PENACOOK (CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE)
“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1570
By this point at least, Passaconaway (“Child of the Bear”) of the Penacook was alive (he may have been born as early as 1550).
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Concord, New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1600
By this point at least, Passaconaway (“Child of the Bear”) had become headman of the Penacook. He lived at the top of the Pawtucket Falls in what would become Lowell in what would become Massachusetts.
At this point, upstream at what would become Concord in what would become New Hampshire, there were about 2,000 English settlers.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord, New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1619
Michael Praetorius’s SYNTAGMA MUSICUM portrayed three Querflotten (flutes having a 2-octave range).
In about this year Wannalancet (“Pleasant Breathing”) was born, a son of headman Passaconaway (“Child of the Bear”) of the Penacook. (The name has also been spelled Wannalancet, Wannalancit, Wanaloset, and Wanalosett, but here we are relying on the spelling Thoreau would use in AWEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.)
A WEEK: Two hundred years ago other catechizing than this was PEOPLE OF going on here; for here came the Sachem Wannalancet, and his A WEEK people, and sometimes Tahatawan, our Concord Sachem, who afterwards had a church at home, to catch fish at the falls; and here also came John Eliot, with the Bible and Catechism, and Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, and other tracts, done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them Christianity meanwhile. “This place,” says Gookin, referring to Wamesit, “being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they come to fish; and this good man takes this opportunity to spread the net of the gospel, to fish for their souls.” —
JOHN ELIOT WANNALANCET
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Concord, New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1666
Summer: There was an exchange of native raids, with the Mohawk hitting the Penacook while the Sokoki and Kennebec attacked Mohawk villages. From the standpoint of the Pennacook, Sokoki, and Abenaki, it was bad enough that the English had become allied with the Iroquois but, even worse, the Boston traders abandoned them to move west to Albany and trade with their enemies. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1674
Concord, New Hampshire’s population was about 1,250. HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord, New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1675
Upon the outbreak of “King Philip’s War,” Wannalancet was invited to a meeting with the English and when he came, he was taken into custody. Upon his release he and his Penacook would flee temporarily, possibly to Merrimack, New Hampshire near present-day Horseshoe Pond and possibly all the way to Canada, and await the outcome of the hostilities.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord, New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1679
Upon the death of his father Passaconaway, possibly in Maine, Wannalancet became headman of the Penacook.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Concord, New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1689
With the beginning of King William’s War (until 1697), the French wanted the Abenaki and Penacook warriors to remain in Canada to defend Québec, but these refugee tribes had become eager to take their vengeance upon the English who had so badly abused them in previous generations. War parties from St. Francois, Bécancour, and Missisquoi headed south. Ampolack, a Pennacook war chief from St. Francois, was leading raids against the English settlements in the Connecticut Valley. Kancamagus joined with the Saco to attack Dover NH and, when an English army went after him, retreated north into the remotenesses of the upper Androscoggin Valley in Maine. The small groups of Pennacook on the upper Merrimack tried to remain neutral, but this wasn’t easy. In 1687 false rumors had been spreading among the English of a French fort being created near the Pennachook settlements on the upper Merrimack River. Despite their assurances that they were neutral and despite an offer in 1689 to relocate nearer to the English settlements, the Pennachook were under constant danger of an English decimation. Meanwhile, war parties out of Canada were using their river villages as rest stops on their way to and from raids in New England. Their situation had become just impossible. Eventually, most of these neutral Pennacook would need to withdraw to Lake Champlain and Cowass (Sokoki) for the HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
duration of the war.1
1. Professor Mary Beth Norton of Cornell University points out in her IN THE DEVIL’S SNARE: THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT CRISIS OF 1692 that the girls who were initially affected by “witchcraft” in Salem, Massachusetts were refugees from the Indian wars of Maine. She points out that two little-known wars were fought, one between 1676 and 1678 and the other between 1688 and 1699, with the English residents suffered greatly at the hands of the Wabanaki and their French allies. She avers that in 1676 and again in 1690, the English settlements of Maine were virtually abandoned, and that that area would not again be settled for decades. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1697
Headman Wannalancet of the Penacook died. The name is now perpetuated in the name of a park in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the stream that flows through that park, and a local elevation of 2,780 feet, as “Wonalancet.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1701
As war approached in 1701, a large group of hostile Abenaki had situated itself in the area between the Penacook of the upper Merrimack and the Pennacook of St. Francois. At a meeting held at Casco Bay, aware that another war was imminent, the English attempted to lure them away from the French or at least hold them neutral. In the tug-of-war for their allegiance, the English offered trade and a sanctuary at Schaghticoke, while the French countered with a similar but more appealing offer at St. Francois. The Abenaki chose the French side. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1719
According to a New England story, at this point there were still a few isolated villages of Penacook along the upper reaches of the Merrimack River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1765
There had been much dispute as to whether the white settlement at what had originally been Penacook on the Merrimack River was to be considered to be under the jurisdiction of New Hampshire authorities, or under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts authorities. Much depended on this not only in the halls of the respective state governments but also locally, where a decision one way or the other would mean that the claims to real property of one group or another could be held to be spurious. The town changed its name, again, this time to “Concord,”2 with the pious hope that such a name would prevent local whites from coming to blows with one HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
another. It was not that the local whites lacked a common enemy which could bring them together, for they were united in the hatred and distrust they felt toward persons of the Roman Catholic faith.3 Those people are engaged in a secret conspiracy to control the planet, and if we let down our guard for an instant they will eat our lunch. There was a restrictive covenant in effect, that no-one could purchase local land or property without the permission of the entire community, and the explanation was that this restrictive covenant was intended to “keep out the Irish,” except we may note that being “Irish” in this context, and being kept out, had little to do with originating in Ireland and a whole lot to do with one’s religious persuasion. ANTI-CATHOLICISM
2. It had been called, for instance, “Rumford.” 3. In point of fact, it would not become legal for Catholics to hold high public office in New Hampshire until 1877. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1805
On a mountainside of the Franconia Notch about 70 miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, a large and quite rich vein of iron ore was discovered, quite unlike the lowland “bog iron” resources that had been utilized until that date. Investors from Boston and Salem set up the New Hampshire Iron Foundry and hired 10 men at $15.00 per month to blast out the ore and cart it downhill.
While they were carving a path along a mountainside, workmen noticed an intriguing rock formation:
Salma Hale, who had become a printer, began to edit the Walpole, New Hampshire Political Observatory. He would study law and obtain an appointment as clerk of the court of common pleas of Cheshire County. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1813
Lewis Downing began the manufacture of coaches in Concord, New Hampshire. HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
7-year-old Joseph Smith, Jr. contracted typhoid fever and the infection settled in a leg, which required surgery. He would have a slight limp.
Salma Hale relocated from Walpole to Keene, New Hampshire.
Republication of the initial volume of the Reverend Jeremy Belknap, D.D.’s 3-volume THE HISTORY OF NEW- HAMPSHIRE. COMPREHENDING THE EVENTS OF ONE COMPLETE CENTURY AND SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER PASCATAQUA TO THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY (Boston: Bradford and Read). A copy of this would find its way into the personal library of Henry David Thoreau, and he would copy from it into his Indian Notebook #11.4 NEW-HAMPSHIRE, I
4. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
A WEEK: Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in PEOPLE OF Tyngsborough, where the river makes a sudden bend to the A WEEK northwest, — for our reflections have anticipated our progress somewhat, — we were advancing farther into the country and into the day, which last proved almost as golden as the preceding, though the slight bustle and activity of the Monday seemed to penetrate even to this scenery. Now and then we had to muster all our energy to get round a point, where the river broke rippling over rocks, and the maples trailed their branches in the stream, but there was generally a backwater or eddy on the side, of which we took advantage. The river was here about forty rods wide and fifteen feet deep. Occasionally one ran along the shore, examining the country, and visiting the nearest farm-houses, while the other followed the windings of the stream alone, to meet his companion at some distant point, and hear the report of his adventures; how the farmer praised the coolness of his well, and his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or the children quarrelled for the only transparency in the window that they might get sight of the man at the well. For though the country seemed so new, and no house was observed by us, shut in between the banks that sunny day, we did not have to travel far to find where men inhabited, like wild bees, and had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam of the Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew scriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin vaporous smoke curled up through the noon. All that is told of mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko, was experience here. Every race and class of men was represented. According to Belknap, the historian BELKNAP of New Hampshire, who wrote sixty years ago, here too, perchance, dwelt “new lights,” and free thinking men even then. “The people in general throughout the State,” it is written, “are professors of the Christian religion in some form or other. There is, however, a sort of wise men who pretend to reject it; but they have not yet been able to substitute a better in its place.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
A WEEK: Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes. We looked down into its yellow water with the more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here in their season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous than shad, are now more rare. Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The shad make their appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is for this reason called the shad-blossom. An insect called the shad-fly also appears at the same time, covering the houses and fences. We are told that “their greatest run is when the apple-trees are in full blossom. The old shad return in August; the young, three or four inches long, in September. These are very fond of flies.” A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. “On the steep sides of the island rock,” says Belknap, “hang several arm-chairs, fastened to BELKNAP ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping nets.” The remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee, one of the head-waters of this river. It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea. “And is it not pretty sport,” wrote Captain John Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, “to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer a line?” — “And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
May: Lewis Downing, Senior, then 21 years of age, came to Concord, New Hampshire from Lexington, Massachusetts and opened a wheelwright shop on the spot now occupied by the first house this side of Dr. Carter’s house, on the corner of Main and Washington streets. He had learned his trade of an older brother, who succeeded his father in the same business, in Lexington. After his apprenticeship of four years, he worked one year as a journeyman in Charlestown, Massachusetts before his removal to Concord, New Hampshire. The capital with which he started business consisted of $125, $75 of which was spent for a set of tools. He commenced building common wagons with the body fastened down to the bind axle, then referred to as buggies. For the first year he worked alone. He usually made the woodwork for two wagons and then took them to the New Hampshire State Prison to be ironed –one woodwork paid for the ironing of the other one– and then painted them himself. For these wagons he found a ready sale at $60 each. The first wagon he built was sold to the late Dr. Samuel Morrill of Concord, New Hampshire. After the first year business so increased that he employed two hands, which number was afterwards increased according to the exigencies of business. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1815
Lewis Downing, Senior bought the house at the south end of Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, then known as the “Duncan Estate,” but it being subject to a lease, he did not remove there with his coach-building business until 1816. In the rear of the house he had a small shop, where the woodwork and painting was done, the iron work still continuing to be done at the New Hampshire State Prison, and by a Mr. Whitney, who had a blacksmith shop near where Francis N. Fisk’s store stood, at the north end of Main Street.
Samuel Green would confess, just before his hanging, that he had committed his initial murder in about this year in Meredith, New Hampshire: One day we were in a store, where a pedlar happened to come in, who had a box of jewelry and other articles of value on his back. While the pedlar was in the store trading for some of his jewelry, A—— took me aside, and asked me how much money I thought the man had about him. Not being able to judge, he said he thought he had the value of a thousand dollars, and asked me if I was willing to waylay him. I made some objections at first, but as he continued to persuade me, and said a dead cock never crowed, I at last consented. About half a mile from this store, was a large swamp by the side of a pond — the pedlar had to pass through this swamp on his road. When the sun was about two hours high, in the afternoon, we saw him almost ready to start from the store, and accordingly went down to the swamp, there we waited his arrival, having provided ourselves each with a good club. We had not waited long, before he made his appearance. As soon as he came up to us, we stepped out, knocked him down, dragged him out of the road into the bushes, where we soon put an end to his life. Having secured his trunk and what money he had about him, amounting to about 900 dollars, we took him from this place, carried him about a quarter of a mile, tied some large stones to the body, and threw it into the pond, where it sunk. This pedlar was a steady, sober man, and always carried the best of jewelry with him, and used to travel, generally about one in three months, through my town.... We waited in the woods till dark, then went about a mile from where we lived, and hid the trunk by the side of a mountain. I now went again to see the daughter of the widow before mentioned, made her a present of a suit of clothes, and also of some ear and finger rings, part of the property of the pedlar, and likewise a gold necklace.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Concord, New Hampshire “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
October 9, Monday: The Merrimack River had finally been made navigable all the way from Boston to Concord, New Hampshire. Barges of 60 to 75-foot length, with sails for when the wind was in the right direction, could be poled along by boatmen who would plant their 20-foot, iron shod poles in the river bottom at the bow and then walk the length of the boat to the stern, pushing it along. Using such means it was taking
7 to 10 days to get a barge of produce down the river from Concord to Boston, part of the reason being that in HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
the 6-mile stretch between the Merrimack and the Billerica millpond on the Concord River, the boatmen had to push the load against the mild current.5 It took considerably longer, of course, to get the barge back up against the current of the swift Merrimack River to Concord NH. But all of this new transportation and freightage activity was utterly bypassing Newburyport MA — the difficult bar of Plum Island and its associated shallows across the mouth of the Merrimack had proved to be this port’s kiss of death. That city would become a backwater through which nobody would ever again ship cargo, despite the fact that some of the money that had created the Middlesex Canal had come from this city’s investors. —And yet, this new canal which was forever destroying Newburyport’s prospects would be usable for only a few decades before
5. Initially it had been presumed that the waters of the Merrimack River would flow south through this section of the canal, but it had been discovered during construction of the canal that the Concord River was at that point 25 feet higher than the Merrimack. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
railroads would render it quite useless for anything except the relocation of water from one place to another!
On this date the Garrison family (the mother, Lloyd and his acting-out elder brother James, and their little sister) became part of the general exodus out of this failed dream of a metropolis, by sailing out of Salem harbor on the brig Edward, bound for better opportunities in Baltimore. William Lloyd Garrison was a “leftie” who was being punished in public school until he became able to write with his right hand:
JOB FEELS THE ROD YET BLESSES GOD.
Lloyd would endure fourteen seasick days before they reached their destination, and then the firm which was going to employ his mother would quickly fail and collapse, stranding the family there in the midst of a slave/ slavemaster culture. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1818
The coach manufacturing industry became big business in Concord, New Hampshire. HISTORY OF RR HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1825
In Concord, New Hampshire, Lewis Downing, Senior commenced erecting the coach-building shops near his house which would be destroyed by fire in the winter of 1849/1850, and then taken over by J. Stephens Abbot. For 12 years he manufactured only wagons, the style of which underwent several changes. The first attempt at a spring was a wooden one, reaching from the hind axle to the rocker, which was followed by the leather thoroughbrace and successive styles of elliptic springs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1826
In Concord, New Hampshire, Lewis Downing, Senior commenced the manufacture of chaises, but did not find sufficient demand for them to make this a leading feature of his business. He commenced also the manufacture of coaches, and it was the popularity of these that would make the name of the firm of Downing and Abbot. He went to Salem MA and hired J. Stephens Abbot, then a journeyman coach body maker who had learned his trade with and was at work for Mr. Frothingham, a somewhat celebrated coachmaker, to come to Concord and build three coach bodies. Abbot arrived on Christmas Eve. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1827
The 1st chaise made in Concord, New Hampshire was sold to the Reverend Doctor Bouton. HISTORY OF CONCORD NH HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
J. Stephens Abbot, a journeyman coach body maker of Salem, Massachusetts who had learned his trade with and had been at work for Mr. Frothingham, a somewhat celebrated coachmaker, had been hired by Lewis Downing, Senior to come to Concord and fabricate three coach bodies. He had arrived in Concord the previous Christmas Eve. During the winter and spring he fashioned the first coach bodies ever built in New Hampshire. Basically the Concord coach was an English-model carriage modified for rough American roads, with its body suspended well above its axles upon leather straps which converted much of the up-and-down jarring into a less unsettling side-to-side swaying. There would be models of this that would seat 6, 8, 10, or 12. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
The first coach was completed and went out of the shop during July, and was sold to John Sheperd. One of the remaining two was soon sold in Vermont. After completing his job with Mr. Downing, Mr. Abbot went to Framingham, Massachusetts and was about to form a business connection there, but this was intercepted due to friendly counsel and advice from a local tavernkeeper. He then went to Providence, Rhode Island and worked a short time, but not feeling contented returned to Concord in the fall, and would be taken in as a partner by Downing at the beginning of the following year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1828
January 1, Tuesday: J. Stephens Abbot became a partner of Lewis Downing, Senior in Concord, New Hampshire in the manufacture of the Concord Coach, which was basically an English-model carriage modified for rough American roads, with its body suspended well above its axles upon leather straps which converted much of the up-and-down jarring into a less unsettling side-to-side swaying. There would be models of this that would seat 6, 8, 10, or 12.
While other carriages were undergoing an infinite variety of changes in style, this design was so excellent so HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
early that it would scarcely require any modification at all.
L’esule di Roma ossia Il proscritto, a melodramma eroico by Gaetano Donizetti to words of Gilardoni after Marchionni, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro San Carlo, Naples. The audience granted it an enthusiastic reception.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal about a stagecoach ride out to visit his mom in Portsmouth, and then a pleasant walk home: 3rd day 1st of 1st M 1828 / This morning when I awoke my mind was lead to reflect on the New Year, & among other thoughts it seemed to me it would be best for me to go to Portsmouth to visit my aged Mother who I have not seen in some weeks. She passes the Winter at Uncle Stantons being pleasant company to Aunt Patty Stanton - Accordingly I got into the Stage & rode out, found them all comfortable, & very glad to have me to dine with them the first day of the Year About 3 OClock Uncle Stanton had his Waggon tackled & sent me on the way as far as Christopher Sweets, the rest of the distance I walked. It was just a pleasant exercise. ——6 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 8, Tuesday: In Concord, New Hampshire, the Reverend Waldo Emerson went on the prison tour:
In Concord, N.H. I visited the prison & went into the cells. At this season, they shut up the convicts in these little granite chambers at about 4 o’clock P.M. & let them out, about 7 o’clock A.M. — 15 dreadful hours.
New-York’s annual Tammany Hall dinner, in commemoration of the battle of New Orleans, was attended by many of the important men of the Republican (democratic) party, such as Benjamin Bailey.
On the verge of impeachment, British Prime Minister Viscount Goderich burst into tears as he presented his resignation to King George IV.
December 6, Saturday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson went to Concord, New Hampshire to court the sickly 17-year-old heiress Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, whose guardian was William Sewell.7
6. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1823-1829: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 8 Folder 13: October 2, 1823-March 6, 1829; also on microfilm, see Series 7 7. This suitor and this guardian may have had something in common since certain of Emerson’s own ancestors had been Sewalls, to wit Hannah Sewall (circa 1677-January 29, 1728); John Sewall (England, October 10, 1654-Newbury MA, 1699); the Reverend Henry Sewall (circa 1613/14-Newbury MA, May 16, 1700). HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1831
The following is a snippet from Charles Haskell’s REMINISCENCES OF NEW YORK BY AN OCTOGENARIAN: In this year the first street railway in the world, the New York and Harlem, was incorporated with a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Upon the notice of the commissioners to receive bids for shares of the stock, there was a furor among our citizens to obtain them, to be likened only to that of the “South Sea Bubble.”... The University of New York was incorporated in this year, the following officers being elected: James M. Matthews, D.D., Chancellor; Albert Gallatin, President of the Council; Morgan Lewis, Vice-President; John Delafield, Secretary; Samuel Ward, Treasurer.... The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad began operations in this year, exciting astonishment and fear by attaining a speed of twenty miles an hour. The river route hence to Peekskill, having for many years been run by Captain Vanderbilt, and the price of passage being such as the citizens of Putnam and Westchester counties, headed by Daniel Drew and James Smith, held to be exorbitant, a number of them associated in a company and built a steamer which forced Vanderbilt to reduce his fare to twelve and one-half cents. In 1832, however, Drew and Smith sold out to Vanderbilt without the knowledge or consent of their associates.... The population of the city in this year was ascertained to be 202,589. The T-rails of rolled iron designed by Robert Stevens and manufactured in England were delivered to America and experimented with on a right-of-way belonging to the Camden & Amboy Railroad. They would prove to be successful despite their high cost and despite the brittleness of the iron in use at that time. Although an inverted-U design was tried by the B&O, the T-rail was better and would soon come into general use.8 A steam-propelled passenger train was designed by placing the bodies of existing “Concord”9 stagecoaches over iron wheels:
Charles Hale was born, younger brother of Edward Everett Hale and son of the editor and railroad manager Nathan Hale and a descendant of the Captain Nathan Hale who had been hung by the Army during the Revolutionary War.
8. In the early years of railroading, the majority of maimings and deaths of crewmembers came from the fact that they were required to stand between two cars being rolled toward each other, and steer a link into a socket, and then drop a pin precisely into the hole, to join the cars into a train. An improved coupler would not be patented until 1873, and would not be in general use until about 1890. In the meanwhile there were coming to be more and more railroad types walking around minus fingers or minus hands. 9. That’s Concord as in Concord, New Hampshire, a large manufacturing town. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1835
In Concord , New Hampshire, Lewis Downing, Senior sold his coach-building shops to J. Stephens Abbot. HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
August 30, Sunday: Felix Mendelssohn arrived in Leipzig to take up directorship of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Friend Angelina Emily Grimké wrote to William Lloyd Garrison informing him that she had made a commitment to abolitionism.
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier and the Englishman George Thompson were egged and stoned in Concord, New Hampshire, on account of their having favored “the niggers” in a speech they had just made in Plymouth, New Hampshire:
“I maintained the testimony and resisted not — I gave place unto wrath.”10
One of the thrown stones injured Whittier’s leg. Afterward, the two stopped off at an inn where the landlord asked if they had heard of the ruckus. As they left, stepping into their chaise, Whittier introduced Thompson, then Thompson introduced Whittier, and they drove off with the innkeeper “standing, mouth wide open, gazing after us.” However, Whittier would comment repeatedly, elsewhere, that one cannot expect “that because men are reformers, they will therefore be better than other people.” [According to Russel B. Nye’s FETTERED FREEDOM: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY, 1830-1860 (Michigan: Michigan State UP, 1963, page 203), it was Whittier and Samuel May and they were stoned. Would this have been a separate occasion, in New-York earlier, or in Boston later?]
I was mobbed in Concord, N.H., in company with George Thompson, afterwards member of the British Parliament, and narrowly escaped from great danger. I kept Thompson, whose life was hunted for, concealed in our lonely farm-house for two weeks. I was in Boston during the great mob in Washington Street, soon after, and was threatened with personal violence.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 30 of 8M / Both Meetings were solid & very good ones to me, & after the Afternoon Meeting Attended the funeral of John H Barbers Child - in both Meetings & at the funeral Father had short testimonies & I thought at the funeral was particularly favoured. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
10. To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October: The British abolitionist lecturer George Thompson, after having been met with brickbats in Concord,
New Hampshire and garbage, raw eggs, and rocks in Lowell MA, and after being seriously injured by being hit in the face with a rock in Ohio, and having been denounced by President Andrew Jackson in a message to Congress, took passage in Boston for return to England. His return plans were made in secret because of concern that pro-slavery activists would attempt to kidnap him (presumably to tar and feather him).11 To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” In the face of Garrison’s campaign to use the postal system to distribute abolitionist literature, the President proposed that Congress impose censorship, banning all these incendiary abolitionist pieces of literature from delivery by the US Mail. And, in fact, in South Carolina and in Washington DC, groups of indignant citizens had mobilized into vigilante committees which were sitting around opening mail bags, and removing and destroying abolitionist communications. ABOLITIONISM KING MOB
11. George Thompson fled Boston in a rowboat in order to board a British ship. Safely back in England, he would win election to Parliament. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October 21, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson made a note in his journal about an initial visit to his home in Concord by Bronson Alcott:
Last Saturday night came hither Mr Alcott & spent the Sabbath with me. A wise man, simple, superior to display. & drops the best things as quietly as the least. Every man, he said, is a Revelation, & ought to write his Record. But few with the pen.
That night, just back in Boston from his visit to Emerson in Concord, Alcott would be visiting William Lloyd Garrison in the jail on Leverett Street. (What was Garrison doing in the Boston lockup? –Read on.)
Having met with brickbats in Concord, New Hampshire and garbage, raw eggs, and rocks in Lowell MA, and having been seriously injured by being hit in the face with a rock in Ohio, and having been denounced by President Andrew Jackson in a message to Congress, the English anti-slavery reformer George Thompson had been reduced to making his return plans in secret because of concern that pro-slavery activists would attempt to kidnap him (presumably to tar and feather him).12 He had fled Boston Harbor in a rowboat in order to board a British ship leaving for New Brunswick.
Back ashore, in what would come to be known as the “Gentlemen’s Riot” carried out by a downtown Boston group of swells associated with State Street and Milk Street which sometimes referred to itself as “the broadcloth mob,” what had been planned as a protest against a scheduled lecture by Thompson on behalf of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society transformed itself into a mob of several thousand persons which stormed the meeting while the women prayed for the protection of God. They came uncomfortably close to tarring and feathering the substitute speaker.13
STATE STREET, BOSTON
12. Safely back in England, George Thompson would be elected to Parliament. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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This substitute, Garrison, was saved only by the intervention of Boston’s mayor, who –despite the fact that there was a mayoral election coming up in December– dealt personally with this proslavery mob.
To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” The riot against Garrison in Boston was far from the only one. The North was having what Grimsted refers to as a “riot conversation” with the South, in an attempt to reassure it that its institution of human enslavement would be tolerated, and that opposition to this institution would not be allowed to interfere with the flow of business. There was therefore also an assault on this day upon Henry B. Stanton in Newport, and an assault upon Samuel May in Montpelier. No great personal injury or property damage resulted, as that was not the point: PAGE 27 GRIMSTED: The day’s riotous work was the North’s final offering of works to prove the sincerity of its stream of words against abolition ... few in the South noted how little damage to property and none to people these careful mobs perpetrated.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould recorded in his journal: 4th day 21 of 10 M / We rode to Portsmouth to attend the Select Meeting - After which we went to Aunt Stantons & spent the Afternoon with her in sympathy with her lonely situation
At this annual meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society at the Anti-Slavery Hall, the women were trapped in rooms on the 3d floor as the mob roamed the corridors of the building. The mayor of Boston belatedly arrived with a group of policemen and got the women to disperse, but Garrison was in his office and was left alone in the building with the mob. When he crawled through the back window and jumped down into the street, someone saw him and the mob gave chase. He was cornered in a 2d-floor room above a carpenter’s shop into which he had dodged, whereupon there was a wrestling match to see whether he would be flung from the window, or into a tar kettle that had been prepared. The police jailed for the night for his own safety, in the jail on Leverett Street, and he inscribed on the wall there that his offense was “preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men have been created equal.” Here is a fuller account of the action: It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month of August, and the heat of men’s passions was as great as the heat of the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves the while with unusual circumspection. They deemed it prudent to publish an address to neutralize the falsehoods with which they were assailed by their enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the purpose was thought “too fiery for the present time,” by his more cautious followers and was rejected. The Liberator office had already been threatened in consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the use of Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were “better that the winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth — better that an earthquake should engulf it — than that it should 13. This mob was witnessed by William Cooper Nell, who, being himself a person of color, of course was unable to interfere. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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be used for so unhallowed and detestable a purpose!” The anti- abolition feeling of the town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th of the month, believed that there were persons in Boston, who would assassinate George Thompson in broad daylight, and doubted whether Garrison or Samuel J. May would be safe in Faneuil Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed still more significant of the inflamed state of the public mind, was the confidence with which he predicted that a mob would follow the meeting. The wild-cat-like spirit was in the air — in the seething heart of the populace. The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle of liberty. To its call alone fifteen hundred names were appended. It was a Boston audience both as to character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair, over whom the mayor of the city presided and before whom two of the most consummate orators of the commonwealth fulmined against the Abolitionists. One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four, who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis that day, described sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how “‘Abolitionist’ was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand — a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was worthy of the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years.” Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit of the city got from the orators. It is taken from the speech of Peleg Sprague. The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, “an avowed emissary” “a professed agitator,” who “comes here from the dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten us upon the rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which our cities are wrapt in flames, and our garments rolled in blood.” The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects. The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close. They thrilled in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people. When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the city with them. Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in their midst. Mischief was let HDT WHAT? INDEX
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loose, Mischief was afoot in the town. The old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe place for the arch-agitator. On the day after the meeting, Garrison and his young wife accordingly retreated to her father’s home at Brooklyn, Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress Mischief, and her pals. Garrison’s answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his sternest vein. He is sure after reading them that, “there is more guilt attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of slavery, than those in the slave States.” At least he is ready to affirm upon the authority of Orator Sprague, “that New England is as really a slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina.” Sprague, he finds, “in amicable companionship and popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties of New England citizens.” To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged statesman had transgressed against liberty “under circumstances of peculiar criminality.” “Yet at this solemn period,” the reprobation of the prophet ran, “you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious, to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system of crime and blood — to pander to the lusts and desires of the robbers of God and his poor — to consign over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters, multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children — and to denounce as an ‘unlawful and dangerous association’ a society whose only object is to bring this nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in Jesus.” These audacious and iconoclastic performances of the reformer were not exactly adapted to turn from him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They more likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston against him. Three weeks passed after his departure from the city, and his friends did not deem it safe for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth week of his enforced absence, against which he was chafing not a little, an incident happened in Boston which warned him to let patience have its perfect work. It was on the night of September 17th that the dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression in a gallows erected in front of his house at 23 Brighton street. This ghastly reminder that the fellow-citizens of the editor of the Liberator continued to take a lively interest in him, “was made in real workmanship style, of maple joist five inches through, eight or nine feet high, for the accommodation of two persons.” Garrison and Thompson were the two persons for whom these brave accommodations were prepared. But as neither they nor their friends were in a mood to have trial made of them, the intended occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth, and to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in with her HDT WHAT? INDEX
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while the homicidal fit lasted. This editing his paper at long range, and this thought of life and safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a “pine-and-fagot” Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was, within a few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety for him was very great. Neither was the anxiety of devoted friends and followers to be lightly disregarded. All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn until the 25th of the month, when the danger signals seemed to have disappeared. Whereupon he set out immediately for his post in Boston to be at the head of his forces. He found the city in one of those strange pauses of popular excitement, which might signify the ebb of the tide or only the retreat of the billows. He was not inclined to let the anti-Abolition agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more abundant harvests in the republic. Anxious lest the cat- like temper of the populace was falling into indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took occasion to prod it into renewed wakefulness and activity. The instruments used for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and the sharp goad of his Liberator editorials. The city was possessed with the demon of slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was the best of all signs that the Abolition exorcism was working effectively. So, in between the glittering teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening goad, and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to behold. One of these meetings was the anniversary of the formation of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society which fell on October 14th. The ladies issued their notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson to address them. Now the foreign emissary was particularly exasperating to Boston sensibility on the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red rag to the pro- slavery bull. The public announcement, therefore, that he was to speak in the city threw the public mind into violent agitation. The Gazette and the Courier augmented the excitement by the recklessness with which they denounced the proposed meeting, the former promising to Thompson a lynching, while the latter endeavored to involve his associates who were to the “manner born” in the popular outbreak, which was confidently predicted in case the “foreign vagrant” wagged his tongue at the time appointed. Notwithstanding the rage of press and people the meeting was postponed through no willingness on the part of the ladies, but because of the panic of the owners of the hall lest their property should be damaged or destroyed in case of a riot. The ladies, thereupon, appointed three o’clock in the afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall adjoining the Anti- Slavery Office, at 46 Washington street, as the place where they would hold their adjourned meeting. This time they made no mention of Mr. Thompson’s addressing them, merely announcing several addresses. In fact, an address from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally outlook, was not deemed expedient. To HDT WHAT? INDEX
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provide against accidents and disasters, he left the city on the day before the meeting. But this his enemies did not know. They confidently expected that he was to be one of the speakers. An inflammatory handbill distributed on the streets at noon of the 21st seemed to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the pro- slavery portion of the city. The handbill referred to ran as follows: THOMPSON, THE ABOLITIONIST! That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator office. No. 48 Washington street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant! Boston, Wednesday, 12 o’clock. That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office, little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing the aforesaid handbills “in the insurance offices, the reading- rooms, all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.,” and scattering it “among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it.” Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his seat among the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: “That’s Garrison!” The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the buildings on Washington street, the head lowering in front of the anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State House, City Hall and Post- office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope of urging her way HDT WHAT? INDEX
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through that dense mass was abandoned by Mrs. Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home, where she passed the night. Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: “Gentlemen,” said he, “perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting.” But he added, “If, gentlemen, any of you are ladies in disguise — why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them accordingly.” The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad to worse. “The tumult continually increased,” says an eye-witness, “with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each other’s shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of the wall which divides the society’s rooms from the landing place. We requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges.” Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti- slavery office, separated from the hall by a board partition. Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next room. The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five thousand throats were howling “Thompson! Thompson!” The mayor of the city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city. But the mayor was a modern HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Canute before the sea of human passion, which was rushing in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar. The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also. Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One “for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers.” It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown themselves against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. “There he is! That’s Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!” and other such words of recognition and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of the partition, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp crash caused by the shivering of the office door, the loud and angry outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, “You may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst.” But fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood. The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was dangerous to remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere.” The ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from their object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing of the ladies had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. “Out with him!” “Lynch him!” rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets. But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from its object in the second story of the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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building before which it was lashing itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed at this juncture to return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control the cataract-like passions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the building, and from the building to the constables, and then — but the mayor glanced not beyond, for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun. When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom, they were in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction, it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison’s situation was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison’s friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and, with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a carpenter’s shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson’s Lane, now Devonshire street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter’s shop in the face of his pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut off; escape from the rear anticipated and foiled. Garrison perceived the futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it was not Garrison, but Garrison’s and Thompson’s friend, who knows where Garrison is, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for doing this, while others were for milder measures. “Don’t let us kill him outright!” they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he bowed to the multitude who were thirsting for his destruction, requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the seething sea of human passion. Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison’s deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, “He is an American! He shan’t be hurt!” and other such words which divided the mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson’s lane into State street, in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic ground, ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks and his fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary glasses, and was therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he “walked with head erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope” according to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind during the ordeal. “The promises of God,” he afterward remembered, sustained his soul, “so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for joy.” The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his constables struggled helplessly in the human current rushing and raging around City Hall, the head and seat of municipal law and authority. Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in violence and terror. He was in the rear of City Hall when the mayor caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had hold of Garrison, “Take him into my office,” which was altogether more HDT WHAT? INDEX
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easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry “to the Frog Pond with him!” Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate or that of the mob? These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance. But other private citizens coming to the assistance of the mayor struck the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall and carried up to the mayor’s room. But the mob had immediately effected an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a wolfish rabble. The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail. To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison’s life. But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for legal forms asserted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the Universal history of mobs? Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of civilized society. But enough — the municipal wiseacres having put their heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison’s life could not well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it. First then by disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel. He HDT WHAT? INDEX
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obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: “Cut the traces! Cut the reins!” They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of the Liberator, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical phrase but by the skin of his teeth. Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell; and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully accosted thus: “You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot ask you to spend the night with me.” That night in his prison cell, and on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and long: “When peace within the bosom reigns, And conscience gives th’ approving voice; Though bound the human form in chains. Yet can the soul aloud rejoice. “’Tis true, my footsteps are confined — I cannot range beyond this cell — But what can circumscribe my mind, To chain the winds attempt as well!” The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell. Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of October 21, 1835. After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court, extemporized in the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and together they went thence to her father’s at Brooklyn, Conn. The apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the city that morning. In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into works her sympathy for the South. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1838
The Reverend William Henry Channing took up a Unitarian pastorate in Cincinnati, Ohio (he would resign in 1841 upon becoming aware that the Gospels were unreliable as history, concluding somehow from this technical detail that Christianity had not been ordained by God).
Charles James Fox became a member of the Unitarian Church in Nashua, New Hampshire (he would teach in its Sunday School).
The Countess Sarah of Concord (formerly “Rumford”) commissioned D.G. Lamont to paint from a sketch by William Lane an oil in which Count von Rumford gazed benevolently upon his only legitimate child while the daughter fondles her favorite lap-dog. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June 21: Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts continued his speech before the US House of Representatives on the expansive topic of Texas for a 7th day.
At about this day, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers was taking responsibility for Concord, New Hampshire’s Herald of Freedom.
September 21, Friday: At the St. Louis dock, Dr. John Emerson and his bride, and their slaves Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, transferred to the steamboat Gypsy.
The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat graced the skies above historic Concord, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 22, Saturday: Shortly after the total solar eclipse of the afternoon of September 18th had been visible in New England, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers published the following article in Concord, New HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Hampshire’s anti-slavery paper Herald of Freedom:
ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. We had a fine opportunity, on our way from Plymouth to Concord, to witness this grand conjunction of the mighty orbs of the sky –this conflict of the “greater and lesser lights”– the lesser obscuring the greater, as is sometimes the case among sublunary bodies, by force of position. The glorious sun was indeed “sick almost to doomsday,” –and it was pitiful to see his regal distress, and with what dignity and decency he drew around him his robe of clouds, to hide his disaster and shame from the smoked-glass gaze of mortals. The atmosphere and the landscape sombered at his obscuration, and he looked, as the foul intrusion overshadowed his disk, like a noble nature seized upon, darkened, marred and smothered to blackness and darkness, by the Genius of slavery. The envious eclipse passes off, and the released luminary shines on gloriously again in mid heaven. Slavery is perpetual eclipse –sickness to “doomsday” –eternal obscuration. May God in his mercy rectify the erring orbs of life, to prevent and remove such fatal moral conjunctions. All animate creation seemed to apprehend and notice instinctively the malady of the heavens. The few birds that remain extant at this unmusical season, gave token of their apprehension of night-fall by betaking themselves to the topmost boughs of the trees — to get as late a good-night as they could, from the blessed luminary whose good morrow they hail with such choral gladness, in that joyous season when “the time of the singing of birds is come.” The cricket and the grasshopper, in the fields by the road side, set up, as night came down, their twilight hum, and blew their “drowsy bugle.” A drove of cattle, through which we passed, on the way to Brighton –like a coffle from the city of WASHINGTON to Alabama– halted, as the drover told us, as if the hour for putting up at night had come. And our own good steed, refreshed by the coolness of the temperature, and warned by the deepening shadows, set up his evening trot, in full remembrance, as well as his master, of Concord hospitality –for he has a “memory like a horse”– and had every visible and ostensible reason to believe, that stable-time and release from the harness were at hand. Would that the poor human cattle of the republic could realize such a season! But neither night nor eclipse brings respite to them. THEY ARE SLAVES. At the height of the obscuration, the sky wore the appearance of real sunset — a sunset far up from the horizon, with blue sky below, between it and the hills. The passing off of the eclipse was invisible, by reason of the thick, hard, night-looking clouds, and the sun did not reappear to give assurance of his recovery. May it not be emblematic of the extinction of slavery in this country amid the gloomy shadowings and night of insurrection, which our friend, the Observer, deprecates with such deep shuddering — while the prospect of eternal slavery he can look on with most serene composure. The “specious twilight” of the eclipse gradually put on evening’s bona fide enshroudings, and settled into ——— but we forget that our eclipse was seen by all our readers, and will leave them, with the wish, that the sun may rise upon them again on the morrow, all unmarred and unscathed by his conflict with the “dirty planet,” and light them all on the way to a day of anti-slavery gratitude and duty. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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(We may trust that in particular this will be true for one new black family in New Bedford.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1839
August 29, Thursday: John Shepard Keyes, who had been a schoolmate of Henry Thoreau at the Concord Academy, commented in his diary on a melon party, the first melons to ripen that year, that was being thrown by Thoreau in anticipation of his and his brother John Thoreau, Jr.’s departure for an adventure from Concord MA to Concord, New Hampshire by boat and on into the White Mountains:
Went up to see Henry Thoreau who is about starting on his expedition to the White Mts[.] in his boat. He has all things arranged prime and will have a glorious time if he is fortunate enough to have good weather. He showed me all the minutiae of packing and invited me up there to eat some fine melons in the evening.... I spent ... the rest of the time getting the fellows ready to go to the Thoreaus[’] melon spree. We went about 9 and saw a table spread in the very handsomest style with all kinds and qualities of melons and we attacked them furiously and I eat [sic] till what with the wine & all I had quite as much as I could carry home.
This is perhaps the Thursday evening party mentioned by Walter Harding as in “a recently discovered letter”:
David had a party of gentlemen, Thursday evening, to eat melons. I went in to see the table, which was adorned with sunflowers, cornstalks, beet leaves & squash blossoms. There were forty-six melons, fifteen different kinds; & apples, all the production of his own garden. This is the only thing of interest that has happened in town this week. When we went in to see the tables, Mrs. Thoreau felt called upon to apologize for Henry having a party, it having been spread abroad by her that such customs met with his contempt & entire disapprobation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 6, Friday: The intrepid Thoreau brothers took the stage from Concord, New Hampshire to Plymouth, New Hampshire, then hiked through Thornton, Peeling, and Lincoln to Franconia below Mount Washington in the Presidential Range (Agiocochuck, elevation 6,288 feet).
The Thoreau brothers presumably both climbed and descended along the 1819 Crawford Path that begins at Crawford Notch and follows along the treeless ridge line, passing Mt. Eisenhower and Mt. Monroe and the Lake of the Clouds at about 5,000 feet to the summit of Mt. Washington. Thoreau’s description of the actual climb, in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, would be succinct: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A WEEK: Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy, rocky, forested, and bepastured country, we at length crossed on prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced up the river to which our native stream is a tributary, until from Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped by our side, and when we had passed its fountain-head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant source among the mountains, and at length, without its guidance, we were enabled to reach the summit of AGIOCOCHOOK. “Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky, Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die.” — HERBERT
When we returned to Hooksett, a week afterward, the melon man, in whose corn-barn we had hung our tent and buffaloes and other things to dry, was already picking his hops, with many women and children to help him. We bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry with us for ballast. It was Nathan’s, which he might sell if he wished, having been conveyed to him in the green state, and owned daily by his eyes. After due consultation with “Father,” the bargain was concluded, — we to buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay “what the gentlemen pleased.” It proved to be ripe; for we had had honest experience in selecting this fruit.
Thoreau’s text does not remain at this elevation. With the words “When we returned to Hookset...” he embarked the brothers upon their literary return voyage downriver. The full poem “Vertue” by Rector George Herbert in his 1633 THE TEMPLE had been as follows: Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridall of the earth and skie: The dew shall weep thy fall to night; For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye: Thy root is ever in its grave And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie; My musick shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Onely a sweet and vertuous soul, Like season’d timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Then chiefly lives.
THE TEMPLE
We may note that our adventurous author has referred earlier, in the text of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, to the poem “The Elixir” among the literary remainders of Herbert: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A WEEK: It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object. “A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye, Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And the heavens espy.” Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like a feather in mid-air, or a leaf which is wafted gently from its twig to the water without turning over, seemed still in their element, and to have very delicately availed themselves of the natural laws. Their floating there was a beautiful and successful experiment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in our eyes the art of navigation; for as birds fly and fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how much fairer and nobler all the actions of man might be, and that our life in its whole economy might be as beautiful as the fairest works of art or nature.
Teach me, my God and King, In all things thee to see, And what I do in any thing, To do it as for thee: Not rudely, as a beast, To runne into an action; But still to make thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. A man that looks on glasse, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it passe, And then the heav’n espie.
All may of thee partake: Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture (for thy sake) Will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this clause Makes drudgerie divine: Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Makes that and th’ action fine. This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold: For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for lesse be told. THE TEMPLE
December 21, Saturday: Using a metaphor of a legislature passing a temperance law while by its drunkenness promoting drunkenness, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers published the following paragraph in Concord, New Hampshire’s anti-slavery paper Herald of Freedom:
Some of our temperance friends are in love with legislative reform in this state, in this behalf. We are decidedly opposed to it. It is an illegitimate mode of reform, and is, we believe, resorted to by those clergymen and politicians, and other great men, who are afraid of the effect of moral agitation upon their influential positions in community. We say, let every man sell as much rum and drink as much rum as he chooses, for all legislation. If we can’t stop drunkenness without the paltry aid of our state house, let it go on. It is a less evil than sumptuary legislation, — and a legislative reformation would be good for nothing, if it could be effected. It would be a totally unprincipled reformation. And as much as we loathe drunkenness, we had as lief witness any bar-room scene we ever saw, as some scenes enacted at our stone state house. Why, we have to keep the legislature itself, sober, in the very session time, by influence of the Temperance society. Stop that influence, and the legislative session would be a time of general drunkenness, gambling and debauchery, wherever the legislature should hold its sittings. And is the country to look to legislation for the preservation of its morals! We would as soon look to the general muster, as the general court. We say this with all deference to our public servants, as they call themselves when they want our votes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1840
During the spring, summer, and fall of this year Henry Thoreau would be studying the history of philosophy: • Ralph Cudworth’s THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE: WHEREIN ALL THE REASON AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM IS CONFUTED, AND ITS IMPOSSIBILITY DEMONSTRATED ... A NEW EDITION; WITH REFERENCES TO THE SEVERAL QUOTATIONS IN THE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM; AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR, BY THOMAS BIRCH of 1678, in which Thales of Miletus and other presocratics had been condemned as mere atheistic materialists. (Waldo Emerson had the four volumes of the London publisher J.F. Dove, for Richard Priestley, edition of 1820 in his personal library.) CUDWORTH’S SYSTEM, I CUDWORTH’S SYSTEM, II CUDWORTH’S SYSTEM, III • Francois Fénelon’s ABRÉGÉ DE LA VIE PLUS ILLUSTRES PHILOSOPHIQUES DE L’ANTIQUITIE (circa 1700), which reported to him the things that Aristotle had placed on record in his METAPHYSICS (“The earth rests upon water” and the “first principle” is “water”) and in his DE ANIMA (“the magnetic stone has soul in it” and “sets a piece of iron in motion” because “All things are full of gods”) and in his POLITICS about the almost-lost work of Thales of Miletos, and in addition retold the story that Thales had explained the summer rising and winter falling of the Nile River as being caused by the Estesian winds. • Baron Joseph de Gerando’s HISTOIRE COMPARÉE DES SYSTÈMES DE PHILOSOPHIE, CONSIDERES RELATIVEMENT AUX PRINCIPES DES CONAISSANCES HUMAINES (1822-1823), which by way of contrast provided a sympathetic reading of Thales, characterizing him as the first natural philosopher (in our current idiom, “scientist”). Thoreau recorded in his journal that Thales of Miletus had been “the first of the Greeks who taught that souls are immortal,” recording also Gerando’s point that this ancient Greek philosopher had considered that “virtue consists in leading a life conformable to nature.”
April 22: Thales was the first of the Greeks who taught that souls are immortal — and it takes equal wisdom to discern this old fact to-day. What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat– The world makes no progress.
I cannot turn on my heel in a carpeted room — what a gap in the morning is a breakfast — a supper supersedes the sunset. Methinks I hear the ranz des vaches and shall soon be tempted to desert.14
Will not one thick garment suffice for three thin ones? Thus I shall be less compound, and can lay my hands on myself in the dark.
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Thoreau first laid plans to write an account of his and his brother’s 1839 boat/stagecoach trip from Concord MA to Concord NH and into the White Mountains to climb Agiocochook (Mount Washington).
HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
14. Isn’t this an interesting pun! I don’t know whether the spelling difference was being observed in America, so that “desert,” a place devoid of life, with its derivative “to desert,” to abandon one’s post and flee into the desert, and to obtain one’s “deserts,” one’s due reward or punishment for one’s conduct, could always be distinguished in writing from “dessert,” the sweet course at the end of a meal. However, if there was such a distinction observed in spelling in America at that time, Thoreau clearly was eliding that distinction here, as in hearing the “ranz des vaches” he is being tempted not only to desert his post (as the armed Swiss guard at the Tuilleries if given an opportunity to hear the ranz des vaches might be tempted by homesickness to flee France for Switzerland) and flee to his homeland, but also to substitute the sweet course of his supper, his dessert, for the experience of something else in his life — as he has already made a gap in his morning by having breakfast, and as he has already missed the sunset by attending instead the supper. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1841
January 13, Wednesday: It was reported that a branch of the Nonresistance Society was formed for New Hampshire, at Concord, New Hampshire, with the following members: Parker Pillsbury, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Stephen Symonds Foster, and Amos Wood.15
15. There was an Amos Wood in the Concord fight in 1775, and there were Woods present in Concord MA at this time, and there was a Mrs. Amos Wood present in Concord in 1875. Was this the person in New Hampshire perhaps the son of the Amos Wood who was born on 28 Oct 1734 in Mendon to James Wood and Grace Thayer Wood? Or maybe the Amos Wood who was born in Canada in 1820, either in Ontario or Quebec and died in Chicago in 1913? HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1842
The Boston rail lines reached Concord, New Hampshire. Beginning of purchase of land for the Boston/ Fitchburg railroad right-of-way. This railroad would be described as follows:
The FITCHBURG RAILROAD, after leaving the depot in Causeway Street, passes through Somerville, South Acton, Porter’s, West Acton, Wellington Hill, Littleton, Waverley, Groton Junction Waltham, Shirley, Stony Brook, Lunenburg, Weston, Leominster, Lincoln, Fitchburg. Concord,
The Fitchburg RR was chartered to establish “the direct route, when finished, for the travel from our Atlantic steamers to Montreal,” a line which was to be financed entirely through the sale of stock, mostly to the people who lived in the towns that would be along the line. So what was so important about Fitchburg, that Boston had to run a RR in that direction? Across the Central Massachusetts Uplands from Fitchburg, beyond Mount Wachusett, lay Greenfield on the Connecticut River, and beyond that, if a Hoosac tunnel could ever be drilled through the Berkshire Hills, would lie Troy, Albany, and Schenectady, in the Hudson River Valley. This was potentially the shortest and the lowest route of all across the Appalachian Chain into the interior of the continent. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Elisha W. Bouvé proposed that there be a grand railroad terminal in Boston for this grand new Fitchburg-and- ultimately-Beyond railroad. His proposed facade he sketched in the upper right hand corner of this map:
Lewis Perry has had the following to say in regard to the Concord, New Hampshire attitudes of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers during this period: Although Lynn nurtured some of the most anarchic elements of nonresistance and Come-Outerism, it was a minor theater of conflict with the Boston Garrisonians compared to New Hampshire. There antislavery and no-organizationism were synonymous, and Nathaniel P. Rogers, at the forefront of this anarchistic movement, rhapsodized on free meeting. Rogers was a widely respected reformer. Descended from the Smithfield martyr John Rogers and from American Puritan divines, he was the “pet and darling” of abolitionism, at one time editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a delegate to the world convention in London in 1840 when he was in his forty-sixth year. According to the political abolitionist William Goodell, Rogers was second only to Garrison, and perhaps surpassed him, in energy and talent. Together they might easily have dominated the antislavery societies if Rogers’ nonresistance had not been total. From opponents of nonresistance came further testimony: the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who knew about such things, recalled that Rogers’ journalism had “a spice and zest which would now command a market on merely professional HDT WHAT? INDEX
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grounds.” But he was a “Non-resistant of non-resistants” and “out-Garrisoned Garrison.” As editor of the Herald of Freedom, Rogers came close to making no-organizationism a coherent theory touching on every aspect of culture and society. Though his style had zest, this American romantic nonetheless did not believe in formalities of style. Nature and speech were key words he use. He was led to distinctions resembling those favored by Alcott: “Argument,” he said, meant less for reform than “STATEMENT”; or action is necessary only for unjust causes which will not bear earnest speech. Probably no other reformer has placed a higher value on free speech. Rogers literally expected to talk slavery out of existence. Although Rogers started out with faith in speech, his destination was always the end of slavery. His earliest rejection of the ballot was based exclusively on the proslavery character of the available parties. In April 1839, Orange Scott still thought that Rogers might be enlisted in opposition to Garrison’s nonresistance, but Rogers explained that he respected both Scott and Garrison and did not worry about the extraneous opinions of dedicated abolitionists. As a budding no-organizationist, he denied that any leader spoke for him. As he became increasingly committed to nonresistance, he confessed that his mind had changed. He was now “convinced that all legislation was force, and that as anti- slavery, in our opinion, was a strictly moral and religious movement, a work of repentance and reformation, we could not resort to physical force.” The basis of his radical career, then, was evangelicalism. Ten months after writing Scott that nonresistance was a matter for private judgment, of little concern to antislavery, Rogers was prepared to argue that legislation could create only “free niggers,” that laws could never eradicate prejudice and racial domination. Thereafter his antislavery position was fixed: emancipation was as wrong as legislated abolition was futile, for it presumed an “act of mastery” to give up slaves, and masters must, in justice, disappear along with slaves. The real problem was to transform a national character in which men were willing to hold slaves and think of themselves as masters. That problem seemed obviously religious. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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February 15, Tuesday: The Reverend William Adam was elected Treasurer of the Association of Industry and Education, and Joseph Conant was elected its President. During this month the Reverend Adam was helping issue a “Preliminary Circular” describing the plan for the Association, which evidently caused Lucy Maria Kollock Brastow Mack and David Mack to change their minds about papers they had just signed with Brook Farm, and come to Northampton to reside instead. The focus of the Northampton association was going to be upon an early version of the Socialist dream of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” in that each participant would contribute according to his or her ability, without recourse to any patriarchal hierarchy or racial division of labor, and would receive according to his or her individual need, in a spirit which was referred to as “equal brotherhood.” (Although the ideology of this association has been portrayed by some as Fourierist, by others as “middle class,” by others as “Transcendentalist,” and by others as “extreme perfectionist” and as “nonresistant,” their contemporary, the newspaper editor of Concord, New Hampshire, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, would categorize them merely as “a peculiar body, and of peculiar individual character.” The Northampton Association of Education and Industry was so advanced in its racial thinking that it even accepted as a member the white widow of a black man.16) COMMUNITARIANISM
Cass advised Webster that, since the Quintuple Treaty obligated its signers to board and search commercial vessels on the high seas in a manner objectionable to the USA, altering the hitherto recognized law of nations, he had on his own responsibility sent a warning to M. Guizot, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, that this was something that we might be prepared to go to war over: “SIR: The recent signature of a treaty, having for its object the suppression of the African slave trade, by five of the powers of Europe, and to which France is a party, is a fact of such general notoriety that it may be assumed as the basis of any diplomatic representations which the subject may fairly require.” The United States is no party to this treaty. She denies the Right of Visitation which England asserts. [quotation from the presidential message of December 7, 1841] This principle is asserted by the treaty. “... The moral effect which such a union of five great powers, two of which are eminently maritime, but three of which have perhaps never had a vessel engaged in that traffic, is calculated to produce upon the United States, and upon other nations who, like them, may be indisposed to these combined movements, though it may be regretted, yet furnishes no just cause of complaint. But the subject assumes another aspect when they are told by one of the parties that their vessels are to be forcibly entered and examined, in order to carry into effect these stipulations. Certainly the American Government does not believe that the high powers, contracting parties to this treaty, have any wish to compel the United States, by force, to adopt their measures to its provisions, or to adopt its stipulations ...; and they will see with pleasure the prompt 16. Otohiko Okugawa’s “Annotated List of Communal and Utopian Societies, 1789-1919,” published as part of the DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN COMMUNAL AND UTOPIAN HISTORY (editor Robert S. Fogarty, Westport CT, 1980, pages 173-233), listed some 119 communal societies established in the USA between 1800 and 1859, not counting those that existed only in “plan and prospectus.” This list of 119 is known, however, to be incomplete; see Dare, Philip N., AMERICAN COMMUNES TO 1860, for a more recent take. Evidence of previously unknown communities continues to turn up from time to time. This decade of the 1840s would turn out to be the key decade for the trend, with at least 59 new communities being formed, most of which would last no longer than two years. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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disavowal made by yourself, sir, in the name of your country, ... of any intentions of this nature. But were it otherwise, ... They would prepare themselves with apprehension, indeed, but without dismay —with regret, but with firmness— for one of those desperate struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history of the world.” If, as England says, these treaties cannot be executed without visiting United States ships, then France must pursue the same course. It is hoped, therefore, that his Majesty will, before signing this treaty, carefully examine the pretensions of England and their compatibility with the law of nations and the honor of the United States. SENATE DOCUMENT, 27th Congress, 3d session, II. No. 52, and IV. No. 223; 29th Congress, 1st session, VIII. No. 377, pages 192-5. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1844
February 11, Sunday-18, Sunday: Frederick Douglass was lecturing in Concord , New Hampshire.
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March 15, Friday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report: “The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the petition of ... John Hanes, ... praying an adjustment of his accounts for the maintenance of certain captured African slaves, ask leave to report,” etc.” –SENATE DOCUMENT, 28 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 194.
In regard to the bursting of the experimental cannon aboard the steam warship USS Princeton, above under the date of February 28, and in regard to the national pomp and ceremony of the funeral arrangements which followed, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers published the article on the following page in Concord, New Hampshire’s anti-slavery paper Herald of Freedom.
Isaac Hecker wrote to the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson in regard to the Reverend William Henry Channing:
There is some talk of Channing’s giving up his efforts here and going on to Brook Farm this spring. Last sunday morning the text of his sermon was first seek the Kingdom of Heaven and then all things will be added there with. His sermon was first seek all outward things and the Kingdom of Heaven will come. Fourierism. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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BURSTING OF THE PAIXHAN GUN. The reader has heard, by this time, of the terrible catastrophe on board the nation’s War-Steamer, Princeton — where five of our governmental chieftains were stricken down at once by the exploded fragments of a great death-engine — intended by them for the destruction of others. They were practising with it, and amusing themselves with exhibitions of its hideous power. Five chieftains, and a slave killed, John Tyler’s slave. The bursting of the Paixhan gun has emancipated him — and left his owner behind. How busy death has been on every side of that owner, since he was thrown up into power by the fermentation of 1840! Above him and below him, in place, “the insatiate archer,” (as poetry has called a dull genius, that never shot an arrow in his life,) has brought down the tall men, and left him standing, like an ungleaned stalk, in a harvested corn-field. He seems to have been the subject of a passover. I saw account of the burial of those slaughtered politicians. The hearses passed along, of Upshur, Gilmer, Kennon, Maxcy, and Gardner, —but the dead slave, who fell in company with them —on the deck of the Princeton, was not there. He was held their equal by the impartial gun- burst, but not allowed by the bereaved nation, a share in the funeral. The five chiefs were borne pompously to the grave, under palls attended by rival expectants of the places they filled before they fell, (not those they now fill) but the poor slave was left by the nation to find his way thither as he might, —or to tarry above ground. Out upon their funeral — and upon the paltry procession that went in its train. Why didn’t they inquire for the body of the other man who fell on that deck! And why hasn’t the nation inquired — and its press? I saw account of the scene, in a barbarian print called the Boston Atlas — and it was dumb on the absence of that body — as if no such man had fallen. Why, I demand in the name of human nature, was that sixth man of the game brought down by that great shot — left unburied and above ground? — for there is no account yet, that his body has been allowed the rites of sepulture. What ailed him, that he was not buried? Wasn’t he dead? Wasn’t he killed as dead as Upshur and Gilmer? And didn’t the same explosion kill him? And won’t his corse decay, like theirs? Don’t it want burying as much? Did they throw it overboard from the deck of the steamer, —to feed the fishes? What have they done with it! Six men were slain by the bursting of that gun — and but five were borne along in that funeral train. Where have they left the sixth? Could they remember their miserable color-phobia, at an hour like this? Did the corses of those mangled and slaughtered secretaries revolt at the companionship of their fellow-slain, and demur at being seen going with him to the grave? If not, what ailed the black man, I ask again, who died on the deck of the steamer with Abel Upshur and Thomas Gilmer, that he couldn’t be buried? Are they cannibals, at that government seat, and have they otherwise disposed of that corse? For what would not they do to a lifeless body — who would enslave it, when alive? I will not entertain the hideous conjecture — though they did enslave him in his life-time. But they didn’t bury him, even as a slave. They didn’t assign him a jim-crow place in that solemn procession, that he might follow, to wait upon his enslavers in the land of spirits. They have gone there without slaves, or waiters. Possibly John Tyler may have had a hole dug somewhere in the ground, to tumble in his emancipated slave. Possibly not. Nobody knows, probably — nobody cares. They mentioned his death among the statistics of that deck, and that is the last we hear of the slave. His tyrants and enslavers are borne to their long home, with pomp and circumstance, and their mangled clay honored and lamented by a pious people. The poor black man — they enslaved and imbruted him all his life-time, and now he is dead, they have, for aught appears, left him to decay and waste above ground. Let the civilized world take note of the circumstance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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After August 1st: Anna Maria Whiting17 wrote up the events of Concord’s annual fair of the Anti-Slavery Society of Middlesex County celebrating the 1st of August liberation of the slaves of the British West Indies and sent them off to Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the Concord, New Hampshire Herald of Freedom. Unfortunately, although it was possible in that day and age to describe how church officials might be timid enough to refuse the use of church facilities for such moralizing purposes, and town officials might be wrongheaded enough to denounce such activities as antislavery oratory as “irresponsible” and refuse to ring the town bell to summon townspeople to the lectures associated with the booths that had been strung by the antislavery ladies along the corridors of the Middlesex County courthouse in Concord, it was not possible in that day and age to describe how a town squire such as Emerson might be for anti-slavery for all the wrong, racist reasons — for Emerson was against the enslavement of blacks in America because he was against the whole idea of allowing people who were obviously inferior as human beings, to be present at all in this New World, the land of the free and the home of the brave, which we should have the intelligence to restrict to those able to benefit from it, that is, to those of us who are brave enough to preserve our freedoms. It is only recently that it has become possible to reconstruct the activities of Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Moses Grandy, and Henry Thoreau in Concord on this day in terms of their respective attitudes toward racism and antiracism on that day on which two black speakers came to town, rather than in the more traditional terms of their respective attitudes toward proslavery versus antislavery. In passing I must recount to you an amusing circumstance. There was an unusual difficulty about ringing the bell of the Unitarian Meeting-house, and those who never hesitated before, now shrunk back, and did not dare attempt it. Five or six individuals who were asked declined for one or another reason. Your friend, David Henry Thoreau, (no foreigner, but one whom Concord should be proud to number among her sons,) seeing the timidity of one unfortunate youth, who dared not touch the bell rope, took hold of it with a strong arm; and the bell (though set in its own way), pealed forth its summons right merrily.— This reluctance among those timid gentlemen to ring the bell seems to me very amusing. One of them went to ask leave to ring it of one of the committee who take charge of the meeting-house, but not finding him at home, declined taking action on the subject.
After August 1: I was once travelling through a distant and mountainous part of the country, along the banks of a stream whose course I followed for several days, through a succession of shady vallies, sunken deep among the hills –where dwelt a few mild and hospitable inhabitants –while on either hand –high up on the level tops of the mountains dwelt a different & less cultivated race who had but little intercourse with themselves – so near indeed though inaccessible that I occasionally heard the bleating of their flocks– As the day was not yet spent and I was anxious to improve the light though my path was gradually rising to these higher levels I took leave of my kind hosts –who directed me to the dwelling of the nearest of the race – whom we will call Satyrus, who they said was a rude and inhospitable man. At length as the sun was setting behind the mountains in a still darker and more solitary vale, where the shaggy woods almost joined their tops over the torrent I reached the dwelling of my host. I observed as I drew near to his abode that he was less savage than I had feared, for he kept herds and dogs to watch them, and I saw where he made maple sugar on the sides of the mountains, and detected the voices of children mingling with the murmur of the torrent before the door. As I passed his stable I met one whom I took to be a hired man attending to his cattle, and inquired if they 17.According to “Marie Birdsall”
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entertained travellers at that house. “Some times we do” –he answered gruffly, and immediately went to the farthest stall from me– And I perceived that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the surrounding scenery –I bent my steps to the house– There was no sign post Before it nor invitation to the traveller though I saw by the road that many went and came there –but the owner’s name only was fastened to the outside –a sort of implied and sullen invitation, as I thought. I passed from room to room without meeting any one, at first, till I came to what seemed the guests apartment, which was neat and even had an air of refinement, and I was glad to find a chart on the wall which would direct me upon my journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step in a distant apartment which was the first I had entered, and went to see if the master of the house had come in, but it proved to be only a child, one of those whose voices I had heard, probably his son, and between him and me stood in the door way a large watch dog, which growled upon me and looked as if he would presently spring, but he boy did not speak to him nor seem to observe the danger. And when I asked him for a glass of water he briefly said “It runs in the corner.” So I took a mug and went outdoors again and searched round the corners of the house, but could find no well nor spring, nor any water, but the stream I have mentioned –which ran all along the front I came back therefore and set down the empty mug –thinking to ask if the stream was good to drink –saying I could not find it –whereupon the child seized the mug and going to the corner of the room where a cool spring trickled through a pipe into the apartment, filled it and drank, and gave it to me empty again –then calling to the dog rushed out of the room, and left me alone. This spring was cool and pure and seemed to issue from the mountain behind the house, and was conducted through it in pipes, and thence flowed into the stream in front. At length some of the men came in and drank and washed and combed their hair. And some of them sat down, as if wear; and fell asleep, without having spoken. All the while I saw no females, but sometimes heard a bustle in that part of the house, from which the spring came and whither the child had gone. At length Rice himself came in with an ox whip in his hand, breathing hard, and going to a corner drank some kind of liquor. He sat down not far from me and when I asked if he could give me a bed, he said there wa sons ready, but in such a a tone as if I ought to have known it, and the less said about that the better. I observed that it was a wild and rugged country which he inhabited and worth coming many miles to visit — “not so very rough neither,” said he, and appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and level of his fields, and the size of his crops, “And if we have some hills”, said he, “there’s no better pasturage any where.” I then asked if this place was not the one I heard of, calling it by the name I had seen on the map –or if it was a certain other, and he answered gruffly –that it was neither the one nor the other –that he had settled it –and cultivated it –and made it what it was –and I could know nothing about it –that it was a place between certain other places –and the books and maps were all wrong –for he had lived there longer than anybody. To tell the truth I was very much pleased with my host’s residence, and inclined even to exaggerate the grandeur of the scenery –and sought in many ways to make known my contentment. Observing some guns and other implements of hunting one the wall, and his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to change the discourse, and inquired if there was much game in that country –and he answered this question more graciously for he was evidently fond of the chace –but when I asked if there were many bears, he answered impatiently that he did not loose more sheep than his neighbors –he had tamed and civilized that region. After a pause, thinking of my journey on the morrow, and of the few hours of day-light in that hollow and mountainous country, which would require me to be on my way betimes, I remarked that the daylight must be shorter by an hour there than in the neighboring plains, at which he gruffly asked what I knew about it. And affirmed that he had as much light as his neighbors –he ventured to say the days were longer there than where I lived as I should find if I stayed –that some how or rather as I could’nt be expected to understand the sun came over the mountains a half an hour earlier and lingered a half an hour later, than elsewhere. Without regarding his rudeness I said with a little less familiarity that he was a fortunate man, and I trusted he was grateful for so much light –and rising said I would take a light, and I would pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to commence my journey on the morrow, even as early as the sun rose in his country, but he answered somewhat more civilly as I though that I should not fail to find some of his household stirring however early, for they were no sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them before I started if I chose, as as He lighted the lamp I could see a gleam of true hospitality and ancient civility –a beam of pure and even gentle humanity, from his bleared and moist eyes, for the effect of the liquor had in some measure worked off– And he led the way to my apartment stepping over the limbs of his men who were sound asleep on the floor, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed. But I arose by star light the next morning and usual, before my host HDT WHAT? 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or his men or even his dogs were awake, and having left an ninepence on the counter, was already half way over the mountain with the sun, before they had broken their fast. But before I had quite left the country of my host, while the first rays of the sun slanted over the mountains, as I had stopped by the wayside to gather some wild berries, a very aged man came along with a milking pail in his hand, and turning aside also began to pluck the berries with me, but when I inquired the way he answered in a low rough voice without looking up, or seeming to take any notice of me –which I imputed to his years – and presently mutturing to himself he proceed to collect his cows in a neighboring pasture, and when he had again returned to the wayside, he suddenly stopped while his cows went on before, and uncovering his head prayed aloud to God for his daily bread, and also that he who letteth his rain fall on the just and on the unjust, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground –would not neglect the stranger –meaning me– And when he had done praying I made bold to ask him –if he had any cheese in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered without looking up and as gruffly as before –that they did’nt make any –and went to milking. “The stranger who turneth away from a house with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and departeth, taking with him all the good actions of the owner.”
According to our faithful town history — “One branch of it rises in the south part of Hopkinton; and another from a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough, and running into Hopkinton, forms the boundary line between that town and Southborough. Thence in a northerly direction it passes through Framingham, and forms the boundary line between Sudbury and East sudbury (where it is sometimes called Sudbury River), and enters Concord at the south part of the town. After passing through it in a diagonal direction, it receives the North River, and, going out at the north east part between Bedford and Carlisle and through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at Lowell. It is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible by the eye. At low water mark? it is from 4 to 15 feet deep, and from 100 to 300 feet wide. Where it enters Concord it is 200 feet, and where it leaves it 330. At the former place it is 114 feet above low-water mark in Boston. In times when the river is highest, it overflows its banks, and is in many places more than a mile wide.” LEMUEL SHATTUCK
It was at this point that Thoreau was re-drafting some scraps from his earlier essay on “Sound and Silence” onto three sheets in his Long Book (2, 112-5) [compare this with A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, pages 391-3; it was these three sheets that Linck Johnson used in his reconstruction of the 1845 conclusion of the 1st draft (390-3)]:
As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude — so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. We go about to find Solitude and Silence, as though they dwelt only in distant glens and the depths of the wood [later Thoreau changed “wood” back to “forest”], venturing out from these fortresses at midnight — and do not dream that she is then imported into them when we wend thither– As the butcher busied himself with looking after his knife when he had it in his mouth. For where man is there is silence, And it takes a man to make a place silent. It [later Thoreau changed “It” back to “Silence”] is the communing of a conscious soul with itself– When we attend for a moment to our own infinity –audible to all men –at all times –in all places –It is when we hear inwardly –sound when he [illegible: “we”?] hear outwardly.
[after August 1: Silence is ever less strange and startling than noise.] Creation has not displaced her but is her visible frame work and foil– She is always at hand with her wisdom, by road sides and street corners — lurking in belfries, the cannon’s mouth, and the wake of the earthquake, gathering up and fondling their puny din in her ample bosom. Silence is ever less strange and startling than noise. and is any where intense and profound just in proportion as we find ourselves these. [Thoreau moved first sentence to end of paragraph and added “and is any where intense and profound just in proportion as we find ourselves these.”] All sounds are her servants and purveyers, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. The thunder is only the signal of her coming. [Thoreau interlined “to attend to her communications” but we don’t know where he intended to position this phrase.] All sound is nearly akin to silence — it is a bubble on her surface which straightway bursts, an evidence of the strength and prolificness of the under current. It is a faint utterance of silence — and then only agreeable to our HDT WHAT? INDEX
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auditory senses [JOURNAL: nerves] when it contrasts itself with and relieves the former. In proportion as it does this, and is a heightener and intensifier of the Silence — it is harmony and purest melody. Accordingly every melodious sound is an ally of silence — a help and not a hindrance to abstraction. Silence is the universal refuge. The sequel to all dull discourses, and all foolish acts –as balm to our every chagrin –as welcome after satiety as disappointment. That background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure he [illegible: “we”?] may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum. Where no indignity can assail no personality — disturb us. The orator puts off his individuality and is then most eloquent, when most silent. He listens while he speaks and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to her infinite din? She is Truth’s speaking trumpet– She is the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodena, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. through her all revelations have been made– Just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle they have obtained a clear insight, and their age been marked as an enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been Dark or Leaden. These have been garralous [garrulous] and noisy eras which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent & melodious era, is ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men. A good book is the plectrum with which our silent lyres are struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own unwritten sequel to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the work. Of all books this sequel is the most indispensable part. It should be the authors aim to say once and emphatically “he said” ‘’ This is the most the book maker can attain to If he make his volume a foil whereon the waves of silence may break it is well. It were vain for me to interpret the silence — she cannot be done into English. For six thousand years have men translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still is she little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time –thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her– but he too must at last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made. For when he at length dives into her — so vast is the disproportion of the told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the surface where he disappeared. Never the less will we go on, like those Chinese Cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth, which may one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea shore. [Two irrelevant paragraphs on Marlowe in the JOURNAL and one on how water-lily blossoms open simultaneously in the morning sunlight are omitted in this version being prepared for publication.] And now our boat was already grating against the bullrushes of its native port — and its keel again recognized the Concord mud where the flattened weeds still preserved some semblance of its own outline having scarce yet recovered themselves since its departure. And we leaped gladly on shore –drawing it up and fastening it to the little apple tree whose stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn –in the chafing of the spring freshets.18
As the poet [Charles Cotton, in “The Tempest”] says Standing upon the margent of the main, Whilst the high boiling tide came tumbling in, &c ** Soon could my sad imagination find A parallel to this half world of flood. An ocean by my walls of earth confined, And rivers in the channels of my blood; Discovering man, unhappy man, to be
18.The poet W.H. Auden has in 1962 brought forward a snippet from this day’s entry as:
THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS, A PERSONAL SELECTION BY W.H. AUDEN...
Pg Topic Aphorism Selected by Auden out of Thoreau
278 Writers and Readers It is the author’s aim to say once and emphatically, “He said.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Of this great frame Heaven’s epitome.— CHARLES COTTON
September 27, Friday: Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the Concord NH, New Hampshire Herald of Freedom published Anna Maria Whiting’s account of the antislavery fair held in Concord, Massachusetts on August 1, participated in by Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Thoreau.19
The Reverend Joel Hawes was in this year visiting Europe and points east, spending several months in Asia Minor and Turkey, where his only daughter Mrs. Mary E. Van Lennep, wife of the Reverend Henry J. Van Lennep, was a missionary. MRS. MARY E. VAN LENNEP
On May 11th this father had parted from his daughter at Smyrna and headed back toward America. She was then in excellent health. On this day, however, in Constantinople, after having for a few days suffered from an illness that had seemed mild, she died.
19. Wendell Glick. “Thoreau and the ‘Herald of Freedom’,” New England Quarterly XXII (1949). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
May 31, Saturday-June 4 (approximately): Frederick Douglass lectured in Concord for the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1847
September: In Concord, New Hampshire, the partnership of Downing & Abbot in the coach-building business was dissolved by mutual consent, J. Stephens Abbot continuing business at the old shops, and Lewis Downing, Senior taking in his sons as partner and removing to new shops nearly opposite the Phenix Hotel. The carriage manufacturing business seems to have received a new impetus about this time, and probably the combination between the two establishments did much to increase the business of both. The Messrs. Downings commenced in their new shops with about 30 hands, and in a few years increased to 80; they also started with 4 forges, which were increased to 11 in the shop, with 2 or 3 outside the yard. The settlement of California opened a large trade to them, both in coaches and carriages, and Lewis Downing, Senior, twice visited the West Coast to look after the business interests of the firm. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1850
In Concord, New Hampshire, the coach-building firm of Downing commenced the manufacture of omnibuses, and they built a large number which went to Philadelphia, and as, we remember, attracted considerable attention in the Quaker City, being escorted into the city by a band of music. In the meanwhile J. Stephens Abbot extended his business in the South and West. In the winter of 1849 his shops had been entirely destroyed by fire. He had immediately replaced them with the present commodious and convenient shops. In 1852 he would take his son, Edward A. Abbot, as a partner. In 1828 the firm of Downing & Abbot had but 4 forges, but that number grew to 11 in operation in their shops, besides much smith work done outside of their yard. The hands in the shops had increased from 75 in 1847 to about 200. At the breaking out of the rebellion, the Southern trade would cease, but new sources of demand would open in Mexico, California, South America, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and light carriages would be needed as well in Ireland, Scotland, and Prussia. HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
Levi Strauss makes his first pair of jeans from canvas he had brought from Austria to California to sell as tents and wagon tops. They were sold to a miner and they wore so well that soon other miners made orders. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1854
September 30, Saturday: Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion presented an image of Concord, New Hampshire:
CONSULT THE WIKIPEDIA
In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went on the Assabet River to the monarda road.
Review of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS under the heading “New Books” in the Harrisburg PA Morning HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
Herald, 2:1.
“A Yankee Diogenes”—a review of Thoreau’s “Walden” [in the October Putnam’s]—comes up to our idea of that eccentric work.
Review of “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” in the New York Christian Inquirer, 2:6.
A gentleman who lives five [sic] years all alone by himself, by the side of a pond in the woods, in a house costing $28.12, and whose yearly expenses for food, raiment, and luxuries, amount to $19.44, and who thinks that is the best way of living, will hardly persuade his readers that he is free from all extravagance. If any one, however, thinks “this is some crazy man,” he will find himself much mistaken if he reads his book. The great value of the work consists in the nice observation of nature which it shows. Its author has a rare gift not only of observing, but of describing all he saw and heard in the woods. He is also a scholar and a great admirer of the Greek and Latin classics. He keeps up his college studies, loves books, music, and pictures, though he lives in a shanty. Whatever may be thought of his oddities, no one can deny that he has written a work full of suggestion, and having here and there considerable wisdom. Almost every page is marked by a quaint humor which few can resist, and the style throughout is singularly nervous and racy.
From England, Nathaniel Hawthorne had written to Ticknor & Fields asking for some “good,” “original” books “with American characteristics” to show to Monckton Milnes. Ticknor & Fields responded by sending WALDEN; OR,LIFE IN THE WOODS and A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, and three other books. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
There was a treaty with the Chippewa: HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
ARTICLE 4. In consideration of and payment for the country hereby ceded, the United States agree to pay to the Chippewas of Lake Superior, annually, for the term of twenty years, the following sums, to wit: five thousand dollars in coin; eight thousand dollars in goods, household furniture and cooking utensils; three thousand dollars in agricultural implements and cattle, carpenter’s and other tools and building materials, and three thousand dollars for moral and educational purposes, of which last sum, three hundred dollars per annum shall be paid to the Grand Portage band, to enable them to maintain a school at their village. The United States will also pay the further sum of ninety thousand dollars, as the chiefs in open council may direct, to enable them to meet their present just engagements. Also the further sum of six thousand dollars, in agricultural implements, household furniture, and cooking utensils, to be distributed at the next annuity payment, among the mixed bloods of said nation. The United States will also furnish two hundred guns, one hundred rifles, five hundred beaver traps, three hundred dollars’ worth of ammunition, and one thousand dollars’ worth of ready made clothing, to be distributed among the young men of the nation, at the next annuity payment. ARTICLE 5. The United States will also furnish a blacksmith and assistant, with the usual amount of stock, during the continuance of the annuity payments, and as much longer as the President may think proper, at each of the points herein set apart for the residence of the Indians, the same to be in lieu of all the employees to which the Chippewas of Lake Superior may be entitled under previous existing treaties. ARTICLE 6. The annuities of the Indians shall not be taken to pay the debts of individuals, but satisfaction for depredations committed by them shall be made by them in such manner as the President may direct. ARTICLE 7. No spirituous liquors shall be made, sold, or used on any of the lands herein set apart for the residence of the Indians, and the sale of the same shall be prohibited in the Territory hereby ceded, until otherwise ordered by the President. ARTICLE 8. It is agreed, between the Chippewas of Lake Superior and the Chippewas of the Mississippi, that the former shall be entitled to two-thirds, and the latter to one-third, of all benefits to be derived from former treaties existing prior to the year 1847. ARTICLE 9. The United States agrees that an examination shall be made, and all sums that may be found equitably due to the Indians, for arrearages of annuity or other thing, under the provisions of former treaties, shall be paid as the chiefs may direct. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Articles of a treaty made and concluded at La Pointe, in the State of Wisconsin, between Henry C. Gilbert and David B. Herriman, commissioners on the part of the United States, and the Chippewa Indians of Lake Superior and the Mississippi, by their chiefs and headmen. ARTICLE 1. The Chippewas of Lake Superior hereby cede to the United States all the lands heretofore owned by them in common with the Chippewas of the Mississippi, lying east of the following boundary line, to wit: Beginning at a point, where the east branch of Snake River crosses the southern boundary line of the Chippewa country, running thence up the said branch to its source, thence nearly north, in a straight line, to the mouth of East Savannah River, thence up the St. Louis River to the mouth of East Swan River, thence up the East swan River to its source, thence in a straight line to the most westerly bend of Vermillion River, and thence down the Vermillion River to its mouth. The Chippewas of the Mississippi hereby assent and agree to the foregoing cession and consent that the whole amount of the consideration money for the country ceded above, shall be paid to the Chippewas of Lake Superior, and in consideration thereof the Chippewas of Lake Superior hereby relinquish to the Chippewas of the Mississippi, all their interest in and claim to the lands heretofore owned by them in common, lying west of the above boundary-line. ARTICLE 2. [Designation of boundary lines] ARTICLE 3. The United States will define the boundaries of the reserved tracts, whenever it may be necessary, by actual survey, and the President may, from time to time, at his discretion, cause the whole to be surveyed, and may assign to each head of a family or single person over twenty-one years of age, eighty acres of land for his or their separate use: and he may, at his discretion, as fast as the occupants become capable of transacting their own affairs, issue patents therefor to such occupants, with such restrictions of the power of alienation as he may see fit to impose. And he may also, at his discretion, make rules and regulations, respecting the disposition of the lands in case of the death of the head of a family, or single person occupying the same, or in case of its abandonment by them. And he may also assign other lands in exchange for mineral lands, if any such are found in the tracts herein set apart. And he may also make such changes in the boundaries of such reserved tracts or otherwise, as shall be necessary to prevent interference with any vested rights. All necessary roads, highways, and railroads, the lines of which may run through any of the reserved tracts, shall have the right of way through the same, compensation being made therefor as in other cases. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
ARTICLE 10. All missionaries, and teachers, and other persons of full age, residing in the territory hereby ceded, or upon any of the reservations hereby made by authority of law, shall be allowed to enter the land occupied by them at the minimum price whenever the surveys shall be completed to the amount of one quarter section each. ARTICLE 11. All annuity payments to the Chippewas of Lake Superior, shall hereafter be made at L’Anse, La Pointe, Grand Portage, and on the St. Louis River, and the Indians shall not be required to remove from the homes hereby set apart for them. And such of them as reside in the territory hereby ceded, shall have the right to hunt and fish therein, until otherwise ordered by the President. ARTICLE 12. In consideration of the poverty of the Bois Forte Indians who are parties to this treaty, they having never received any annuity payments, and of the great extent of that part of the ceded country owned exclusively by them, the following additional stipulations are made for their benefit. The United States will pay the sum of ten thousand dollars, as their chiefs in open council may direct, to enable them to meet their present just engagements. Also the further sum of ten thousand dollars, in five equal annual payments, in blankets, cloth, nets, guns, ammunition, and such other articles of necessity as they may require. They shall have the right to select their reservation at any time hereafter, under the direction of the President; and the same may be equal in extent, in proportion to their numbers, to those allowed the other bands, and be subject to the same provisions. They shall be allowed a blacksmith, and the usual smith shop supplies and also two persons to instruct them in farming, whenever in the opinion of the President it shall be proper, and for such length of time as he shall direct. It is understood that all Indians who are parties to this treaty, except the Chippewas of the Mississippi, shall hereafter be known as the Chippewas of Lake Superior. Provided, That the stipulation by which the Chippewas of Lake Superior relinquishing their right to land west of the boundary line shall not apply to the Bois Forte band who are parties to this treaty. ARTICLE 13. This treaty shall be obligatory on the contracting parties, as soon as the same shall be ratified by the President and Senate of the United States. In testimony whereof, the said Henry C. Gilbert, and the said David B. Herriman, commissioners as aforesaid, and the undersigned chiefs and headmen of the Chippewas of Lake Superior and the Mississippi, have hereunto set their hands and seals, at the place aforesaid, this thirtieth day of September, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. Henry C. Gilbert, David B Herriman HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
1856
Benning W. Sanborn’s THE HISTORY OF CONCORD, FROM ITS FIRST GRANT IN 1725 TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT IN 1853, WITH A HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT PENACOOKS was published in Concord, New Hampshire:
http://www.ci.concord.nh.us/library/concordhistory/concordv2.asp?siteindx=L0m,02 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1868
A big shipment went out of Concord, New Hampshire: a train loaded with 30 Abbot & Downing stagecoaches, heading west for delivery to the Wells, Fargo & Co. stagecoach line. This was such a red-letter event that the scene of the long train of highly decorated stages, pulling out of the station, was even painted.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Concord, New Hampshire HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: August 14, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PENACOOK CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE PENACOOK
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with