Galusha A. Grow, father of the homestead law

Front matter

ALtfSHA A.: GROW e Iloiiiestea i^JAMES'T DUBOIS and GERTRUDE S. MATHEWS

OtartieU Intensity Ktbrarg

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

Foreword

The definition of history as the biography of great men holds good in the land movement of the United States as elsewhere. Galusha A. Grow, Speaker of the House of Representatives in Lincoln's time, true statesman, patriot in so large a sense that to-day we are reaping a harvest which he helped to sow and largely cultivated, did human, historical work which should make him proportionately honored.

To his foresight and persistence we owe, in great part, the settlement of the Far West with genuine homes, the peopling of vast tracts with earnest homesteaders who could give that invaluable element, personal interest, to the task of breaking open the continent, and the retention to such people of a considerable part of the domain which, in 1850, was in so large a measure not only new possession but entirely unassimilated.

Having followed the politico-geographical principle that young countries know no exclusion from the sea, 1 the United States had

viii FOREWORD

pushed forward to dominion on the Pacific, completing a monumental expansion of our territory. Finding ourselves in possession of a folk-land of fabulous extent, the pressure for the formulation of some adequate land policy by which to assure to the nation its proper development had become active. There was imminent danger of monopoly, of disastrously lavish gift to railroads and other utilities, upon whose pleasure the country must then wait for a programme which would reasonably develop it without independent chance for the common man. Involved in the question of settlement, moreover, was the momentous issue whether the territory should be slave or free.

At this epoch, before the matter had become a party issue, Grow entered the arena of Congress, its youngest member. Land bills there had been in plenty, but ideas on the matter were conflicting and by no means clear and broad in principle. The free-grants plan had been launched on its course, but, while its prominent advocates in Congress had presented the idea in various ways, no plan was entirely compelling and all of them sharply controversial because of the half-developed

FOREWORD ix

status of the Union and the more or less tentative condition of federal authority. \ With an appreciation of the value of any man to the soil, with an instinctive feeling for the rights of man, and with the vision of superb empire compelling him, Grow took up the practical task of laying a comprehensive, stable foundation for a continental national life; and once assumed he never laid it down.

To the land he wished to secure the people. To invite them, inducement and protection were necessary. Legislation must be formulated which would prove a good investment alike for the nation and the individual. To that policy, for which he made a long and difficult fight extending over ten years' time, culminating in the successful passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 while he was Speaker, the nation owes much of its present stability. ■ A great labor, bearing the indelible imprint of the best spirit of our American times — the people of the country have not begun to realize how large a debt they owe to Galusha A. Grow for the basis of the successful development of a very great portion of our national estate. Obscured in the period of its accomplishment by an excitement so painful to us as a people that x FOREWORD

other national policies than those most obviously connected with the Civil War were comparatively little heeded, it is important that new light be thrown upon the source of inspiration which lies in this conscientious, effective, and far-reaching labor. Because of the aid that this legislation has afforded to one of the greatest migrations that the world has seen, because of the direct connection between the land and our present prosperity, and because of the worth of the man who was so ready to give himself as the instrument of accomplishment, Galusha Grow's life, set in key with the most throbbing strains of our most dramatic period, is vital to America.

"The true patriot," says "Henry van Dyke, "is he who is as willing to sacrifice time and strength and property to remove political shame and reform political corruption, as he who would be ready to answer the call of battle against a foreign foe. The true patriot is he who works and votes with the same courage he would show in arms, in order that the aspirations of a noble people may be embodied in the noblest rulers."

To make the great unoccupied commons of America a true free folk-land, to introduce

FOREWORD xi

honest settlement on the heels of disastrous speculation and ineffective preemption, Grow steadily gave himself with courage and persistence to a discouraging civil, economic task. In pursuance of the work which had fallen on his shoulders, he came into intimate contact with some of the greatest Americans of the climacteric period of our history.

In the following account we have endeavored to preserve, so far as possible, the direct personal style with which Mr. Grow narrated the incidents of his life, many of them told in the sunset years as he rested in his wicker chair on the great veranda of his home in Glenwood, Pennsylvania, or while reclining on the old-fashioned sofa in his room. He left behind him manuscripts and memoranda, notes biographical and historical, fugitive articles and fragments, which contain incontrovertible proof of lofty feeling and a simple ruggedness of character which should make his patriotic story suggestive, since they give direct testimony to the rise of a man who consistently followed the primeval impulse within him to its great ends of broad human benefit.

Contents

I. Eablt Youth 1

II. Education and Formulating Purposes . . 28

HI. The Law and the Land 43

Chapter I

The event of birth is all too frequently insignificant. A pleasure to record where it is emphatically to the contrary, it must be set down that a son was born August 31, 1823, in Ashford, Windham County, Connecticut, to Joseph and Elizabeth Grow, great-greatgrandchildren of that Grow, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, who in the sixteen hundreds was one of the "commoners" of the town.

About the time of the baby's christening an aunt who lived in Vermont was visiting his mother. The. Christian name of her husband was Aaron. She was an admirer of Governor Galusha, of Vermont, and asked permission to name the child "Aaron Galusha," which was granted, and his weighty nomenclature was so recorded in the family Bible. The name of their nearest neighbor was also Aaron, however, and fearing that it might be thought that the boy took his name from him, the family began calling him "Galusha." When he became ten years old it was sometimes necessary to write his name, and as it did not please them as "A. Galusha Grow," that being in their estimation hardly definite enough to designate any particular person, he began writing it "Galusha A. Grow" and continued it ever after.

When he was a little over four years old, his father died, leaving his mother with six children and property hardly sufficient to pay the debts. Of the children Julia was the eldest, being fifteen; then came Edwin, Frederick, Samuel, Galusha, and Elizabeth, who was only eighteen months old. Samuel went to live with "Uncle Thomas Grow" in Hampton. Galusha went with his uncle, Kinney Gallup, to his grandfather, Captain Samuel Robbins, in Voluntown, who was a soldier in the Continental Army and was among the first volunteers who went from Connecticut to Boston after the battle of Lexington.

His mother spent a few months in settling up her business affairs in Ashford and then went with the rest of her children to her father, Captain Robbins, where they spent seven years. Edwin and Frederick worked on the farm doing heavy labor, while Galusha was general chore-boy, milking the cows and caring for the horses. At times he drove the oxen for Edwin to plough, rode the horse bareback in cultivating corn and potatoes, and attended school in winter.

The hotel at Voluntown was kept by Captain Bobbins, and during his life and many years after it was the place for transacting all township business, the elections and meetings of the selectmen who had charge of town affairs being held there. The annual drill of the militia company of the township took place on a large meadow near the hotel, and the great day of the year for small boys and grown men was "Training-Day." Probably it was in this place that Galusha came to hear many tales of the Liberty Pole times of our forefathers, and the fact that he remembered them all his life makes the assumption warrantable that they must have instilled into his blood some especial interest in the idea of freedom, of revolt on principle, and of love for political action.

Early in the Revolutionary War Liberty Poles were first used, and closely following it became the fashion of every village to have a "Pole-Raising" or "Training-Day." These events were popular with the farmers who came to such centers as Voluntown, driving for miles from all directions and in all kinds of vehicles from logging- wagons to Revolutionary coaches. More than one of the men gathered at Galusha's grandfather's inn remembered all the excitement of the origin of these poles, when "Citizen Gen6t," Minister from France to our country, tried to fit out privateers from our ports and enlist men for expeditions against the Spanish territory. In America the Republicans, who were the American partisans of France, sympathized with his movements. When President Washington issued a proclamation in 1793 declaring the neutrality of the United States, more sympathy for Genet's schemes was aroused, and Democratic Clubs set up Liberty Poles surmounted by flags bearing various inscriptions favorable to France.

To this tradition of that Training-Day which was so great a feature of Galusha's boyhood was added that of the revolt in western Pennsylvania against the excise law, when the red "Anarchy" or "Sedition Poles" were the distinctive emblems of a disturbance which had to be suppressed by armed force of the Government. The fad, dying out about 1800, sprang to life again when the British lion began to growl. Later on, when Whigs and Democrats were in the midst of their bitterest contests, each party vied with the other in raising poles at their political meetings, and they were considered quite as essential to the success of the day as the speech-making. The party loyalty of a community came to be measured by the height of the pole. Very often sailors were brought from port towns far into the interior to help in "riggin' " the poles after they were raised. These jolly tars in their seamen's uniform were half the show, and they were lionized and bountifully entertained with applejack and pumpkin pie, and not infrequently with free Whiskey and a free fight.

The masses of both parties had come to regard the emblem itself with a sort of superstitious awe, and to children like Galusha such superstition made of the Liberty Pole a mystic shrine. If these poles were such a rage that a mass meeting without one was to grown-ups like a schooner without a sail, imagine the scorn of a small boy who venerated his Liberty Pole as an Indian his totem! No political demonstration in any era could have been finer to any small boy, and Galusha was a real boy.

The accompanying campaign disease known as the "campaign ditty " had its own delights, but it was by no means so compelling. Still, from the old men who congregated in the hotel and "reminisced," Galusha absorbed many an ancient verse. First used in Washington's campaign they had at this time none of the wit and bitterness which afterwards characterized them. The rancor of party feeling did not develop until almost 1800, and it was then that bitter partisanship began to express itself in political songs. One, dating from Jefferson's campaign against Adams, ran: —

" The Federalists are down at last, The Monarchists completely cast, The aristocrats are stript of power, Storms o'er the British faction lower. Soon we Republicans shall see Columbia's sons from bondage free. Lord! How the Federalists will stare At Jefferson in Adams' chair!"

Perhaps Mrs. Grow feared the influence of the inn for her children; certainly Galusha was "taking in" a good deal for his age. For various reasons in the winter of 1833-34, she coneluded that it would be better for them to go West and grow up with the country. Orrin S. Kinney, who married Galusha's sister Julia, had the winter before gone out to eastern Pennsylvania to found a home. He bought a tract covered with heavy timber in Greenfield, about four miles from Carbondale, and began cutting a -fallow of five acres, expecting his wife to join him in the spring. When Mrs. Grow consulted her father about going West he agreed that before she departed she should receive the portion of the property which he had allotted to her in his will.

The same winter Charles Barstow and Samuel Newton, who were living near Voluntown, went to northern Pennsylvania, or "up-country" as it was then called, to establish new homes. Barstow bought the Crystal Lake Hotel property, about two miles from Dundaff in Susquehanna County, and Newton purchased a farm on the Milford and Owego Turnpike, three miles out of Montrose, and were to take possession the next spring. On their return to Connecticut they chartered a sailing vessel on Long Island Sound engaged in trade between New London and New York, to take their families to Rondout on the

Hudson River as soon as the Delaware and Hudson Canal was open.

Hearing that Mrs. Grow was going to move "up-country," they came to Voluntown to see if it would suit her to go on the sailing vessel they had chartered. She accepted the offer, and the last of April, 1834, the three families gathered together their household effects, put them aboard the little ship Mystic, nearly opposite New London, and commenced their journey through Long Island Sound. Mrs. Grow took with her Julia, Edwin, Elizabeth, and Galusha, and after five days, having stopped in New York one day to make some purchases, the Mystic arrived at Rondout. There everything was transferred to a flatboat on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the first one to make the spring trip to Honesdale, in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, which was the end of their water route. They were detained one day at Port Jervis by a break in the canal, and it took them five days to reach Honesdale, where their goods were transferred to wagons drawn by two-horse teams.

Then the journey overland was begun. One can see the small boy of ten, his ardent imagination all astir, facing the great, wide mysterious West which stretched before them in interminable reaches, full of unexplored wild resources. The excitement of an adventure journey of magnitude into that mountainous country which, although pioneered long before, from its ohstinacy to subjugation had still the character of real wilderness, must, to judge by later developments, have transcended all ordinary, childish excitement and touched that Great Wonder, the experience of which is so valuable an asset to any human life.

By sea four days, a twenty-four hour space in that New York whose remote edge was Twenty-third Street, a canal-boat journey which meant slow, dreamy days in a unique environment on a placid water, and then the beginning of a caravan movement, painful and snail-like, toward that corner of the globe where the Creator, when He made the earth, seems to have dumped the leavings in a picturesque manner — this was such a romance as one remembers throughout one's journey down the life-path.

"A mover up-country!" — the phrase must have been magic to a small boy. With nomadic instinct keenly alive as he bumped along the uneven roads to the new country in whose vague area they were to find themselves a home, he could not escape the lure of migration. Such experiences leave deep roots in the sensitive, romantic minds of children. Galusha was part of a greater movement than he could possibly know, a migration which had in it sweeping, elemental forces. Probably conscious only of the keenest interest in the adventurous advance of his own people inland, in the natural resources, he really received on this pilgrimage a motif for a lifework which tied him even thus early to a Cause. It was given to him to perceive the glamour of the new land and the inherent hardship of its conquest at that period when youth moves mountains by a wave of the hand, seeing its high vision with the clarity of reality. The mother, whose resolution and vigor, whose good sense and ability took her out to battle with the primitive for the good of her children, inspired by that touch of altruism which often makes the ordinary homestead so poignantly appealing, demonstrated her brave nobility. Alone in her responsibility, even the pilgrimage must have been an appalling task, and with the handicap of limited resources the establishment of a new home demanded fortitude, efficiency, and courage of the highest order. When she came to the enchanting Tunkhannock Valley, the settlers were building log huts out of the tall pine and hemlock trees which surrounded them on all sides. Trails, often only blazed ones, struck through the dense and far-reaching woodland to the gristmill, the post-office, and the blacksmith shop. Usually in such settlements was found a small store containing general merchandise.

Mr. Barstow went to his purchase at Crystal Lake. Mr. Newton took his family to his farm near Montrose. "Sister Julia" and her husband went to Greenfield. Mrs. Grow, having no abiding-place, deposited her belongings in the barn of Ephraim Johnson, who lived on a farm midway between Crystal Lake and Dundaff. Mr. Johnson had been her neighbor in Connecticut, and at his invitation they remained in his house while his son drove Edwin Grow around the country to procure a suitable homestead.

After driving for three days, a farm of four hundred acres was purchased of Solomon Millard for twelve hundred dollars, in the valley of the Tunkhannock Creek at a hamlet called Glenwood, located about sixteen miles from the junction of the creek with the Susquehanna and four miles from the post-office. The nearest store was at Dundaff , eight miles away.

Edwin and Galusha were the farmers. The only stock they had on the farm that summer was one cow and a yoke of oxen. They sowed a field of oats and planted some corn and potatoes, borrowing a plough and harrow from their neighbor, William Hartley. One day, as Galusha went to get the plough for the third time, Mr. Hartley said, "I will lend you anything on my farm this season, but next year I will neither borrow nor lend ! " They heeded this warning with care.

In that year 1 the wild pigeons nested on Elk Mountain, the highest elevation in northeastern Pennsylvania, and they were very destructive to the fields of oats and corn for a radius of twenty miles. In the day they passed from their mountain roost to their feedinggrounds like a dark cloud covering the sun. At night the farmers for miles around drove to the roosting-place and with long poles

1 Mrs. Blackman, History of Susquehanna County.

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H « struck down thousands of pigeons, and carrying wagonloads home, salted them for winter use. The "Volunteer," a newspaper published at Montrose, referring to the great pigeon invasion, said: "They occupied a district nine miles long and two miles wide, every tree and branch of which was crowded with pigeons, and while these pests feasted on the farmers' fields the farmers returned the compliment by feasting on them."

During that same summer and autumn they practically destroyed all the grain crops in the region surrounding Elk Mountain except where the farmers were vigilant in protecting their fields. Galusha's mother assigned him to a post upon the ridge of a barn shed which stood in the cornfield, and his business was to sing songs, giving loud cat-calls or Indian whoops, and rattling sticks on the shingles to scare away the hungry winged robbers and prevent them from lighting in the fields. He held this post from the time the corn was planted until it was harvested, and he was always at his station from daylight until dark. A constant guard was necessary, as in a few hours' time a swarm of pigeons, if undisturbed, would destroy a good-sized field of grain.

The winters of 1834-37 Galusha went to the district school about a mile distant, and he always after mentioned with particular pleasure the spelling-bees in which not only the scholars but parents were participants. These contests called for "choosing sides," and the people from the various school districts would gather at the log school and fight out their battles in words. In this old building Galusha first took part in debate.

"I often prepared myself, while walking over a mile twice a day to fodder the cattle," he notes, "to argue whether the hen that hatched or the hen that laid the egg was the mother of the chick," and subjects of like importance. Sometimes the question debated was of a political character, and in these contests he became deeply interested. The questions to be discussed were announced by the teachers a week ahead, and it was there he learned the art of "talking on his feet."

In August, 1834, Frederick, who had been left at Voluntown to close up business and dispose, so far as possible, of the land Captain Robbins had conveyed to his mother, came to Glenwood, and soon thereafter Mrs. Grow, having decided that there was a good opening, set apart one room in the farmhouse for a general store. Business flourishing, a building of three rooms was erected the following spring to accommodate the increasing trade. Frederick took charge of the store and made Galusha clerk. They traded groceries and cotton goods for butter, bark, and hides, and, the business prospering, branched out into "lumbering" as it was called in those days. They handled a large amount of "sawed lumber" which they floated down the Tunkhannock to the markets scattered along the Susquehanna River.

At fourteen years of age Galusha took his first trip down the river to Columbia. It took about five days to make it, and all through the journey they lived in a rough cabin on the rafts and slept in straw bunks, cooking their own meals and doing the "housework" themselves, as no women were on board. At Marietta the up-river pilots and most of the men returned home and new pilots and crews ran the raft on to Port Deposit.

Galusha made several of these trips with Frederick as far as Marietta and Columbia, but did not go "all the way through " — so they spoke of going to Port Deposit — until the spring freshet of 1837. Then, with Frederick, he made the long journey clear to the Port, which was at the head of navigation on Chesapeake Bay, where lumber merchants from Baltimore and Philadelphia came to purchase supplies for their customers. At that time Port Deposit was the center of distribution of all lumber that came down the Susquehanna River and was a very interesting and busy place. Galusha enjoyed his sojourn there in full measure. All these practical experiences, while stimulating to the imagination, helped to transmute fancy to definite utilitarian power.

The panic of 1837, the year Martin Van Buren assumed the Presidency, caused a severe depression in business, and the lumber business being dull, lumbermen became impatient and sacrificed their stock at low prices. Two men, Horace G. Phelps, uncle of William Walter Phelps, who lived in Dundaff, Pennsylvania, and Benajah Bailey, of Painted Post, New York, were largely engaged in lumbering on the Tioga Branch of the Susquehanna near Corning, New York, and had a big stock of pine and hemlock at Port Deposit. When Frederick and Galusha reached that place with their raft, Mr. Bailey asked Frederick to let Galusha take charge of a vessel loaded with lumber and go down the Bay and find as good a market for it as he could. Frederick told him that Bailey wanted him to go and sell the lumber. Galusha demanded, " Go where? "

Frederick replied, "Go until you sell it, if you have to go to Norfolk or Richmond, and then meet me in Baltimore with the cash."

Galusha accepted the proposition "so quick it made Frederick stare, as he thought it was too big a task for a boy of fourteen."

When the vessel was ready, Mr. Bailey said to him: "Galusha, you are supercargo of this ship, and you may sell the lumber at any price you think best; but sell. If you want to consult the captain about anything, do it, as he has sense and is my friend."

Unafraid to tackle anything, venturesome but by no means reckless, with a few dollars in his pocket, he started on his voyage into veritably unknown waters and strange lands. Arriving at Annapolis he went ashore in search of a buyer. He went into the office of a general merchant by the name of Adams, who agreed to buy the cargo at a fair price. As Galusha passed out of the place, in high spirits, Adams suddenly changed his mind and called him back, saying he would not buy. Galusha was provoked at this commercial looseness and left without saying a word. He had respect for adherence to a promise given.

A man he met on the street told him that a gentleman named Claude, who was not a dealer in lumber, but who owned a plantation on an inlet a few miles from Annapolis, wanted some lumber. He went in search of Claude, finding him behind the counter in a small store, a sharp-featured man with a sandy complexion.

Galusha stepped up to him and inquired, "Do you want my pine lumber?"

Claude looked at him as though he thought Galusha ought to be in a kindergarten. Finally he demanded, "Where are you from?"

He told Claude that he had come from northeastern Pennsylvania on a raft, which seemed to puzzle him. Being very curious, Claude put the boy through a thorough catechism about his family and business. Galusha replied briefly, cautiously, quite holding his own under interrogatory fire.

At last Claude made reply to his first question. "I want fifteen thousand feet of pine boards for my plantation."

"That would only take half my cargo," protested Galusha. "I do not want to sell half of it, for if I must go farther to sell the rest I might as well go with a whole load as a half."

Claude refused to buy it all, so Galusha started again in pursuit of a buyer. On the street he met a kindly faced old man and told him he had a shipload of lumber to sell. He stared at the boy in surprise, but seeing he was serious, told him that a man named Carter down on the Patuxent River wanted lumber for a large tobacco barn. It was twenty miles to Carter's.

Galusha hired a saddle-horse at the livery stable and started for the Carter plantation, reaching it just after sundown. He found Mr. Carter in shirt-sleeves, standing in his front door.

"Do you want a shipload of lumber?" asked Galusha.

His answer seemed to stop the boy's heart. "I bought all I need this morning."

Galusha turned to go, but Mr. Carter kindly insisted that he should spend the night under his roof. For the first time he realized the meaning of Southern hospitality, for Mr. Carter and his family were very gracious to him. During the evening he told Galusha that the year before he had purchased a large supply of pine from William Hartley, who was a neighbor of the Grows at Glen wood. He at once felt that he was not entirely among strangers.

He returned to Annapolis in the morning, leaving the livery stable with the intention of seeing Mr. Claude again. He met Mr. Adams on the street, who said, "Young man, I have changed my mind; I will take the entire cargo."

"No, Mr. Adams," Galusha replied, "you backed out of your first bargain, and I do not care to trade with a man who won't stand up to his agreement." He left Adams staring with surprise.

Galusha went to Mr. Claude, who had treated him with kindness, and told him about Adams. Mr. Claude proposed that he would take half and let Adams have the other half and so dispose of it without further expense. Galusha objected: "Adams made a bargain with me for all of it and balked, and I never did like balky horses." But Mr. Claude urged him to do as he proposed, and while it hurt his dignity, the boy finally agreed. He was already experienced enough in trading to know when to compromise, having developed considerable acumen.

Adams wanted just half the cargo, and Galusha requested him to have an inspector ready to count it. When Adams came to pay, he offered Galusha a check, but the boy wanted cash or nothing. Adams flushed and protested, "Do you want to come some Yankee trick on me?"