Essays, historical and literary

Front matter

Qass.

Book.

ESSAYS HISTORICAL AND LITERARY

Contents

PACK

I. Thomas Hutchinson, Last Royal Governor of

Massachusetts i

Introduction

The material in this volume was intended, by the Author, to be embodied in a greater work, A History of the American People. Many of these chapters were given by him as lectures in every part of our broad country, always enlarging and strengthening the bond of friendship with his people — who freely gave him such personal opinions, letters, and private documents as aided him in perfecting his historical work. Some of these letters, of especial significance, I have here included as notes.

Through the courtesy of D. Appleton & Company, I am enabled to reproduce in the essays — Charles Lee, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Daniel Webster — biographical passages written by the Author for the Encyclopaedia of American Biography.

ABBY MORGAN FISKE.

Westgate,

September 26, 1902.

Vii

One of the most encouraging features of the age in which we Hve is the rapidity with which the bitter feehngs attendant upon a terrible civil war have faded away and given place to mutual friendliness and esteem between gallant men who, less than thirty years ago, withstood one another in deadly strife. Among our public men who hunger for the highest offices, a few Rip van Winkles are still to be found who, without sense enough to realize the folly and wickedness of their behaviour, try now and then to fan into fresh life the dying embers of sectional prejudice and distrust; but their speech has lost its charm, and those that bow the ear to it are few. The time is at hand when we may study the great Civil War of the nineteenth century as dispassionately as we study that of the seventeenth ; and the warmest admirer of Cromwell and Lincoln may rejoice in belonging to a race of men that has produced such noble Christian heroes as Lucius, Viscount Falkland, and General Robert Lee. Such a time seems certainly not far off when we see how pleasantly the generals of opposing armies can now sit down and tell their reminiscences, and discuss each other's opinions and conduct in the pages of a popular magazine.

Had the Civil War resulted in dividing the United States into two distinct nations, such an era of reconciliation would, of course, have been long delayed. With most people the sentiment of patriotism, which now extends, however inadequately, over the whole country, would then have become restricted to half of it. It would have been long before an independent Confederacy could have recognized the personal merit of men who strove with might and main to prevent its independence ; and it would have been long before the defeated and curtailed United States could have been expected to admire the character or do justice to the motives of those who had shorn it of power and prestige. When one group of people owes its national existence to the military humiliation of another, the situation is very unfavourable for correct historical judgments, and it is apt to fare ill with the reputation of men who have been upon the unpopular side. Such, for the past hundred years, have been the relations between the United States and Great Britain, and accordingly many of the illustrious men of the Revolutionary period are still sadly misunderstood, in the one countr)' if not in the other. The two foremost men of the time, the two that tower above all others in that century, Washington and Chatham, are indeed accepted as heroes in both countries ; their fame is the common possession of the English race. The admiration which our British cousins feel for Washington is perhaps even more disinterested than that which we Americans feel for our eloquent defender, Chatham ; but in either case the homage is paid to transcendent greatness. In the portraits of too many of the actors upon our Revolutionary scene, the brush of partisan prejudice has obscured or distorted the true features. To this day British writers are apt to speak of Patrick Henry as a ranting fire-eater, and Samuel Adams as a tricksome demagogue ; while upon the pages of American historians may be found remarks that, as applied to such high-minded gentlemen as Burgoyne or Cornwallis, are simply silly.

But of all the men of that day none have fared so ill as the American loyalists. They were not only out of sympathy with the declared policy of their country, but they were on the losing side. As a party they were crushed out of existence, as individuals they were driven into exile by thousands ; and for a long time their voice was silenced. Liberal leaders in England, like Fox and Richmond, who hailed with glee the news of each American victory, were equally out of sympathy with the declared policy of their own country ; but they were, nevertheless, a power in the land. The unanswerable logic of events was on their side ; it was they that could say, " We told you so " ; they represented principles that triumphed at Yorktown and were soon to triumph in England. The American loyalists, on the other hand, represented principles that have been irredeemably and forever discredited. They set themselves in opposition to the strongest and most wholesome instinct of the English race, the inborn love of self-government ; and they have incurred the fate which is reserved for men who diverge too widely from the progressive movement of the age in which they live. It becomes difficult for the next age to understand them, or to attribute their behaviour to anything but sheer perverseness. Yet among these American loyalists were men of noblest character and purest patriotism : and we need only to divest ourselves for the moment of the knowledge of subsequent events which in their day none could foresee ; we need only to put ourselves back, in imagination, into the circumstances amid which their opinions were formed and their actions determined, in order to do justice to the deep humanity that was in them. We may dissent from their opinions, and disapprove their actions as heartily as ever ; but it is our duty, as students of history, to take our stand upon that firm ground where, freed from the fleeting passions of a day, true manliness may be taken for its worth.

Among the American loyalists of the Revolutionary period there is perhaps none who has had such hard measure as Thomas Hutchinson. It may be doubted if any other American in high position, except Benedict Arnold, has ever incurred so much obloquy. But to couple these two names, even for a moment, is gross injustice to the last royal governor of Massachusetts. Alike for intellectual eminence and for spotless purity of character, there have been few Americans more thoroughly entitled to our respect than Thomas Hutchinson. It is sad indeed, though perfectly natural, that such a man should have had to wait a hundred years before his countrymen could come to consider his career dispassionately, and see him in the light in which he would himself have been willing to be seen. Let us take a brief survey of the personal history of this man ; and as he belonged to a family distinguished in both the Old World and the New, let us begin with a glance at his ancestry.

In the English literature of the seventeenth century there are few books more charming than the memoirs of Colonel John Hutchinson of Owthorpe, written by his widow Lucy. Nowhere do we get a pleasanter picture of domestic life in the time of Charles I., or of the personality of a great Puritan soldier, than in those strong pages, glowing with sweet wifely devotion. This John Hutchinson, valiant defender of Nottingham and regicide judge, was eleventh in descent from Bernard Hutchinson, of Cowland, in Yorkshire, a doughty knight of the time of Edward I. From the same Bernard, apparently through Richard of Wyckham, in the sixth generation, in a chain of which one link still awaits complete verification, came Edward Hutchinson, of Alford, in Lincolnshire, who flourished in the reign of Elizabeth, but lived long enough to see hundreds of his friends and neighbours forsake their homes and set forth under Winthrop's leadership to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay. From one of Edward's younger sons are descended the Irish earls of Donoughmore, including the able general who, for overthrowing the remnant of Napoleon's army in Egypt in 1801, was first raised to the peerage as Lord Hutchinson. Edward's eldest son, William, born two years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada, was married in 161 2 to Anne Marbury, daughter of a Lincolnshire clergyman, a scion of the distinguished family of Sir Walter Blunt. Anne's mother was sister to Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the great poet. William and his wife were warm friends and adherents of John Cotton, rector of St. Botolph's, and after that famous divine had taken his departure for New England, they were not long in following him. William's father, the venerable Edward, had died in 1631 ; and three years afterward, taking the widowed mother,

Susanna, the wife, and fourteen children, William made his way across the Atlantic to Boston, where he proceeded to build a comfortable house on the site where now stands the Old Corner Bookstore. There, however, he was not destined long to dwell. The Antinomian heresy soon roused such fierce disputes as to threaten the very existence of the colony, and Mrs. Hutchinson, as the leading agitator, was tried for sedition and banished. Early in 1638 the family fled to the Narragansett country, where at first they were fain to seek shelter in a cave. But presently Mr. Hutchinson, with William Coddington and a few faithful followers, bought the island of Aquednek from the Indians for forty fathoms of white wampum, and forthwith the building of the towns of Portsmouth and Newport went on briskly. In 1642, when Mr. Hutchinson died, the outlook for the little colony was dubious. The New England Confederacy was about to be formed, and there were strong hints that the Rhode Island settlements, if they would share in its advantages, must put themselves under the jurisdiction either of Massachusetts or of Plymouth. Absurd and horrible tales were told about Mrs. Hutchinson, and found many believers. There were some who suspected her of being a paramour of Satan, and perhaps the fear of arrest on a charge of witchcraft may have had something to do with her next move. At all events, soon after her husband's death, the poor woman, with most of her children and a few friends, removed to a place since known as Pelham, a few miles west of Stamford and within the tolerant jurisdiction of the New Netherlands. There in the course of the following year they were all cruelly murdered by Indians, save one little ten-year-old daughter, Susanna, who was ransomed after four years of captivity.

In this wholesale massacre the eldest son, Edward, was not included. At the time of his mother's banishment he was twenty-five years old. He had lately returned from a visit to England, bringing with him a fair young bride who was admitted to communion with the First Church in Boston in December, 1638. While Edward's loyalty to his mother got him so far into trouble that he was heavily fined and sentence of banishment was passed upon him, we may imagine that his wife's orthodoxy may have helped him somewhat in making his peace with the magistrates of the Puritan commonwealth. At any rate he spent the rest of his life in Boston, where for seventeen years he was a deputy in the General Court. He was also the chief commander of horse in the colony, and in the summer of 1675, after the disastrous beginning of King Philip's War, he was sent to Brookfield to negotiate with the Nipmuck Indians. The treacherous savages appointed the time and place for a rendezvous, but lay in ambush for Captain Hutchinson as he approached, and slew him, with several of his company.

Of Edward's twelve children, the eldest son, Elisha, came to be judge of common pleas and member of the council of assistants, and in 1688 was joined with Increase Mather, in London, in protesting against the high-handed conduct of Sir Edmund Andros. One of the earliest recollections of the royal governor was the great pomp of his grandfather Elisha's funeral on a bleak December day of 171 7, when the militia companies and the chief dignitaries of the province marched in stately procession to the place of burial. As Elisha lO THOMAS HUTCHINSON

left twelve children, the Hutchinson family in New England was getting to be a large one ; and we find many of them in places of distinction and trust. Elisha's eldest son, Thomas, became a wealthy merchant and ship-owner. For twenty-six years he was a member of the council of assistants, and was noted for his resolute integrity and the fearlessness with which he spoke his mind without regard to the effect upon his popularity. He was also noted for a public-spirited generosity so lavish as to have made serious inroads upon his princely fortune. He has been called ^ " one of Boston's greatest benefactors." At his death, in 1739, though still a very rich man, he lamented his inability to provide for his children on a scale commensurate with his wishes. One can readily believe that such families as these men had must have heavily taxed their resources. This Thomas Hutchinson's children were twelve in number, which seems to have been the normal rate of multiplication in that family. His wife, Sarah Foster, a lady of sterling character and sense, was daughter of Colonel John Foster, who took an active part in the insurrection which overthrew the government of Andros. Their fourth child and eldest surviving son, Thomas, most illustrious and in some respects most unhappy of this remarkable family, was born on the 9th of September, 1 7 1 1 , in that stately house in the old north end of Boston to which our attention will by and by again be directed. At five years of age the little Thomas began to con his multiplication table and spelling-book in the North grammar school on Bennet Street, which his father had lately founded, and over the lintel of which were en-

lE. G. Porter, " Rambles in Old Boston," p. 205.

LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS II

graved the arms of the Hutchinsons of Lincolnshire. Thus in daily going out and in at the door, as in the vague wonder of the grandsire's stately funeral, may the thoughtful and impressible child, in somewhat the mood of a generous little prince, have come to feel himself identified with the civic life of Boston. Of adulation for such boys there is usually enough and to spare ; but Thomas Hutchinson was not of the sort that is easily spoiled. In the writings of his later years, amid all the storm and stress of a troubled life, nothing is more conspicuous than the absence of personal vanity and the sweetness of temper with which events are judged aside from their bearings upon himself.

In the simple school life of those days there were not so many subjects to be half learned as now, and boys became freshmen at a very tender age. Hutchinson was barely sixteen when he received his bachelor's degree at Harvard, and in after years he frankly confessed that he could not clearly see what he had done to earn it. At first the ledger interested him more than the lexicon. He carried on a little foreign trade by sending ventures in his father's ships, and thus earned enough money to have defrayed the whole cost of his education, while at the same time he became an expert in bookkeeping. In those days Harvard students were graded according to social position. Early in the freshman year a list of names was hung in the college buttery, and those at the top were allowed the best rooms and other privileges. Usually this list remained without change, and it is in this order that the names appear on the triennial catalogue until 1773, when the democratic alphabet took its place. In the class of 1727, which numbered thirty-seven students, the only names above Hutchinson's were those of the two Brownes, one of whom was afterward son-in-law of Governor Burnet and father of one of the ''mandamus councillors" of 1774. Another distinguished member of the class was Jonathan Trumbull, the great " war governor " of Connecticut and valued friend of Washington, and according to one tradition, the original " Brother Jonathan."

It was after Hutchinson had left college, and become an apprentice in his father's counting-room, that the scholarly impulse seized and mastered him. He fell in love with the beauties of Latin, and diligently used his leisure evenings until he had become fairly accomplished in that language ; to this he soon added a practical knowledge of French. Of history he was always fond. As a child he would rather curl down in the chimney corner and pore over Church's " Indian War " and Morton's " New England Memorial " than coast and snowball with boys in the street; and his Puritan education did not prevent him from shedding tears over the sufferings and death of King Charles. The seventy-fours and frigates that now and then sailed into Boston harbour, stately and beautiful, and symbolic of England's empire, had a special charm for him. In their snug cabins he found agreeable companions, among them Lieutenant Hawke, afterward to be known as one of the greatest of British sea kings. Still pleasanter society was found in the household of a widow lady, with three beautiful daughters, who had lately moved to Boston from Rhode Island. To Margaret Sanford, the second daughter, aged seventeen, Hutchinson was married in 1734. In the course of the following year he became a member of the Congregational church on Hanover Street, known at that time as the New Brick Church. Throughout his life he was strictly religious, according to the Puritanism of the eighteenth century, which in Massachusetts had already come to be much more genial and liberal than that of the seventeenth.

Hutchinson's public life began soon after his marriage. In his diary he tells how much pleasure he felt when, in his twenty-sixth year, he was chosen a selectman for the town of Boston, and a few weeks later a representative in the General Court. But his public career was stormy from the outset. The people were then greatly agitated over the question of paper money. As long ago as 1690, upon the return of Sir William Phips from his disastrous expedition against Quebec, Massachusetts had issued promissory notes, called bills of credit, in denominations from 2 s. to £io\ they were receivable for sums due to the public treasury. The inevitable results followed. The promissory notes issued by a government which had no cash for paying its debts, and because it had no cash, of course fell in value. Coin was therefore driven from circulation, and there was a great inflation of prices, with frequent and disastrous fluctuations. The disturbance of trade became serious, and then, as always, tricksome demagogues played upon the popular ignorance, which sought a cure for the disease in fresh issues of paper. Pretty much the same nonsense was talked in 1737 ^s afterward in 1786, and yet again in 1873. The trouble extended over New England, and it is curious to observe, between three of the states, the same differences of attitude as in the great crisis of

1 786. In Connecticut the advocates of paper money made but little headway. In 1709 and 171 3 bills of credit were issued, but in such small amount and with such judicious and stringent measures for redemption that the depreciation was but slight, and specie payments were resumed with little difficulty. In Rhode Island, on the other hand, rag money won an easy victory, and the resulting demoralization lasted through the century, until after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. In Massachusetts parties were more evenly divided, but whereas in 1786 the advocates of paper were in the minority, in 1737 they had a decided majority. They were the popular party, and especially so after their policy had led to complaints from British merchants trading with Massachusetts, until the royal governor, Jonathan Belcher, was ordered by the Lords of Trade to veto any further issue of bills of credit. A quarrel ensued between Belcher and his legislature, and as the governor proved inexorable, wildcat banking schemes were devised to meet the emergency. The agitation was coming to a crisis when Hutchinson took his seat in the House. Upon all financial questions he had a remarkably clear head, and there was nothing of the demagogue about him. He would not palter with a question of public policy, or seek to hide his opinions in order to curry favour with the people. He was a man to whom strong convictions and dauntless courage had come by inheritance, and as his great-grandfather Edward had stoutly opposed the persecution of the Quakers, so now the great-grandson opposed the paper money delusion with untiring zeal.

His conduct was the more noteworthy in that representatives were at that time in Massachusetts regarded as mere deputies, in duty bound to give voice to the wishes or whims of the voters that sent them to the legislature. The liberty accorded to them of using their own judgment was narrow indeed. In spite of his independence, Hutchinson was reelected in 1738; but soon afterward in town meeting a set of instructions were reported, enjoining it upon the representatives of Boston to vote for the further emission of paper. This measure was intended to curb the refractory young man, but it only called him at once to his feet with a powerful speech, in which he denounced the instructions as foolish and wicked, and ended by flatly refusing to obey them. Indignant murmurs ran about the room, and one wrathful voice shouted, " Choose another representative, Mr. Moderator ! " But this was too silly ; it was not for the presiding officer of a town meeting to seat or unseat representatives. There was no help for it until next year, when Hutchinson, who had been as good as his word, was defeated at the polls. About this time a typhoid fever struck him down, and for several weeks he was at death's door. He had three very eminent physicians, either of whom might have sat for the portrait of Dr. Sangrado, but by dint of an ample inheritance of vitality he withstood both drugs and disease; and presently, taking counsel of a sensible friend, threw physic to the dogs, and recovered strength by means of a judicious diet and horseback rides in the country. One of the doctors lost his temper and stormed about empirics and quacks ; the others showed more candour. When Hutchinson found himself able again to attend to business, the general confidence in his uprightness and ability prevailed over the dislike of his policy, and he was again chosen representative.

In this year, 1 740, there was an outburst of excitement in Boston not unlike those that ushered in the Revolutionary War. Of the wildcat banking schemes, two were especially prominent. The one known as the " Specie Bank " undertook to issue £1 10,000 in promissory notes, to be redeemed at the end of fifteen years in silver at 20 s. per ounce ; but it was not altogether clear from what quarter this desirable silver was to come. There is something pathetic about these persistently recurring popular fancies, based on a still surviving faith in that old Norse deity to which our heathen forefathers did reverence as the god Wish! The rival scheme, known as the " Land Bank," undertook to issue ^150,000 in promissory notes, redeemable at the end of twenty years in manufactures or produce. There were about eight hundred stock-holders, or partners. Each partner mortgaged his house or farm to the company, and in return for this security borrowed the company's notes at three per cent interest. He was to pay each year not only the interest, but one-twentieth part of the principal ; and payment might be made either in the same notes or else in merchandise at rates assigned by the directors of the company.^ The exploit of " basing " a currency on nothing and " floating " it in the air was never more boldly attempted. As a means of transacting business in a commercial society, a note payable in another note, or in whatever commodity might after twenty years happen to be cheapest, must have been a device of scarcely less efficiency than the far-famed philosopher's stone. A man who sold one hundred bushels

1 Palfrey, IV. 550; Sumner, "American Currency," 29.

of wheat for such a note would have such a precise knowledge of how much it was going to be worth to him ! But in financial matters, where the wish is so apt to father the thought, there seems to be no delusion too gross to find supporters. By 1 740 the Land Bank and the Specie Bank had both been put into operation, in spite of Governor Belcher, who dissolved the assembly, cashiered colonels, disbenched justices, and turned out office-holders to right and left, for the offence of receiving and passing the notes ; and presently a flagrant political issue was raised. Finding that paper professing to represent at least ;^5o,ooo had been issued by the Land Bank, the governor appealed to Parliament for help, and in this he was upheld by some of the best men in Massachusetts. This was in Walpole's time, and his Parliaments handled American affairs more delicately than those of George III.; it happened that a new statute expressly for this occasion was not needed. Twenty years before, upon the collapse of the famous South Sea Bubble, an act had been passed forbidding the incorporation of joint stock companies with more than six partners. Parliament now simply declared that this act was always of force in the colonies as well as in Great Britain. The two Massachusetts companies were thus abruptly compelled to wind up their affairs and redeem their scrip ; and as the partners were held individually liable, they incurred heavy losses, and would have been quickly ruined if the claims against them had been rigorously pressed.

One of the directors of the Land Bank, and perhaps the wealthiest of its partners, was the elder Samuel Adams, deacon of the Old South Church, and one of the justices of the peace whom Belcher had displaced. A considerable part of his fortune melted away in a moment, so that his famous son, who was that summer in the graduating class at Harvard, may be said in a certain sense to have inherited his quarrel with the British government. It is interesting, in this connection, to remember how, three years later, as a candidate for the master's degree, young Samuel Adams chose as the subject of his Latin thesis the question, " Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved ? " and this bold question he answered in the affirmative, while the new royal governor, Shirley, as guest of the college on Commencement Day, sat on the platform and heard him. The question as to the authority of Parliament over the colonies, which had for a moment attracted attention as long ago as 1644, was now more warmly agitated. The friends of the Land Bank loudly denounced the declaratory act of 1 740 as a violation of the chartered rights of Massachusetts, and the bitter feelings engendered by this affair must unquestionably be set down among the causes of the American Revolution. Hutchinson's conduct at this time was eminently wise and patriotic. 'On theory he was then, as always, a firm believer in the ultimate supremacy of Parliament over every part of the British empire.

He understood better than most Americans of his day that the supremacy of the crown was figurative rather than real. He believed that if sovereignty over the whole did not reside somewhere, the unity of the empire was virtually at an end ; and where else could such sovereignty reside if not in Parliament ? At the same time he shared with many other able and thoughtful men in the fear that, if the protecting hand of Great Britain were once removed, the colonies would either fall a prey to France or Spain, or else would tear themselves to pieces with internecine wars ; and who is there that can read the solemn story of the impending anarchy from which Washington and Madison and Hamilton saved the people of these states in the anxious years that followed the victory at Yorktown, and then say that such forebodings were wholly unreasonable. I It is easy to be wise after the event ; but in distributing the meed of praise and blame, the historian must bear in mind the aspect of things in the times which he seeks to describe, when events, now as familiar as our daily bread, were as yet in the darkness of the future, undreamed of and improbable. Nothing can be clearer to-day than that Hutchinson's fundamental theory was wrong. He failed to take in the situation, and paid so heavy a penalty for his failure that we can well afford to give him due credit for the wisdom and good feeling which in some respects he did show to an eminent degree. Like Dickinson and Burke, he realized that the question of the ultimate supremacy of Parliament was a dangerous one to insist upon. He saw distinctly the foolishness of enlisting such a wholesome feeling as the love of self-government in behalf of such a wretched concern as the Massachusetts Land Bank ; and he earnestly advised Governor Belcher to bide his time, and trust in accomplishing its downfall in some other way than by a direct appeal to Parliament. Surely Belcher, as an ambitious politician, undervalued the counsel of this young man of nine and twenty, for the immediate result of his violent conduct was his own downfall;