor, Letters on the Eastern States (ed. of 1821), 60.]
Not to be one's brother's keeper and not to assent to the dictates
of community sentiment were indications of moral laxity. This long
training in theological inquiry, this continued emphasis upon
conduct, and this use of community sentiment as a means of enforcing
certain moral and political ideals, led the New-Englander to war
with opposing conceptions wherever he went.
A test of the ideals of New England is found in the attitude of
those who spread into new regions. The migrating Yankee was a
reformer. A considerable proportion of the New-Englanders who left
the section were "come-outers" in religion as in politics; many of
the Vermonters and the pioneers who went west were radicals. But the
majority of these dissenters from the established order carried with
them a body of ideas regarding conduct and a way of looking at the
world that were deeply influenced by their old Puritan training. If,
indeed, they revolted from the older type of Calvinism in the freer
air of a new country, they were, by this sudden release from
restraint, likely to develop "isms" of their own, which revealed the
strong underlying forces of religious thinking. Lacking the
restraining influence of the old Congregational system, some of them
contented themselves with placing greater emphasis upon emotional
religion and eagerly embraced membership in churches like the
Baptist or Methodist, or accepted fellowship with Presbyterians and
welcomed the revival spirit of the western churches.
Others used their freedom to proclaim a new order of things in the
religious world. Most noteworthy was Mormonism, which was founded by
a migrating New England family and was announced and reached its
first success among the New-Englanders of New York and Ohio.
Antimasonry and spiritualism flourished in the Greater New England
in which these emancipated Puritans settled. Wherever the New-
Englander went he was a leader in reform, in temperance crusades, in
abolition of slavery, in Bible societies, in home missions, in the
evangelization of the west, in the promotion of schools, and in the
establishment of sectarian colleges.
Perhaps the most significant elements in the disintegration of the
old Congregationalism in New England itself, however, were furnished
by the Unitarians and the Universalists. For nearly a generation the
liberal movement in religion had been progressing. The Unitarian
revolt, of which Channing was the most important leader, laid its
emphasis upon conduct rather than upon a plan of salvation by
atonement. In place of original sin and total depravity, it came
more and more to put stress upon the fatherhood of God and the
dignity of man. The new optimism of this faith was carried in still
another direction by the Universalist movement, with its gospel of
universal salvation.
The strength of the Unitarian movement was confined to a limited
area about Boston, but within its own sphere of influence it
contested successfully with the old Congregational power, captured
Harvard College, and caught the imaginations of large numbers of the
best educated and prosperous classes of the community. Attempting to
adjust themselves between the old order of things on the one side,
and the new forces of evangelism and liberalism on the other,
another great body of Congregationalists found a middle ground in a
movement of modified Calvinism, which sustained the life of
Congregationalism in large areas of New England. By these movements
of conflict and readjustment, whatever of unity the older
Congregational faith had possessed was gradually broken down and a
renaissance of religious and moral ideas was ushered in.
This change was soon to find expression in a new literary movement
in New England, a movement in which poetry and prose were to take on
a cheerful optimism, a joy in life, and an idealism. This new
literature reflected the influence of the Unitarian movement, the
influence of European romantic literature, and the influence of
German philosophy. Before long the Transcendentalists proclaimed the
new idealism that was showing itself about Boston. [Footnote:
Wendell, Literary Hist. of America, book V., chaps. iv., v.] Bryant,
Longfellow, Whittier, Hawthorne, and Emerson were all prophesied in
the forces of intellectual change that now spread over the section.
Even New England's statesmen were deeply influenced by the literary
spirit. Daniel Webster, although the son of a New Hampshire pioneer
whose log cabin was on the edge of the vast forest that stretched
north to Canada, had won an education at the "little college" at
Dartmouth; and, after his removal to Boston, he captivated New
England by his noble commemorative orations and enriched his
arguments before the courts by the splendor of his style. He united
the strong, passionate nature of his backwoods father with a mind
brought under the influences of the cultured society of Boston. John
Quincy Adams, also, had been professor of rhetoric and oratory at
Harvard, and he found in the classics a solace when the political
world grew dark around him. Edward Everett represented even more
clearly the union of the man of letters with the political leader.
If we except the brilliant but erratic John Randolph, of Roanoke, no
statesman from other sections showed this impress of literature.
While these forces were developing, a liberalizing of the colleges,
and particularly of Harvard, by the introduction of new courses in
literature and science, was in progress. Reform movements, designed
to give fuller expression to common-school public education, began,
and already in 1821 Boston had established the first English high-
school, precursor of a movement of profound importance in the
uplifting of the masses. Lyceums and special schools for the
laborers flourished in the new centers of manufacturing. The smaller
educational centers, like Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams,
where the farmer boys of New England worked their way through
college, sent out each year men to other sections to become leaders
at the bar, in the pulpit, in the press, and in the newer colleges.
The careers of Amos Kendall, Prentiss, and others illustrate these
tendencies. In short, New England was training herself to be the
school-mistress of the nation. Her abiding power was to lie in the
influence which she exerted in letters, in education, and in reform.
She was to find a new life and a larger sphere of activity in the
wide-spread western communities which were already invaded by her
sons. In furnishing men of talent in these fields she was to have an
influence out of all relation to her population.[Footnote: Century
Mag., XLVII., 43.]