Recollections of a busy life : including reminiscences of American politics and politicians, from the opening of the Missouri contest to the downfall of slavery ; to which are added miscellanies ; also, a discussion with Robert Dale Owen of the law of divorce

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The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIEE:

INCLUDING

Contents

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I. A Sample of the Scotch-Irish 17

II. Our Folks at Londonderry 23

I. A Sample Of The Scotch-irish

ULSTEE, — the most northern of the four provinces into which Ireland is pretty equally divided, — being separated but by a strait from the western coast of Scotland, was doubtless the recipient of emigration thence from time immemorial ; but, after the suppression, by Queen Elizabeth, of a bloody insurrection of the Celts under Hugh O'Neil against English domination, a large area of the soil previously held by the insurgents was confiscated ; and " The Plantation of Ulster," with some English, but more Scotch emigrants, was effected under James I. More Celtic insurrections naturally followed ; that of 1641 being marked as especially murderous ; 40,000 of the Protestant settlers in Ulster having been speedily massacred, with small regard to age or sex. Eight years later, Cromwell, heading his terrible " Ironsides," swept resistlessly over Ulster not only, but all Ireland, crushing out her resistance, and leaving in his track but blood, ashes, and ruins ; actually subjugating the entire island, for the first time, to British power, and confiscating four fifths of its soil. Forty years of such peace as subjugation can make was suddenly broken by the expulsion of James II. from the throne of England, mainly because of his Eomanism, while Papal Ireland still clung to his falling throne, and resisted the accession of Dutch William and his wife Mary, daughter of James. Ulster, in so far as she was Scotch-English and Protestant, hailed with rapture the new rule ; while Catholic Ireland clung to James ; who, having fled to France, landed 2 thence at Kinsale, and was received with open arms.

The Protestants of Ulster, unaccountably left to themselves, had already been nearly overrun by the French and Irish soldiers of James, who was eager to pass over to Scotland and recruit his forces from the Highlanders of that kingdom, who were already enrolled, under the banners of Grahame of Claverhouse, and eagerly awaiting their monarch's appearance. Londonderry (originally Deny, but re-named on being re-peopled, as above recited, under the patronage of a London company) for months stood up almost alone against the overwhelming forces of James, ably led by Richard Hamilton, and finally by Conrad de Eosen. A poorly walled town of perhaps a thousand houses, garrisoned by a few drilled soldiers, and three or four thousand armed citizens, partly fugitives driven in from the surrounding country, who, wretchedly armed, and most scantily provided with ammunition, commanded for weeks by a traitor (Colonel Lundy), who did all he dared to betray them to their enemies, nevertheless defied the most desperate efforts of their besiegers, with the still more terrible assaults of famine ; and even their cowardly desertion by General Kirke, who was sent from England to relieve them with 5,000 men and a supply of provisions, but who recoiled with all his fleet without even seriously attempting to succor the famishing, heroic city. Yet the sorely disappointed and distressed Protestants, so far from despairing, resolved, five days afterward, that no man, on penalty of death, should propose a surrender, and fought on, eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, salted hides and tallow, while scores died of absolute starvation, until not two days' subsistence remained, or only nine lean horses in all, and one pint of meal per man, when, on the 28th of July, 1690, a frigate and two transports ran up the Foyle past the enemy's batteries, and, sadly peppered and cut up, anchored at the quay, — the transports laden with provisions.

Of 7,500 men enrolled for the defence at the outset, but 4,300 survived ; and one fourth of these were disabled. That night James's army raised the siege, in which they had lost more than 8,000 men ; and the signal defeat of their monarch by

A SAMPLE OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 19

his son-in-law in the battle of the Boyne, a few days before, was speedily followed by the utter overthrow and expulsion of the former. Londonderry had saved the kingdom, and enabled William to fight the decisive battle under auspices far more favorable than if James had been allowed to cross into Scotland, and add the Highland clans and their great leader to the army wherewith he struggled for his crown.

A quarter of a century had elapsed. William and Mary were dead ; so was their sister and successor, Anne ; George I. had been called from Hanover to the throne ; when a new migration was meditated and resolved on by a goodly company of the " Scotch-Irish " of Londonderry and its neighborhood. They were rigid Presbyterians, of the school of Knox; the faith and observances of their Celtic neighbors were exceedingly repugnant to them, and those of the Protestant Episcopal Church by law established, little less so. Acts of Uniformity and other prelatical devices bore hardly upon them ; they resolved to seek homes where they would enjoy absolute religious freedom. Sending out to New England a young Mr. Holmes to examine and inquire, they were incited by his report to take the decisive step ; and a considerable portion of four Presbyterian societies (one of them that of Holmes's father), resolved to cross the Atlantic. Early in 1718 they despatched Eev. William Boyd with an address to Governor Shute, of Massachusetts, signed by 217 of their number, of whom 210 attached their names in fair, legible chirography; nine of them being clergymen. The Governor's response was such that the colony, on receiving it, took passage on five small vessels, landing at Boston, August 4, 1718. Months were now wasted in seeking, in different lands, a location, — the ensuing Winter being passed with great privation and suffering by twenty families of these explorers, near Falmouth, now Portland, Maine, where they were saved from starving by a donation of one hundred bushels of Indian meal from the Massachusetts General Court.

But Spring at length opened. The colonists, returning from Casco Bay, dissatisfied with their experience in that quarter, entered the mouth of the Merrimac, and ascended it to Haverhill; where they heard of an inviting tract of wilderness, known as Nuffield, from the abundance of its indigenous chestnut, butternut, and hickory trees. Leaving their families at Haverhill, the men visited this tract, some fifteen miles northward ; and, having found it worth their taking, they located thereon their grant from Governor Shute of any twelve miles square of unoccupied land which they should select within the boundaries of his colony, — to find, ultimately, that their Canaan was not in Massachusetts, but New Hampshire, and their grant, consequently, of no use. As many, if not most of them, including nearly all their leaders, had borne part in the defence of the Protestant stronghold of their native land, they, in memory thereof, discarded the name of Nuffield, and were, in 1722, incorporated under that of Londonderry. Having hastily erected a few huts of logs, the pioneers returned to Haverhill for their families ; the day of whose arrival — April 11 (old style), 1719 — is regarded as that on which their settlement was founded. Eev. James McGregor, their chosen pastor, preached (from Isa. xxxii. 2) next day, under a great oak, the first sermon ever listened to in that locality. When he had left to seek his family in Dracut, but sixteen sturdy pioneers and their families remained ; and these, for mutual defence against Indians, were located but thirty rods apart, facing a brook ; each lot being a mile in depth, or sixty acres in area. But two stone houses of refuge, in case of attack, were soon built, affording some security against savage incursions ; and the town was finally laid off into lots, each sixty rods wide on the road it fronted, and a mile deep, making each allotment one hundred and twenty acres. Such were the dimensions of the tract on " the High Eange," allotted, in 1721, to my mother's grandfather, John Woodburn, and which was by his industry transformed into the farm whereon she was born, and Avhich is to day the property of her youngest and only surviving brother, John *

* Since this was first printed he has deceased, aged 72 ; but the farm descends to his numerous children.

A SAMPLE OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 21

now about 70 years old. The first framed house, wherein she was born, was superseded, about 1800, by that wherein she was married, and whence I first went to school, which is now the family homestead. No price was ever paid for the Woodburn farm, nor has a deed of it ever been given.

Though the infant settlement of Londonderry was rapidly augmented, not only by the flocking thither of the original colonists (whose sixteen families in April had thus been swelled to seventy by September), but by continuous accessions of relatives and friends from the old country, yet brave men long ploughed and sowed with a loaded gun standing as handy as might be, and with a sharp eye on the adjacent woods ; and they never went to " meeting " on Sunday without carrying their trusty weapon, first seeing that it was in good order. Nay, their spiritual teacher and guide for months regularly entered his pulpit musket in hand, and, having cocked it and carefully scrutinized the priming, sat it down in one corner, and devoutly addressed himself to the ever-living God. His influence with the Marquis de Vaudreuil, then French Governor of Canada, who had been his classmate at college, and with whom he still maintained a friendly correspondence, was supposed to have averted from his charge the savage attacks by which so many frontier towns were desolated.

Mr. McGregor died in 1729, and was succeeded by Rev. Matthew Clark, a patriarch who now came out from Ireland on purpose, and whose memory deserves a paragraph. He never ate flesh, but said nothing on the subject ; and his abstinence was regarded as an idle whim, until one day when my great-grandmother (his niece, as I remember), then a young girl and an inmate of his house, saw the pot wherein the family dinner was cooking boil over into the smaller vessel wherein was boiling his frugal mess of greens. Supposing this of no consequence, she said nothing until — the family being seated at the table, and its head having said grace and taken his first mouthful — he was observed to fall back insensible and apparently dying. Recovering his consciousness after a few moments, he calmed the general excitement by saying, " It is nothing — a trifle — I shall be well directly — only a little of the water from your meat has boiled over into my greens." He had been a lieutenant in the famous Siege, wherein he was wounded in the temple by a ball, which injured a bone so that it never healed ; and, though a devoted evangelist, could never forget that he had been a soldier. Once, while acting as Moderator of an assembled Presbytery, the music of a marching company was heard, when his attention was wholly absorbed by it. Being repeatedly called to give heed to the grave business in hand, his steady reply was, "Nae business while I hear the roll of the drum." When death came to him at seventy-six years of age, and after forty years of blameless ministry, he said to sympathizing friends, "I have a last request which must not be denied." " What is it, Father Clark ? " " Let me be borne to my rest by my brother soldiers in the Siege, and let them fire a parting volley over my grave ! " The military parade was conceded ; but, according to my mother's tradition, the volley, though promised, was withheld ; it being deemed indecorous and unsuitable that so holy a man should be indulged in a dying freak so unbecoming his cloth.

II. Our Folks At Londonderry

THE current notion that the Puritans were a sour, morose, ascetic people — objecting, as Macaulay says, to bearbaiting, not that it gave pain to the bear, but that it gave pleasure to the spectator — is not justified by my recollections, nor by the traditions handed down through my mother. The pioneers of Londonderry were so thoroughly Puritan that, while their original framed and well-built meeting-house was finished and occupied in the third year of the settlement, when there were none other but log huts in the township, nearly a century elapsed before any other than a Presbyterian or Orthodox Congregational sermon was preached therein, and nobody that was anybody adhered to any rival church, down to a period within the memory of persons still living. " The "Westminster SJwrter Catechism " — a rather tough digest of Calvinistic theology, which aroused my infantile wonder as to what a dreadful bore its longer counterpart must be — was, within my experience, regularly administered to us youngsters once a week, as a portion of our common-school regimen ; and we were required to affirm that " God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life," &c, &c, as though it were next of kin to the proposition that two and two make four. If there was anywhere a community strictly, thoroughly Puritan, such was Londonderry down to at least 1800, as she mainly is to-day. And yet there was more humor, more play, more fun, more merriment, in that Puritan community, than can be found anywhere in this anxious, plodding age.

All were measurably poor, yet seldom were any hungry ; all wore coarse clothes, made in utter contempt of the fashions which, in the course of three or four years, had made their way from Paris to Boston ; yet lads and lasses were as comely in each other's eyes, though clad in coarse homespun, as if they had been arrayed in purple and fine linen, and redolent of lavender and patchouli : and they danced with each other through long winter nights with a vigor and zest rarely evinced at Almaek's or in Fifth Avenue mansions. Their weddings were far more numerously attended and more expensive than are the average in our day ; for not to be invited was an affront, as it implied discredit or insignificance ; and all who were invited expected to eat and drink bountifully of the best that could be had. A general discharge of musketry throughout the neighborhood ushered in a wedding-day ; and the bridegroom's party, starting from his house, was met by the bride's at a point half-way to hers, when one of each party was chosen to " run for the bottle " to the bride's house ; and whichever won the race returned with the prize to the waiting assembly; which, having drunk all around, proceeded, under a dropping fire of musketry, to their destination ; where — the ceremony having been duly performed — drinking was resumed, and continued, with alternate feasting and dancing, often till broad daylight. Nor was this the worst. Our ancestors had somehow caught from their Celtic neighbors, in the old country, despite their general antipathy, the infection of " wakes " ; and the house in which lay a corpse awaiting burial was often filled through the night with sympathizing friends, who, after due religious observances, proceeded to drown their sorrow in the strong drink supplied in abundance, whereby strange transformations were sometimes wrought from plaintive grief to exuberant, and even boisterous, hilarity. Funerals were attended by nearly every one who seasonably heard of them, and all would have felt insulted if not asked to drink at least twice ; while those who walked to the grave were entitled by usage to a third glass, and at least a lunch, on their return. As none were yet rich, while many were quite poor on their arrival,

OUR FOLKS AT LONDONDERRY. 25

many families were absolutely impoverished by the expense imposed on them by the funeral of a deceased member ; while, if a wedding and a funeral occurred within a few months in a household, it could hardly escape ruin. Happily, living in frugal plenty, almost wholly on their own products, spending much of their time in vigorous exercise in the open air, and having but one doctor within call, they had great tenacity of life ; so that funerals were few and far between.

The pioneers of Londonderry brought with them the Potato, which, despite its American origin, was hardly known in New England till they introduced it from Ireland, where it had already taken root and flourished. Some of them, having spent their first winter in America in a neighboring settlement of Massachusetts, planted there a few of the valued tubers, which were duly tended by those to whom they were left ; but, the plants being matured, they gathered the seedballs from the stalks and tried to cook them into edibility ; but by no boiling, baking, or roasting could they render them palatable ; and they gave it up that those Scotch-Irish had unaccountable tastes.

Next Spring, however, when the garden was duly ploughed, the large, fair " murphies " were rolled out in generous abundance, and, being dubiously tasted, were pronounced quite endurable. Like too many ignorant people, these novices in potato-eating had begun at the wrong end. They could never have made this mistake in Londonderry ; yet it is related that the first pound of tea ever seen there was received as a present from a Boston friend, and, being duly boiled as a vegetable, and served up as " greens," was unanimously pronounced detestable, and pitched out of doors.

Flaxseed was brought from Ireland by the pioneers ; and the growth of flax and production of linen early became important elements of the industry and trade of Londonderry, though every operation, from the sowing of the seed to the bleaching of the cloth, was effected by the simplest manual labor ; and I can personally testify that " breaking flax," in the bad, old way, is the most oxecrably hard work to winch a young boy can be set. A skilful, resolute man could hardly make laborer's wages at it now, if the raw material were given him. When the matrons of the town had a neighborhood gathering, — tea, like coffee, being then happily unknown, — each took her "little wheel" under her arm to the house whereto she had been invited, and the flow of conversation and gossip ran on for hours to a constant " whir, whir " of swiftly flying wheels. Whitney's Cotton Gin and Arkwright's Spinning Jenny have long since dismissed those wheels to the moles and the bats ; but, so late as 1819, my mother spun and wove a goodly roll of linen from the flax grown on our farm, bleaching it to adequate whiteness by spreading it on the aftermath of a meadow, and watering it thrice per day from a sprinkling-pot.

Poor folks have their vanities as well as the rich. Most of the pioneers had been small farmers or artificers " at home " ; and the rude log huts, which were at first inevitable, seemed to many good wives to involve a sacrifice, not only of comfort, but of social standing. Hence it is related of the Morrisons, who were among the first settlers, -that the good dame remonstrated against the contemplated homestead until assured that there was no help for it, when she acquiescingly entreated : "A-weel, a-weel, dear John, if it maun (must) be a log-house, make it a log heegher nor the lave " (a log higher that the rest).

The settlers knew that their homespun garments (often of tow) contrasted strongly with the trim, dapper apparel of the polished denizens of more refined communities ; but they were not thereby disconcerted. Though Burns had not yet strung his immortal lyre, his spirit so flooded their log-cabins that he would have been welcomed and understood in any of them, but would have excited surprise in none. Thus it is related of the Eev. Matthew Clark, already mentioned, that, among the audience in attendance on his ministrations was once a young British military officer, whose scarlet uniform far outshone any rival habiliments, and so fixed the gaze of the young damsels present, that the wearer, enjoying the impression he was making, not only stood through the prayer

OUR FOLKS AT LONDONDERRY. 27

with the rest, but remained standing after all others had sat down, until the pastor had proceeded for some time with his sermon. At length, noticing a divided attention and its cause, the minister stopped, laid aside his sermon, and, addressing his new hearer, said : " Ye 're a braw (brave) lad ; ye ha'e a braw suit of claithes, and we ha'e a' seen them ; ye may sit doun." The lieutenant dropped as if shot, and the sermon was resumed and concluded as though it had not been interrupted.

Eev. E. L. Parker's " History of Londonderry," to which I am indebted for many facts, gives the following specimen of Mr. Clark's pulpit efforts. His theme was Peter's assurance that, though all others should forsake his Divine Master, lie never would ; and this was a part of his commentary : —

" Just like Peter — aye mair forrit (forward) than wise ; ganging swaggering aboot wi' a sword at his side ; an' a puir han' he mad' o' it when he cam' to the trial ; for he only cut off a chiel's lug (ear) ; an' he ought to ha' split doun his head."

This was a gleam of the spirit evoked in the Siege of Derry.

I fear I have nowise portrayed the perfect mingling of humor and piety in the prevalent type of our Scotch-Irish pioneers, — all of them baptized in infancy, and growing up devoted members of the church, — all hearing the Bible read, a hymn sung and a prayer offered, each morning at the family fireside, and these exercises repeated at night, so uniformly, that one of the early pastors, having learned that a parishioner had retired without invoking the throne of grace, forthwith repaired to his dwelling, called up the delinquent and his family, made them kneel and renew their devotions, and did not leave till they were finished ; and yet there was never a people who loved play better, or gave it more attention, than these. House-raisings, corn-huskings, and all manner of excuses for festive merry-making, were frequent, and generally improved ; games requiring strength, rather than skill, especially wrestling (with, I grieve to say, some boxing), were favorite pastimes ; and it is recorded of the pioneers of Peterborough, N. H., — one of the several swarms sent out by the parent hive in Londonderry, — that, having cut each his hole in the great woods, and reared his log-cabin, a meeting was called to form a church, and generally attended. The object having been duly set forth, some one started the cavil : " I fear we are such a rough set — so given to frolic and drink — that we are not good enough to constitute a church " ; but he was instantly silenced by another, who, like a true Calvinist, observed : " Mr. Moderator, if it be the Lord's will that He should have a church in Peterborough, I am sure He will be willing to have it made up of such materials as there are." So it was.

The present township of Londonderry embraces but a fraction of the original town, whose 144 square miles have been sliced away to form the several townships of Deny, Windham, and parts of others, until it now probably contains less than forty square miles. Though a railroad now crosses it, and accords it a station, it has no considerable village, no lawyer (I believe) ; its people nearly all live by farming, and own the land they cultivate; three fourths of them were born where they live, and there expect to die. Some families of English lineage have gradually taken root among them ; but they are still" mainly of the original Scotch-Irish stock, and even Celtic or German " help " is scarcely known to them. Simple, moral, diligent, God-fearing, the vices of modern civilization have scarcely penetrated their quiet homes ; and, while those who with pride trace their origin to the old settlement are numbered by thousands, and scattered all over our broad land, I doubt whether the present population of Londonderry exceeds in number that which tilled her fields, and hunted through her woods, fifty to sixty years ago.

III. "the Times That Tried Men's Souls."

THE Scotch-Irish founders of our Londonderry indignantlyeschewed the characterization of " Irish," which was sometimes maliciously, but oftener ignorantly, applied to them; stoutly insisting that, as stanch Protestants and zealous upholders of the Hanoverian succession, they should not be confounded with the savage and intractable Celtic Papists who were indigenous to Ireland. Devoted loyalty was their pride and boast, and was usefully evinced in the " Old French War," which lasted from 1756 to 1763, and effected a transfer of the Canadas from France to Great Britain ; yet the British assumption, directly thereafter, of a right to impose taxes on the Colonies, without their consent, was here early, promptly, zealously, persistently resisted; and the tidings that Colonial blood had been shed by British soldiers at Lexington, Mass., on the 19th of April, 1775, operated like an electric shock on this rural, peace-loving community. Ten minutes after receiving it, John Stark — who had served with distinction in the recent French war — stopped the sawmill in which he was at work, mounted his horse, and rode off to Cambridge, leaving directions for his neighbors to muster and follow. The two companies of Londonderry militia were immediately assembled, and, though many had already hastened to the scene of action, a full company — the best blood of the township — volunteered, choosing George Beed their captain. Six days after the Lexington fray, the two thousand New Hampshire men now confronting General Gage were organized by the convention sitting at Exeter into two regiments, with Stark and Eeed as their respective colonels. Another regiment from this thinly peopled colony was soon formed, under Colonel Poor ; but the left wing of our army, stationed near Medford, was composed of the two regiments commanded by Londonderry colonels ; and these, under Stark and Eeed, were soon deputed to join the Connecticut men under Putnam, and a Massachusetts regiment under Prescott, in throwing up and holding the breastwork on Bunker's or Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, which the British assailed next day with such memorable consequences. Londonderry had 130 men behind those slight defences. In the struggle for this position, the New Hampshire men lost 19 killed and 74 wounded.

The three New Hampshire regiments were detached from Washington's army to swell that which, in 1776, was organized in this State, under General Sullivan, for the conquest of Canada ; but which, having invaded that Province, by way of the Hudson and Lake Champlain, found itself outnumbered and compelled to retreat to Ticonderoga, losing a third of its number by sickness, privation, and exposure. Eejoining General Washington, Stark's regiment was conspicuous in the brilliant affair at Trenton, where it had the advance, and participated in the succeeding actions at Princeton and at Springfield, K J.

In the list of promotions made by Congress next Spring, Stark's name did not appear ; whereupon, he promptly and indignantly resigned. But, on the alarm of Burgoyne's invasion from Canada, soon afterward, a fresh appeal to the patriotism of the people was made by the General Assembly of New Hampshire ; when Londonderry raised another company of seventy men, besides contributing liberally to existing organizations. In fact, there was nearly a levy en masse of the able-bodied men of this State and the debatable lands now known as Vermont. Stark was asked to take command of the new militia, and did so ; stipulating only that he should not be subordinate to any other commander. Hence, he refused to obey General Schuyler's order to advance to and

" THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS." 31

cross the Hudson, giving excellent reasons therefor ; but, remaining within the territory his men were called out to protect, he fought and won — Aug. 26, 1777 — the brilliant battle of Bennington, routing and killing Colonel Baum, the Hessian commander, and taking five hundred prisoners. His speech to his troops, on the brink of engaging, ran substantially thus : " Boys, you see them Hessians. King George gave <£4 7s. 6d. apiece for 'em. I reckon we are worth more, and will prove it directly. If not, Molly Stark sleeps a widow to-night ! " There have been more elegant and far longer speeches ; but this went as straight to its mark as a bullet.

The danger to his State having thus been averted, Stark hastened to join General Gates on the Hudson, was in the council which fixed the terms of Burgoyne's surrender, and was soon thereafter restored to position in the Continental line, — Congress making reparation for its oversight by publicly thanking him for his victory at Bennington, and appointing him a Brigadier-General in the regular service. He remained in the army till the close of the war, and lived forty years thereafter, — dying May 8, 1822, in his ninetyfourth year.

Colonel Beed, though not awarded his rank in the Continental line, also served through the war, — taking part in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Saratoga, Stillwater, Brandywine, Germantown, and in Sullivan's Indian expedition. Having at length risen to a Continental colonelcy, he was in command at Albany in 1782, when he was favored with several letters from Washington, of whose military and political character he was evermore a passionate admirer. Having left his family in haste, on the tidings of the first shot, he paid it but two or three hurried visits in midwinter till honorably mustered out of service after the close of the war, in the Summer of 1783. Meantime his wife, Mary, sister of my grandfather Woodburn, was the ruler of his household, the manager of his farm and business, and the sharer in full measure of his fervid, unwearying patriotism. He lived to fill several public stations, including those of Brigadier-General and Sheriff of his county ; dying in 1815, aged eighty-two years. His wife survived him; dying in 1823, at the ripe age of eighty-eight.