New England in the life of the world; a record of adventure and achievement

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Foreword

This book attempts to bring within the field of vision the influence which New England has exerted upon states and lands beyond its own borders. From this narrow belt of territory stretching for a few hundred miles along the Atlantic Coast has gone forth, throughout three centuries, power which has molded communities, given character to great commonwealths and helped to transform distant nations.

Many a book or pamphlet or magazine article tells in part the fascinating story of New England impact upon the world. The only justification for this book is that it assembles between two covers scattered and hitherto unrelated material, binding it together by a single cord, arranging it with some pretence to orderly sequence and interpreting it from page to page as the deeper meanings of the narrative appear.

Just what New Englanders have been doing these many years in the larger area of the world, who went forth, when, whither and why, ''what came of it at last," to quote little Peterkin — this is what this book tries to set forth.

A subject like this no student could exhaust in a life time given to research. To set it forth ade-

X FOREWORD

quately would require a series of volumes. Least of all can one with whom book-making must necessarily be an avocation claim anything like completeness or finality of treatment. As a loyal son of New England, yet not blind to its limitations and shortcomings or to the magnificent service rendered the world by non-New Englanders, I have worked at my task with constantly increasing enthusiasm, as I have discovered fact after fact redounding to the glory of New England men and women. In the preface to her "Stoiy of Jesus Christ" Elizabeth Stuart Phelps speaks of the effect upon herself of her minute study of his earthly career. As she awoke morning after morning her first conscious thought was: ''Who was with me yesterday? What noble Being entered this door? In what delightful, in what high society have I been?" Not otherwise has been the personal reaction as I have been in contact with these great New Englanders: "What magnificent men and women were those whom I am now seeking to portray."

It was inevitable that I should be obliged to touch lightly upon or pass by altogether many traces of New England's expansion throughout the South, the West, the Southwest and overseas which deserve comment. Nor have the limits of the volume permitted more than an occasional reference to that

FOREWORD XI

phase of New England's influence upon the higher life of the world arising from its great literature and its achievements in the fine arts, philanthropy and education.

The book has confined itself to one objective, that of picturing the labors and conquests of typical pioneers who went forth to serve and leaven the nation and the world, and who left a decided and determining mark upon great commonwealths outside of New England and upon nations across the Atlantic or the Pacific.

In a sense this is a composite book. In the time at my disposal I never could have produced it had I not had the willing and invaluable help of many friends. Chief among them is Miss Prances J. Dyer, to whose ability in handling the literary sources and to whose facility in diction the book owes much. Indeed the phraseology of more than one paragraph is hers. Hardly less serviceable in connection with a multitude of details as well as in the preparation of the book for the printer has been my secretary. Miss Florence Moore.

I am also indebted to my colleagues on the staff of The Congregationalist, Mr. Rankin and Mr. Farwell, in particular, for many suggestions and for much practical assistance, especially in the important work of proofreading. Another friend in the xii FOREWORD

inner circle whose inspiring criticism has been deeply appreciated has been Mr. Lindsay Swift of the Boston Public Library. Equally valuable have been the information and suggestions freely put at my disposal by the secretaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Of co-workers at a distance to whom I feel indebted the list is a long one, and includes among many others:

Rev. John G. Fraser of Cleveland, 0., Rev. John W. Sutherland of Lansing, Mich., Mr. George Catlin of Detroit, Mich., Rev. Henry W. Hunt of Vermontville, Mich., Rev. H. A. Miner of Madison, Wis., Mr. Warren Upham of St. Paul, Minn., Mr. Roger Leavitt of Cedar Falls, lo., Mr. William E. Connelley and Prof. W. C. Wheeler of Topeka, Kan., Mr. Doane Robinson of Pierre, S. D., and Prof. George H. Durand of Yankton, S. D., Mr. George H. Himes of Portland, Ore., Prof. W. D. Lyman and Mr. T. C. Elliott of Walla WaUa, Wn., Prof. John W. Buckham of Berkeley, Cal., Mr. Frank Miller of Riverside, Cal.

The bibliography on the later pages of the book gives some idea of the outstanding literature that has made this book possible. Constantly at my right hand have been two incomparable volumes, that entitled ''The Expansion of New England," by Mrs.

FOREWORD xiii

Lois K. Mathews, now Mrs. Judge Rosenberry of Madison, Wis., and ''The Story of the American Board," by Dr. William E. Strong. Considerable time has been spent poring over the records of the American Historical Association and still more delving into the files of newspapers and periodicals, as well" as in consulting numerous pamphlets and annual reports.

To my Amherst College classmate, Prof. Williston Walker, I am deeply indebted for his great kindness in reading the galley proofs.

The book is for all who, whether born in New England or not, live in the New England spirit, and who, whether or not they reside today within the six original states, are striving to keep alive in the modern world the principles that have been and will be the glory of New England.

Howard A. Bridgman.

Boston, September, 1920.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword ix

I. The New England Dynamic 3

Chapter I The New England Dynamic

For three centuries the urge of an inward force has driven New England men and women out from their own homes and neighborhoods into the broad field of human service. Not that their own homes and neighborhoods presented no opportunities of usefulness, but that the need in the regions beyond seemed greater and more appealing. They could not remain contentedly where they were. No one else seemed disposed to attempt the task over yonder. Unless some one went thither it would not be done. If it were not done the situation calling so loudly for relief would become still more grievous and menacing. If the work ought to be done, why should not we undertake it? So their quick consciences argued.

By this simple process of reasoning, many a New Englander during the last three hundred years has brought himself to the point where he could make satisfactory response to the inner impulse and let it carry him whither it would. Always there were those by his side who said, "What's the use? Why tiy to ram your religion down another man's throat when he may be altogether satisfied with what he has? Why try to clean up the slums? The children there are not so unhappy as you think they are. They are used to their environment and have come to like it. Why undertake a Don Quixotic educational crusade in behalf of a race of another skin or in another land? The moment they get a smattering of education they will become indisposed to work and ready to desert that station in life to which Providence assigned them."

Somehow this line of argumentation has never convinced dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders who possessed any measure of the altruistic spirit, or swerved them from their purpose. Because so many throughout this long period have thus responded to the call of duty, New England has attained its place of moral and spiritual leadership and won the admiration of the world. Few stretches of territory of similar area on this planet can compare with New England in the. influence exerted on the higher life of mankind. Scotland has been a stimulating force in the realm of theology and philosophy and has sent its sons all over the world to make their contributions to civilization. Greece was a little country, too, but mighty in the days of its finest efflorescence. It bequeathed much to the generations following. Yet Greece was self -centered and ministered chiefly to those who found in art and literature the main satisfactions of life.

Only across the -^gean Sea, in the perfect life that flowered there within the narrow limits of Palestine, and in the lives touched by it, do we find a true historic parallel to the type of power represented by the New England dynamic.

For this reason New England is also a holy land. For what makes a land worthy to be venerated? Not the product of its soil and its mines, but the kind of men and women it rears. This is the outstanding marvel: not that New England has furnished shoes and cloth to multitudes, but that since the Pilgrims landed, it has been a seed-bed in which were incubated those germinal ideas and deep-going emotions that in due time found expression in schools, colleges and hospitals, in philanthropies, reforms and far-reaching enterprises that have wrought wondrous changes in the nation and the world. ''Leave New England out in the cold!" said James Russell Lowell in his essay, ''New England Two Centuries Ago," "While you are plotting it, she sits by every fireside in the land."

Mr. Lowell might have enlarged his picture to inelude New England's domestication of itself on the Bosphorus, under the shadow of the Alhambra, on the banks of the Euphrates and Ganges, in the midst of the shrines and temples of Japan, upon the loftysteppes of China and beneath the Southern Cross.

That all this should have come to pass despite unfavorable external conditions is even more remarkable. The New England soil, broadly speaking, is rocky and barren. The New England climate is a standing joke. Today may be enchanting, but tomorrow is as likely as not to be execrable. New Englanders as a rule throughout these three centuries have not been surfeited with creature comforts. It would be reasonable to infer that lacking a climate and a soil conducive to the best physical conditions, they would have had enough to do to provide for their own material welfare without giving much attention to the higher concerns of life and without indulging in much constructive thought touching the welfare of others.

But the contrary is true. It has been the plain people of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut who have been the bulwark against oppression and injustice and the backbone of every movement that sought to make men happier, wiser and better.

Nothing but the working of a powerful inner dynamic could have thus broadened the vision and touched the heart of those who as they tilled their stony fields could at the same time see beyond their own doorsills and pasture bars.

The Pilgrims themselves were responsible for the placing of this dynamic in the New England heart. They brought it with them to Plymouth. In Bradford's own words:

Lastly, (and which was not least,) a great hope & inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work.

Undoubtedly the Pilgrims wished to better their own lot, material and spiritual, but as some one has well said, there was never a migration in history in which the almighty dollar played so small a part. From the time they sailed from the old world on through all the vicissitudes of the first hard years, the Pilgrims never forgot one of the chief objects in behalf of which they made their memorable venture, and they never ceased striving to attain it.

The Pilgrims passed on this dynamic to their successors. Many, perhaps the majority of their descendants, and of those who came later to dwell in

New England, refused to be energized by the same master passion and lapsed into inertia and inaction. But there have always been enough persons who have felt the glow of the inner fires to maintain the sacred calling.

In their case also, as in that of the original Pilgrims, motives were undoubtedly mixed. This blending of the desire to better oneself and to serve others comes out quite naively in the constitution drawn by those sturdy Vermonters who in 1836 established themselves in Southern Michigan. They brought into close juxtaposition their two dominant motives, expressing the one in this language:

We believe that a pious and devoted emigration is to be one of the most efficient means, in the hands of God, in removing the moral darkness which hangs over a great portion of the valley of the Mississippi ;

and saying with reference to the other:

We believe that a removal to the west may be a means of promoting our temporal interest, and we trust be made subservient to the advancement of Christ's kingdom. ...

That little Massachusetts lad whom his father discovered weeping one day because he could not find dirt enough to cover his seeds proved the first link in the chain of events that led the entire family westward to more fertile fields. But why should we expect New Englanders to be immune from the influence of all materialistic considerations? "Why not, in situations when a variety of motives are at work, as in the case of the two million American soldiers who went overseas, interpret the action taken on its highest side? The crucial question always is what motive is dominant enough to bring all the other motives into line with itself.

As for the New Englanders who have been going Westward and Southward through these centuries, and particularly during the last century and a half, allowance should be frankly made for the ne'er-dowells, who having failed in one place, thought they could retrieve their fortunes somewhere else, and for the adventurers who were prompted chiefly by the sporting instinct, and for those who had no other end in view than the acquisition of a competence or a fortune. After all the emigrants of their type have been winnowed out, a host remains among the outgoing sons and daughters of New England, whose chief reason for cutting the home ties was the hope that they could do more for their fellow men in some new location than they could if they stayed where they were. For the true New Englander, the New Englander built on the Brewster-Bradford-

Winslow pattern, is never content to sit at ease in his own chimney corner when ignorance and vice are clamoring on the streets.

Sometimes it is true that in his zeal he seems to others nothing but a busybody and a meddler. When Dwight L. Moody returned to his native town of Northfield in the Connecticut Valley after the meetings which with Mr. Sankey's aid he had held in England, he looked about for ways in which he might serve the community in which he grew up. To his quick-seeing eye many local conditions revealed themselves which he thought might be improved. Meeting one morning one of the old farmers whom he had known from boyhood, he suggested ways in which he might make his farm more productive. * ' D-D-Dwight, " said the farmer, who like most stutterers was a good deal of a wag, < < D_D_Dwight, y-y-you have been all over the w-w-world and people th-think y-y-you 're a great m-man, but there's one thing that you c-c-can't do, D-D-Dwight.»'

"Oh," said Mr. Moody, pleasantly, ''I guess there are a good many things I can't do, but what special thing are you thinking of?"

''You c-c-can't m-m-mind your own business."

The farmer was right. Dwight Moody never could be content with the limitations of the shoe business from the moment that his great heart began to beat with sjnnpathy for the boys of Boston and Chicago running wild on the streets. In that particular he is an excellent illustration of the absolute inability of the typical New Englander to mind his own business. This constitutes in many cases his title to remembrance and to honor. The instinct for meddling runs in the Yankee blood. It is as divine an instinct as the instinct for self-preservation. He just cannot keep still and mind his own affairs as long as anywhere in the world tyranny goes unrebuked or injustice stalks abroad, or little children are hungry or naked, or men and women bow down to false gods and whole races are uninstructed about the real meaning and value of human life.

Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston could not but choose to intermeddle with the pagan and licentious beliefs that held in bondage and superstition the Hawaiians, so capable of emerging, as a few d >cades of mission work among them have proved, into a noble race.

Manasseh Cutler, Julian M. Sturtevant, Elijah Love joy and Eli Thayer were consumed as with a fire in their bones with a desire to keep slavery out of the new commonwealths, so that they utilized eveiy agency within reach to compass that desirable end. Clara Barton, made aware in the days of her strong young womanhood of the sufferings ensuing from great calamities and particularly from tl^at most calamitous catastrophe known as war, could not remain in her pleasant Worcester County home, but must knock at the door of presidents and prime ministers until she could bind the nations together through the Eed Cross in the divine task of staunching the wounds of the sufferers. Dorothea Dix would have discredited her Boston training, had she not obeyed the impulse that sent her forth to agitate in America and Europe in behalf of more humane treatment of prisoners and lunatics. So successful was her crusading that many a man behind barg, the victim of an iniquitous system, blessed her as she passed.

Mary Lyon, born in a lonely little valley among the Franklin hills, as she came to maturity was caught up and swept along by this same great passion. To give the young women of her generation an education measurably equal to that which their brothers could so easily obtain, became her one ambition, and the great college under the shadow of Mt. Holyoke, Lake Erie College at Painesville, 0., Western College for Women in Oxford, 0., the schools in Spain started by Alice Gordon Gulick, the Huguenot Seminary and Inanda Seminary in South Africa, all modeled* on the same idea, are living witnesses to the fact that this country girl builded even better than she dreamed she could build in those early days when, with Deacon Andrew Porter of Monson, she journeyed in his one horse chaise from house to house soliciting the dimes and the dollars.

To many another man or woman who never emerged into prominence has come during these years the same driving force. It laid hold of them in different ways. One was standing hoe in hand amid the growing corn when he caught the vision of something worth doing beyond the rim of the surrounding hills. Another was occupied with household drudgery when the call came first to finish creditably the day's work with the pots and kettles, and then to leave to others that by no means unworthy vocation in order to take up a work elsewhere which would otherwise be left undone. In the case of a third the voyager's wallet, stored with strange and rare curios which he had brought from overseas, was the immediate instrumentality through which the impulse acted. It prompted the seeking of those far-off lands with a higher objective in view than that which lured the traveler and explorer.

In the silence of the night, at the mass meeting called to agitate in behalf of some fundamental human right, through the reading of a stirring biography of a life freely spent for mankind, througli the word seasonably spoken by parent, teacher or friend, or through some personal experience of sorrow or joy the irresistible impulse began to make its searching demands upon conscience, heart and will.

So one after another, singly, in pairs or in groups. New Englanders were impelled to teach the black man and the red man, or to better the educational opportunities at the disposal of the sons and daughters of New England, or to transfer the fundamental New England virtues to other sections of the country in order that they might give character to infant states and territories, or take to Asia and Africa and the islands of the sea the best things New England knew and possessed. Those who belong to the rank and file for whom no shining shaft was ever erected are as truly the continuators and transmitters of the New England idealism as are those whose names come quickly to mind when the roll of great New Englanders is called. Certainly great enterprises in the field of government, education, philanthropy and religion, which have been pushed forward the world over, owe their largest debt to the fidelity of these every-day people, as they faithfully followed the pioneers who blazed the way.

Apart from what the New -England dynamic enabled those who were energized by it to do, its reaction upon them was constant and wholesome. It developed capacities which might have remained dormant. It made these men and women resourceful, persistent, courageous. It militated against selfindulgence. It opened wide the purse strings. Sometimes generosity went so far that the ordinary means of sustenance were scanted and the innocent joys of human life disesteemed. There was a New Englander by the name of P. P. Stewart who went out as a missionary to the Western Reserve in Ohio when it was just being opened to settlement. He was not only a devoted herald of the gospel, but he had the Yankee gift of inventiveness. He discovered a new way of making stoves draw, and much to his surprise he acquired in due time quite a fortune for those days through his invention. He came back to Vermont in his later years and lived in the utmost simplicity in a mountain village. One day a neighbor overheard a conversation between him and his wife, equally simple in her tastes and equally devoted to the interests of the kingdom. It seems however that on that day a justifiable desire for a little more leeway in personal expenditures could not be repressed. The neighbor arrived just in time to hear her say, "WeU, I guess I can have all the molasses I want," to which her husband cahnly responded, *'I did not say that you could not have all the molasses you wanted. I simply said that if we did not eat so much molasses ourselves, we should have more to give away."

More to give away — that has been the New England ambition at its best through these centuries. If money was sought, it was not to be hoarded but to be put in generous sums on the contribution plate or slipped quietly into the hands of some widow or sent to Boston or New York to some worthy charity. If a liberal education was the goal, it was coveted in order that thus equipped the son or daughter might have more enlightenment to share with others.

Such habitual subordination of personal gain and pleasure to the welfare of others registered the high-water mark to which the New England dynamic lifted the responsive human material upon which its force was spent. Few there may have been relatively who attained that high goal, but enough to give substance and direction to the New England character. ;

The continuance of this instinct for service, its transmission from father to son, its outcropping here and there in so many fields of life and in so many widely separated localities, this eternal push outward and forward must have been due to its origin in something higher than the human will. It testifies to the constancy of the divine element in man by which, when once aroused to its presence and power, he can remove mountains of apathy and prejudice. Thereby he is enabled to transmit his faith, hope and love a thousand miles, or ten thousand miles. There they re-root themselves and bring forth fruit under new skies and amid a totally different environment.

The story of New England outreach into the world is the story of God's working in and through men of good will, to an extent which has few parallels in human history. The New England dynamic will continue to be a mighty power in the world as long as New England men keep open the channel between themselves and God.

TRANSPLANTING THE PILGRIM SEED

/NCREASE of roealth and commerce, and the enlargement of empire, are not truly primary objects of the American patriot. . . . The first object is the preservation of the spirit of freedom, which is the soul of the Republic itself. Let that become langiiid and the Republic itself must languish and decline. Let it become extinct and the Republic must disastrously fall. Let it be preserved and invigorated and the Republic will spread wider and wider and its noble institutions will tower higher and higher. Let it fall, and so its example fail, and the nations will retrograde. Let it endure and the world will yet be free, virtuous and happy.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, At Plymouth, Dec. 21, 1855,

'*! HE people of New England have been from the beginning colonising and propagating people. They have never been content with the narrow limits fixed by their state lines, but have sought out new homes wherever the conditions promised improvement upon the abiding-place of their fathers. In proportion to their numbers the New England states have peopled larger portions of this country than any other section. And wherever they have gone they have carried with them the life and characteristics of New England and built up institutions and reared a people of a like will and force as that of their progenitors.

HENRY L. DAWES.

Chapter II Transplanting The Pilgrim Seed

No observant person visiting Rochester, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle or Portland, or other prosperous and beautiful cities between the Hudson and the Pacific Coast, could fail to be impressed with the handsome homes, churches, hotels, banks, office buildings, boulevards and parks. On inquiry he would learn that from the beginning New England has been influential in the outward development of these municipalities. Not only has capital come in large amounts from New England, but many a New Englander working on the ground has helped to bring about gratifying results in brick and mortar, in architectural adornments and in great industrial enterprises.

Such a visitor would make similar discoveries in a multitude of smaller cities and towns. There, too. New England enterprise has expressed itself in substantial forms. Scores of towns in the Middle • and Western States are replicas of their New England prototypes. Along river banks, on the broad prairies, in the midst of fertile farm lands, the New England village type has been reproduced — the Green,

Common or pnblic Square fringed "v\ith trees, and grouped around it the old white church, the town hall, schoolhouse, the library and attractive homes.

The molding influence of New England upon public opinion, upon the spirit of the community and upon the institutions which minister to its higher life is even more evident. As the emigrating New Englander of the higher type moved westward he carried, in many cases, not only his household goods, but his religion, his valuation of education, his high conception of citizenship. As his forebears crossed the Atlantic, impelled by nobler motives than the instinct for trade, so within many a ''prairieschooner" or in the cargo of the boats exploring the great rivers of the Middle West could have been found in these early days the Bible and the schoolbook along with the rifle and the plow. As E. P. Powell says, "Her sons carried the habits and manners, the wooden clocks and spinning-wheels and the indomitable thrift of the little land forever to be known as 'mother.' "

To be sure, in these later years, other racial strains have entered potently into the body politic. In the great cities and in many a farming town the population is made up of those who hail from all parts of Europe and Asia. They do business and go to school with people whose ancestry runs straight back

TRANSPLANTING THE PILGRIM SEED 23

to the Mayflower. Nevertheless many sections of the "West are today more true to the New England type than New England itself, considered as a whole. In a city as large as Cleveland only a quarter of the population of nearly a million people are of direct English birth and tradition. But within this particular group are found many of the principal citizens. In churches and banks, in chambers of commerce and the various professions, they form the wise, strong and trusted leaders.

The influence of New England was first felt in the impact of this or that adventurous pioneer, who with his own strong hands carved out of the wilderness his little holding and then put the stamp of his vigorous personality upon the region as it developed. Pathfinders like these were numerous in the early days of the western emigration, and later came those whose work it was not to blaze trails through the forest but chiefly to sound out and develop the possibilities of trade and commerce.