Recollections of a busy life: including reminiscences of American politics and politicians, from the opening of the Missouri contest to the downfall of slavery

Front matter

m

KECOLLECTMS OF A BUSY LIFE:

INCLUDING

Contents

Page I. A Sample of the Scotch-Ikish 17

n. Our Folks at Londonderry 23

m. "The Times that tried Men's Souls" 29

II. Our Folks At Londonderry

THE current notion that the Puritans were a sour, morose, ascetic people — objecting, as Macaiday 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 cluirch, down to a period within the memory of persons still living. " The Westminster SJiortcr 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 liis 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 Pmitan, 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 coui'se 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 Ahnack'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 eveiy 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, hving 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 " gre'ens," 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 execrably hard work t() which 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. Wliitney'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 hecglier 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 tlie 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 tlie 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 parisliioner had retired without invoking the throne of grace, forthwith repaired to his dweUing, 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 dvily 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 Derry, 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 la^\yer (I believe) ; its people nearly all live by farming, and owti 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-Irisli founders of our Londonderry indignantly eschewed 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 confoimded 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, du^ectly 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 Staek — 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 Geoege Eeed 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 kiUed 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 l)y 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, N. 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-l)odied 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 briUiant battle of Bennington, routing and kOling 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 X4 7s. Q>d. 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 Eeed, though not awarded his rank in the Continental line, also served through the war, — taking part in the battles of Long Island, AVliite 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 mihtary 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.

Never was a war more essentially popular than that waged in support of American Independence, and never were the issues involved more thoroughly debated or more clearly understood by a people. Congress having, early m 1776, requested the authorities of each township to ascertain and to disarm all persons "who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America," the selectmen of Londonderry reported the names of 374 adult males in that town who had severally signed the following pledge : —

" We, the subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage and promise that we will, to the utmost of our power, at the risk of oiu- lives and fortunes, with arms, oppose the hostile proceedings of the British fleets and armies against the United American Colonies."

Of course, those who had already enlisted, and were then absent in the Continental service, should be added to the above list, raising it nearly to five hundred; wliile barely fifteen men in that entire community refused to sign. Several " Tories," however, had already left, finding the place too hot for them : among them. Major Robert Eogers, of the " Rangers," raised in 1756, who had served with distinction throughout the French war ; but who now, taking the wrong side, was proscribed, and fled to England, where he died. Colonel Stephen Holland, who had been one of the most eminent and popular citizens, and had held several important public trusts, after concealing and denying his Toryism so long as he could, finally proclaimed it by fleeing to General Gage at Boston ; whereupon his property was confiscated. Nowhere was Toryism more execrated ; and the suggestion in the Treaty of Paris that the Loyalists should be permitted to return to the communities they had, to serve the king, deserted, was unanimously scouted and defied in full town meeting.

Dr. Matthew Thornton, whose name heads the list of signers to the pledge aforesaid, soon afterward aflixed his signature to the immortal Declaration of American Independence. He

"THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS." 33

was born in Ireland in 1714, but brought over when but three years old ; early commenced the practice of medicine in Londonderry, and steadily rose to esteem and competence. He was a surgeon of the New Hampshire forces in the expedition against Cape Breton, in 1745, and was a colonel of militia at the breaking out of the Eevolution. He was President of the first Provincial Convention assembled in New Hampshire after the retirement of the royal Governor Wentworth, and was chosen by it a delegate to Congress, in which he did not take his seat till November, 1776, when — though it was the darkest hour of the struggle — he at once signed the Declaration. After peace was restored, though no la^vyer, he was chosen a judge of the Superior Court, and afterward Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He died in 1803, aged eighty-nine.

From first to last, Londonderry furnished 347 soldiers to the Eevolutionary armies, while her whole number of adult males cannot, as we have seen, have much exceeded 500. Some of these served but for short terms ; yet, after making every deduction, this record, from a purely rm^al township, whose youth had for forty years been constantly dra"s\Ti away to pioneer new settlements, not only in different parts of New Hampshire, but in Londonderry and Windham, Vermont, Truro, Nova Scotia, Cherry Valley, N. Y., &c., &c., is one which her children have a right to regard with affectionate pride. And not only were town bounties — liberal, considering the value of money in those days — paid to her volunteers, but their families were shielded from want by the provident care of her authorities and people. Food was scarce and dear; clothing was scarcer and dearer ; but those who fought their coimtry's battles were consoled by the thought that, whatever might befall them, their wives and little ones should not famish or freeze while bread or cloth remained. And, when independence and peace were at length achieved, it was a proud reflection that they had been won by the constancy and devotion, not of a class or a portion, but of the entire people.

IV. Rural New England Fifty Years Ago

THREE brothers named Greeley (spelled five different ways) migrated to America in 1640. One settled in Maine, where he has many living descendants ; another in Rhode Island, where he soon died ; a third in Salisbury, Mass., near the south line of New Hampshire, into which his descendants soon migrated, if he did not. One large family of them hail from Gilmanton ; another, to whom I am less remotely related, from Wilton ; my own great-grandfather (named Zaccheus, as was his son my grandfather, and Ids son my father) lived in or on the verge of Londonderry, in what was in my youth Nottingham-West, and is now Hudson, across the Merrimac from Nashua (which was then Dunstable or nothing). I never heard of a Woodburn of our stock who was not a farmer ; but the Greeleys of our clan, while mainly farmers, are in part blacksmiths. Some of them have in this century engaged in trade, and are presumed to have acquired considerable property ; but these are not of the tribe of Zaccheus.

My grandfather Greeley was a most excellent, though never a thrifty citizen. Kind, mild, easy-going, honest, and unambitious, he married young, and reared a family of thirteen, — nine sons and four daughters, — of whom he who died youngest was thirty years old ; while a majority lived to be seventy, and three are yet living, — at least two of them having seen more than eighty summers.

So many cliildren in the house of a poor and by no means driving farmer, in an age when food and cloth cost twice the

RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YE^iRS AGO. 35

labor they now do, made economy rather a necessity than a vu^tue ; but I presume none of those children ever suffered protractedly from hunger, while all of them obtained such education as was afforded by the common schools of sixty to eighty years ago ; or, if not, the fault was their own. Still, the school-houses were ruder and rarer, the teachers less competent, and the terms much shorter, than now ; while attendance was quite irregular, being suspended on slight pretexts ; so that I have heard my father say that his winter's schooling after he came of age — when for three months he hired his board, attended constantly, and studied diligently — was worth more to him than all that preceded it.

My grandfather owned and worked small farms successively in Hudson, Pelham, Nottingham, and Londonderry, and was living in the latter town for a second or third tune when, on the death of his wife, when he was about seventy-five years old, he sold out, and went to spend his remaining days with his son Gilbert, living in Manchester; but, that son dying before him, he foimd a home thenceforth in Londonderiy, with his older son John, whose farm all but joins that of the Woodburns in "the High Eange," — the respective houses being but a hundred rods apart, — and here, in his fulness of days, he died, aged ninety-four. (My grandfather Woodburn had died at eighty-fi^'e, nearly thirty years before.) A devoted, consistent, life-long Christian, — originally of the Baptist, but ultimately of the Methodist persuasion, — exemplary in deportment and blameless in life, I do not believe that my grandfather Greeley ever made an enemy; and, while he never held an office, and his property was probably at no time worth $ 2,000, and generally ranged from $ 1,000 to zero, I think few men were ever more sincerely and generally esteemed than he by those who knew him.

My father — married at twenty-five to Mary "Woodburn, aged nineteen — went first to live with his father, whose farm he was to work, and inherit, supporting the old folks and their still numerous minor children ; but he soon tired of this, and seceded ; migrating to and purchasing the farm whereon six of his seven children were born.

The old road to Amherst from the Merrimac, at what in my childhood was Amoskeag Falls, crossed by a rickety old bridge, with but two or three houses in sight, and is now the manufacturing city of Manchester, with twenty-five thousand inhabitants, passes through the little village of Piscataquoag, near the mouth of the creek of like name ; thence through the township and village of Bedford, and, zigzagging over the jjentler hills, descends, when about five miles from "Amhsrst Plain," or village, and just on the verge of the township, into the deep valley of a brook, not yet quite large enough for a mill-stream. (The road now travelled is far smoother and better, and passes a mile or two southward of the old one.) The " Stewart farm," of some forty acres (enlarged by my father to fifty), covers the hillside and meadow north of the road, with a few acres south of it, and lies partly in Bedford, but mainly in Amherst. The soil is a gravelly loam, generally strong, but hard and rocky ; grass, heavy at first, " binds out " the third or fourth year, when the land must be broken up, manured, tilled, and seeded down again ; and a breaking-up team, in my early boyhood, was made up of four yoke of oxen a"nd a horse, whereby an acre per day was seldom ploughed. Across the brook were two or three little knolls, of an acre or so each, in good part composed of water- worn pebbles, — the debris of I know not what antediluvian commotion and collision of glaciers and marine currents, — which, when duly fertilized and tilled, produced freely of corn or potatoes; but which, being laid down to grass, utterly refused to respond, deeming itself better adapted to the growth of son^el, milk-weed, or mullein. The potato yielded more bounteously then than it does now, and was freely grown to be fed into pork ; but I reckon that Indian corn cost treble, if not quadruple, the labor per bushel that our Western friends now give for it; while wheat yielded meagrely and was a very uncertain crop. Eye and oats did much better, and were favorite crops to " seed down " upon ; " rye and Indian " were the bases of the farmer's staff of life ; and, when well made, no bread is more palatable or whole-

RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO.

2>1 some. The hop culture was then common in our section ; and, though fearfully hazardous, — there being no yield one year and no price the next, — was reckoned inviting and productive. My father estimated hops at ten cents per pound as profitable a crop as corn at one dollar per bushel.

My father bought and removed to this farm early in 1808 ;