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[Illustration: J.W. BOOTT]






THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.

_A Massachusetts Magazine._

VOL. I. MARCH, 1884. No. III.

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Hon. JOSIAH GARDNER ABBOTT, LL.D.

By Colonel John Hatch George.


The Honorable JOSIAH GARDNER ABBOTT, the subject of this
biographic sketch, traces his lineage back to the first settlers of this
Commonwealth. The Puritan George Abbott, who came from Yorkshire,
England, in 1630, and settled in Andover, was his ancestor on his
father's side; while on his mother's side his English ancestor was
William Fletcher, who came from Devonshire in 1640, and settled, first,
in Concord, and, finally, in 1651, in Chelmsford. It may be noted in
passing that Devonshire, particularly in the first part of the
seventeenth century, was not an obscure part of England to hail from,
for it was the native shire of England's first great naval heroes and
circumnavigators of the globe, such as Drake and Cavendish.

George Abbott married Hannah, the daughter of William and Annis
Chandler, whose descendants have been both numerous and influential. The
young couple settled in Andover. As has been said, ten years after the
advent on these shores of George Abbott came William Fletcher, who,
after living for a short time in Concord, settled finally in Chelmsford.
In direct descent from these two original settlers of New England were
Caleb Abbott and Mercy Fletcher, the parents of the subject of this
sketch. Judge Abbott is, therefore, of good yeomanly pedigree. His
ancestors have always lived in Massachusetts since the settlement of the
country, and have always been patriotic citizens, prompt to respond to
every call of duty in the emergencies of their country, whether in peace
or war. Both his grandfathers served honorably in the war of the
Revolution, as their fathers and grandfathers before them served in the
French and Indian wars of the colonial period of our history. In his
genealogy there is no trace of Norman blood or high rank: but

  "The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
  The man's the gowd for a' that."


In this country, while it is not necessary to success to be able to lay
claim to an aristocratic descent, it is certainly a satisfaction,
however democratic the community may be, for any person to know that his
grandfather was an honest man and a public-spirited citizen.

Judge Abbott was born in Chelmsford on the first of November, 1814. He
was fitted for college under the instruction of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He
entered Harvard College at the early age of fourteen and was graduated
in 1832. After taking his degree, he studied law with Nathaniel Wright,
of Lowell, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. In 1840, he formed with
Samuel A. Brown a partnership, which continued until he was appointed to
the bench in 1855.

From the very first, Judge Abbott took a leading position in his
profession, and at once acquired an extensive and lucrative practice,
without undergoing a tedious probation, or having any experience of the
"hope deferred which maketh the heart sick." In criminal cases his
services were in great demand. He had, and has, the advantage of a fine
and commanding person, which, both at the bar and in the Senate, and, in
fact, in all situations where a man sustains the relation of an advocate
or orator before the public, is really a great advantage, other things
being equal. As a speaker, Judge Abbott is fluent, persuasive, and
effective. He excites his own intensity of feeling in the jury or
audience that he is addressing. His client's cause is emphatically his
own. He is equal to any emergency of attack or defence. If he believes
in a person or cause, he believes fully and without reservation; thus he
is no trimmer or half-and-half advocate. He has great capacity for
labor, and immense power of application, extremely industrious habits,
and what may be called a nervous intellectuality, which, in athletic
phrase, gives him great staying power, a most important quality in the
conduct of long and sharply contested jury trials. After saying this, it
is almost needless to add that he is full of self-reliance and of
confidence in whatever he deliberately champions. His nerve and pluck
are inherited traits, which were conspicuous in his ancestors, as their
participation in the French and Indian wars, and in the war for
Independence, sufficiently shows. Three of Judge Abbott's sons served in
the army during the war of the Rebellion, and two of them fell in
battle, thus showing that they, too, inherited the martial spirit of
their ancestors.

Judge Abbott had just reached his majority, when he was chosen as
representative to the Legislature. In 1841, he was elected State
senator. During his first term in the Senate he served on the railroad
and judiciary committees; and during his second term, as chairman of
these committees, he rendered services of great and permanent value to
the State. At the close of his youthful legislative career he returned
with renewed zeal to the practice of his profession. His ability as a
legislator had made him conspicuous and brought him in contact with
persons managing large business interests, who were greatly attracted by
the brilliant young lawyer and law-maker, and swelled the list of his
clients.

At this period General Butler was almost invariably his opposing or
associate counsel. When they were opposed, it is needless to say that
their cases were tried with the utmost thoroughness and ability. When
they were associated, it is equally needless to say that there could
hardly have been a greater concentration of legal ability. In 1844,
Judge Abbott was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention at
Baltimore, which nominated James K. Polk as its presidential candidate;
and he has been a delegate, either from his district or the State at
large, to all but one of the Democratic National Conventions since,
including, of course, the last one, at Cincinnati, which nominated
General Winfield S. Hancock. His political prominence is shown by the
fact that he has invariably been the chairman of the delegation from his
State, and, several times, the candidate of his party in the Legislature
for the office of United States senator.

Judge Abbott was on the staff of Governor Marcus Morton. In 1853, he was
a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, which consisted so largely
of men of exceptional ability. In the debates and deliberations of this
convention, he took a conspicuous part. In 1835, he was appointed judge
of the superior court of Suffolk County. He retired from the bench in
1858, having won an enviable reputation for judicial fairness and
acumen, and suavity of manner, in the trial of cases, which made him
deservedly popular with the members of the bar who practised in his
court. In the year following his retirement from the bench, he removed
his office from Lowell to Boston, where he has since resided, practising
in the courts, not only of this Commonwealth, but of the neighboring
States and in the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1874, he was
elected a member of Congress, from the fourth congressional district of
Massachusetts. He was chosen by his Democratic colleagues of the House a
member of the Electoral Commission, to determine the controverted result
of the presidential election. When the gravity of the situation, and the
dangers of the country at that time, are taken into account, it is
obvious that no higher compliment could have been paid than that
involved in this selection; a compliment which was fully justified by
the courage and ability which Judge Abbott manifested as a member of
that commission. It should have been mentioned before, that, in 1838,
Judge Abbott married Caroline, daughter of Judge Edward St. Loe
Livermore. After what has been said, it is scarcely necessary to give a
summary of the prominent traits of Judge Abbott as a man and a lawyer.
The warmth and fidelity of his friendship are known to all such as have
had the good fortune to enjoy that friendship. He is as conspicuous for
integrity and purity of character as for professional ability. As a
citizen, he is noted for patriotism, liberality, and public spirit.
As a politician, he is true to his convictions. As a business man,
he has brought to the aid of the large railroad and manufacturing
interests, with which he has long been, and is still, connected, large
intelligence, great energy, and sound judgment. His physical and mental
powers are undiminished, and it may be hoped that many years of honor
and prosperity are still in store for him.


GENEALOGY.

[1. GEORGE ABBOT, the pioneer, born in 1615, emigrated from Yorkshire,
England, about 1640, and was one of the first settlers and proprietors
of Andover, in 1643. His house was a garrison for many years. In 1647,
he married Hannah Chandler, daughter of William and Annis Chandler. They
were industrious, economical, sober, pious, and respected. With
Christian fortitude they endured their trials, privations, and dangers.
He died December 24, 1681, aged 66. She married (2) the Reverend Francis
Dane, minister of Andover, who died in February, 1697, aged 81. She died
June 11, 1711, aged 82.

2. TIMOTHY ABBOT, seventh son and ninth child of George and Hannah
(Chandler) Abbot, born November 17, 1663; was captured during the Indian
War in 1676, and returned in a few months to his parents; was married in
January, 1690, to Hannah Graves, who died November 16, 1726. He lived at
the garrison-house, and died September 9, 1730.

3. TIMOTHY ABBOT, eldest son of Timothy and Hannah (Graves) Abbott, was
born July 1, 1663; lived with his father in the garrison-house; was
industrious, honest, useful, and respected. He married in December,
1717, Mary Foster, and died July 10, 1766.

4. NATHAN ABBOT, third son and sixth child of Timothy and Mary (Foster)
Abbot, was born January 18, 1729; married, in 1759, Jane Paul.

5. CALEB ABBOT, son of Nathan and Jane (Paul) Abbot, married, in 1779,
Lucy Lovejoy, who died February 21, 1802; he married (2) Deborah Baker;
he died 1819.

6. CALEB ABBOTT, son of Caleb and Lucy (Lovejoy) Abbot, was born
November 10, 1779; settled in Chelmsford; married Mercy Fletcher
(daughter of Josiah Fletcher), who died in 1834; he died December 5,
1846.

7. JOSIAH GARDNER ABBOTT, second son and fourth child of Caleb and Mercy
(Fletcher) Abbott, was born November 1, 1814. In 1838, he married
Caroline Livermore, daughter of the Honorable Edward St. Loe Livermore,
and granddaughter of the Honorable Samuel Livermore, of New Hampshire.
Their children are:--

I. Caroline Marcy Abbott, born April 25, 1839; married April 19, 1869;
and died in May, 1872, leaving one daughter, Caroline Derby, born in
April, 1872.

II. Edward Gardner Abbott, born in Lowell, September 29, 1840; was
killed in battle August 9, 1862.

III. Henry Livermore Abbott, born January 21, 1842; was killed in battle
May 6, 1864.

IV. Fletcher Morton Abbott, born February 18, 1843.

V. William Stackpole Abbott, born November 18, 1844; died May 6, 1846.

VI. Samuel Appleton Browne Abbott, born March 6, 1846; married October
15, 1873, Abby Francis Woods, and has four children.

  (_a_) Helen Francis Abbott, born July 29, 1874.
  (_b_) Madeline Abbott, born November 2, 1876.
  (_c_) Francis Abbott, born September 8, 1878.
  (_d_) Caroline Livermore Abbott, born April 25, 1880.

VII. Sarah Livermore Abbott, born May 14, 1850; married October 12,
1870, William P. Fay, and has three children.

  (_a_) Richard Sullivan Fay, born in July, 1871.
  (_b_) Catherine Fay, born in September, 1872.
  (_c_) Edward Henry Fay, born in 1876.

VIII. Franklin Pierce Abbott, born May 6, 1842.

IX. Arthur St. Loe Livermore Abbott, born November 6, 1853; died March
28, 1863.

X. Grafton, born November 14, 1856.

XI. Holker Welch Abbott, born February 28, 1858.

EDITOR.]

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ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.--A Review.

By Lucius H. Buckingham, Ph.D.


Those who have read Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism will probably agree on
one point, namely: that, whether the statements of the book be true or
false, the book, as a whole, is a great stimulant of thought. The
European world has looked upon Indian philosophy as mere dreams, idle
speculations, built only on a foundation of metaphysical subtleties.
Here comes a book which, going down to the root of the whole matter,
claims that, instead of resting on mere imaginations, this whole
structure of Buddhistic philosophy has, as its cornerstone, certain
facts which have been preserved from the wrecks of a time earlier than
that which our grandfathers ascribe to the creation of the world, and
handed down without interruption from eras of civilization of which the
earth at present does not retain even the ruins. Such a claim of
antiquity rouses an interest in our minds, were it only for its
stupendous contempt of common belief.

There is one direction in which the book so harmonizes with one's
speculations that it makes upon us a very peculiar impression. It
carries out the theory of human development, physical and metaphysical.
Darwin's idea of the origin of the human animal, in connection with the
doctrine of the survival of the fittest, might, if one had the time to
make it all out, be shown to be the sufficient basis for a belief in,
and a logical ground for anticipating, the progress of man toward moral
and spiritual perfection. A healthy man is an optimist. Pessimism is the
product of dyspepsia; and all the intermediate phases of philosophy come
from some want of normal brain-action. Following out the Darwinian
theory,--supported as it seems to be by the facts,--one must believe
that the human race as a whole is improving in bodily development; that
the results of what we call civilization are, increase of symmetry in
the growth of the human body, diminution of disease, greater perfection
in the power of the senses, in short, a gradual progress toward a
healthy body. Now, a healthy body brings with it a healthy mind. The two
cannot be separated. Whatever brings the one will bring the other;
whatever impairs the one will impair the other. A sound mind must bring,
in time, a sound moral nature; and all, together, will tend toward the
perfection of humanity in the development of his spiritual affinities.
Such has been, roughly sketched, my belief regarding the progress of
man. It has left all the men of the past ages, all of the present time,
all of many generations yet to come, in a condition, which, compared
with that which I try to foresee, must be called very immature. This has
never been a stumbling-block to me; for I hold that the Lord understands
his own work, the end from the beginning; and that, if "order is
heaven's first law," there is a place for every soul that is in it,
and a possible satisfaction of the desires of every one. Dr. Clarke
expresses the thought that, however much any being may have gone astray,
the soul reconciled at last to God, though it can never undo the past,
or be at that point it might have reached, will yet be perfectly content
with its place in the universe, and as much blessed as the archangels.
That consideration has satisfied my mind when I contemplated humanity,
seeming to stop so far short of its perfection. My regrets--if I can use
such a term--came, as I believed, out of my ignorance.

Now comes a book which claims to give us the key of the whole problem of
human destiny--a book containing some assertions regarding occult
science, belief in which must remain suspended in our minds, and some
points in cosmogony which conflict with our Christian convictions--yet a
book making statements about human history which, though in the highest
degree startling, are not contradicted by anything we know of the past,
but are rather an explanation of some of its dark passages--a book
developing a system of human growth which cannot be disproved and which
makes plain some of the riddles of destiny.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is its tremendous
assumption. "All that have hitherto written on this subject have been
only half-taught. They have not been admitted to the real inner
doctrine. Here is the first putting-forth, to the world, of the real
teaching, as the Buddhists present it to those who have been initiated
into occult science." Such is, in substance, the author's claim. We may
believe just as much of this as we can. I, for my part, knowing nothing
about the matter, choose, just now, and for our purpose, to assume that
the doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism are what Sinnett says they are,
because they suggest to my mind so many attractive avenues for my
imagination to wander in.

There are two main points in this book which give it its chief interest:
(1) "The past history of the human race as now living on this planet;"
and (2) "The manner in which, and the circumstances under which, any
individual man works out his own salvation." But before entering upon
these, we should say a word about the Buddhist statements regarding the
nature of man.

Seven is the sacred number in the Buddhist system. As there are seven
worlds in the planetary chain, seven kingdoms in Nature, seven
root-races of men, in like manner man is a sevenfold being, continuing,
through untold millions of years, his existence as an individual, yet
changing, one knows not how many times, many of his component elements.
As the Buddhist sees the mortal body to be dissolved into its molecules,
and these molecules to be transferred with their inherent vitality to
other organisms, so some of his higher elements, among them his "astral
body," his impulses and desires, under the name, as our author gives it,
of _animal soul_, may separate from the more enduring parts of his
composition, and become lost to him in Nature's great store of material
substance. As there is an _animal soul_, the seat of those
faculties which we possess in common with the lower beings about us, so
there is a _human soul_, the seat of intelligence; and, higher
still, a _spiritual soul_, possessing powers of which as yet we
know but little, yet destined to give us, when it shall be more fully
developed, new powers of sense, new avenues for the entrance of
knowledge, by which we shall be able to communicate directly with
Nature, and become as much greater than the present race of men, as
_that_ is greater than the lowest brutes. Above all these elements
of man, controlling all, and preserving its individuality throughout, is
"spirit." Yet even this, when absorbed into Nirvana, is lost in that
great whole which includes all things and is Nature herself. Lost, do I
say?--yes, lost for inconceivable ages upon ages, yet destined to come
forth again at some moment in eternity, and to begin its round through
the everlasting cycle of evolution.

Here, you will say, is materialism. As the intelligent man of early ages
looked out upon the world, he felt the wind he could not see, he smelt
the odor that he could not feel, and he reasoned with himself, I think,
as follows; "There is somewhat too subtile for these bodily senses to
grasp it. Something of which I cannot directly take cognizance brings
to me the light of sun and stars." These somethings were, in his
conception, forms of matter. He saw the intelligence and the moral worth
of his friend, and then he saw that friend a lifeless body stretched
upon the ground, and he said some _thing_ is gone. This thing was
again to him only another and more subtile form of matter. We, with all
the aids of modern knowledge and thought, are absolutely unable to say
what distinction there is between matter and spirit. The old philosopher
was logical. He could find no point at which to draw his line. Therefore
he drew no line. He recognized only different manifestations of one
substance. In terms of our language, he was a materialist. So is the
modern scientist; yet I cannot help thinking that the Buddhist stands
much nearer to truth than the materialist of to-day. The various
faculties of human sense and human intellect are so many molecules
forming, by their accretion, the animal and the human soul. As, at
death, the molecules of the body separate and are, by-and-by, absorbed
with their inherent vitality into new agglomerations, and become part of
new living forms, so the elements of the human soul may be torn apart,
and some of them, being no longer man, but following the fortunes of the
lower principles, may be lost to us, while other elements, clinging to
the spiritual soul, follow its destiny in the after-life. I know a
thinking man who believes in nothing but matter and motion; add time and
space, and we have the all in all, the Nature, of Buddhism. Yet the
Buddhist believes in a state of being beyond this earthly life: a state
whose conditions are determined absolutely by the use which the human
soul has made of its opportunities in the life that now is, and my
friend says he does not. Truly, Buddhism is better than the materialism
of to-day.

Let me now turn to the history of humanity as revealed to us in our
book. Every monad, or spirit-element, beginning its course by becoming
separated from what I conceive as the great central reservoir of Nature,
must, before returning thither, make a certain fixed round through an
individual existence. If it belongs to the planetary chain, of which our
earth is the fourth and lowest link, it must pass seven times through
each of the kingdoms of Nature on each one of the seven planets. Of
these seven planets, Mars, our Earth, and Mercury, are three. The other
four are too tenuous to be cognizable by our present senses. Of the
seven kingdoms of Nature, three are likewise beyond our ken or
conception; the highest four are the mineral, the vegetable, the animal,
and man. Our immortal part has therefore passed already through six of
the kingdoms of its destiny, and is, in fact, now near the middle of its
fourth round of human existence upon the earth. One life on earth is,
however, not sufficient for the development of our powers. Every human
being must pass through each of the seven branch races of each of the
sub-races of each of the root-races of humanity; and must, in short,
live, or, as our author expresses the idea, be incarnated about eight
hundred times--some more and some less--upon this planet, before the
hour will come when it will be permitted to him, by a path as easy of
passage for him then, as is that followed by the rays of light, to visit
the planet Mercury, for his next two million years of existence.

Through each of these eight hundred mortal lives, man is purifying and
developing his nature. When, at the end of each, his body dies, his
higher principles leave the lower to gradual dissolution, while they
themselves remaining still bound in space to this planet, pass into
_Devachan_, the state of effects. Here, entirely unconscious of what
passes on earth, the soul remains, absorbed in its own subjectivity. For
a length of time, stated as never less than fifteen hundred years, and
shown by figures to average not less than eight thousand, the soul,
enjoying in its own contemplation those things it most desired in mortal
life, surrounded in its own imagination by the friends and the scenes it
has loved on earth, reaps the exact reward of its own deeds. When Nature
has thus paid the laborer his hire, when his power of enjoyment has
exhausted itself, the soul passes by a gradual process into oblivion of
all the past--an oblivion from which it returns only on its approach to
Nirvana--and waits the moment for reincarnation. Yet it comes not again
to conscious life, unaffected by the forgotten past. _Karma_,--the
resultant of its upward or downward tendencies,--which has been
accumulating through all the course of its existence, remains; and the
new-born man comes into visible being with good or evil propensities,
the balance of which is to be affected by the struggles of one more
mortal phase of existence. Thus we go on through one life after another,
each time a new person yet the same human soul, ignorant of our own past
lives, yet never free from their influence upon our character, exactly
as in mature life we have absolutely forgotten what happened to us in
our infancy, yet are never free from its influence. In Devachan, which
corresponds, says our author, to what in other religions is the final
and eternal heaven, we receive, from time to time, the reward of our
deeds done in the body, yet still pass on with all our upward or
downward tendencies until, many millions of years in the future, during
our next passage through life on this planet, we shall come to the
crisis in our existence which shall determine whether we are to become
gods or demons.

Let me now turn back the page of history. A little more than one million
years ago this earth was covered, as now, with vegetable forms, and was
the dwelling of animals, as numerous, perhaps, and as various as now;
but there was no humanity. The time was come when man, who had passed
already three times round the planetary chain, and was nearly half way
through his fourth round, should again make his appearance on the scene.
Nature works only in her own way, and that way is uniform. The first man
must be born of parents already living. As there are no human parents,
he must be born of lower animals, and of those lower animals most nearly
resembling the coming human animal. Darwin has told us what the animal
was, yet the new being was a man and not an ape, because, in addition to
its animal soul, it was possessed also of a human soul. We all know that
man is an animal. Those modern students of science, who affirm that that
is the whole truth of human nature, take a lower view of their own being
than the Indian philosophers. Man is an animal plus a human and a
spiritual soul.

Behold, now, the earth peopled by man. Through seven races must he pass,
each with its various branches. Yet these races are not contemporaneous;
for Nature is in no hurry. One race comes forward at a time, reaches
the height of its possibility, then passes away during great physical
transformations, and leaves but a wreck behind to live, and witness,
in some new part of earth, the coming of another race. These races
and branch races and sub-branch races are to be animated by the same
identical souls. Hence, one race at a time; at first, even, one sub-race
only, for the next is to be of a higher order. After each root-race has
run its course, the earth has always been prepared by a great geological
convulsion for the next. In this convulsion has perished all that makes
up what we call civilization, yet not all men then living. Since some
souls are slower than others, all are not ready to pass into the second
race, when the time for that race has come. Hence fragments of old races
survive, kept up for a time by the incarnation of the laggard souls
whose progress has been too slow. Thus, we are told, although the first
and second root-races have now entirely disappeared, there still remain
relics of the third and fourth. The proper seat of this third root-race
was that lost continent which Wallace told us, long ago, stood where now
roll the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, south and southwest of
Asia. Here we have, in the degraded Papuan and Australian, the remainder
of the third race. Degraded I call him, because his ancestors, though
inferior to the highest races of to-day, were far in advance of him. So
it must always be. Destroy the accumulations of the highest race of men
now living, and the next generation will be barbarians; the second,
savages.

The fourth root-race inhabited the famous, but no longer fabulous,
Atlantis, now sunk, in greater part, beneath the waters of the Atlantic.
Fragments of this race were left in Northern Africa, though perhaps none
now remain there, and we are told that there is a remnant in the heart
of China. From the relics of the African branch of this root-race, the
old Egyptian priests had knowledge regarding the sunken continent,
knowledge which was no fable, but the traditionary lore and history of
the survivors of the lost Atlantis.

Such is, in brief, an outline of the nature, history, and destiny of
man, as the Buddhist relates it. How has he obtained his knowledge? By
means which, he says, are within the reach of any one. First, of the
history: it is said to be well authenticated tradition. Of the actual
knowledge of former races, the Egyptian priests were the repositories,
inheriting their information from the Atlantids. Of human nature and
destiny the Buddhist would say: Here are the facts, look about you and
see. From a theory of astronomy, or botany, or chemistry, we find an
explanation of facts, and these facts explained, confirm and establish
the theory. So, too, of man, here is the view, once a theory, but now as
firmly established as the law of gravitation. Besides, by study and
contemplation, the expert has developed, in advance of the age in which
he lives, his spiritual soul, and this opens to him sources of
information which place him on a higher level in point of knowledge than
the rest of mankind, just as the man with seeing eyes has possibilities
of information which are absolutely closed to one born blind.

Let me stop here to explain more fully what is the spiritual soul.
I should call it, using a term that seems to me more natural to our
vocabulary, the transcendental sense. In the reality of such a sense
I am a firm believer. It was once fashionable to ridicule whatever was
thought, or nicknamed, transcendental. Yet transcendentalism seems to
me the only complete bar to modern scepticism. Faith, in the highest
Christian sense, is transcendental. We know some things for which we can
bring no evidence, things the truth of which lies not in logic, nor even
in intellect. The intellect never gave man any firm conviction of God's
being. Paley's mode of reasoning never brought conviction to any man's
mind. At best, it only serves to confirm belief, to stifle doubt, to
silence logic misapplied. Faith is the action of the spiritual sense--or,
as the Buddhist says, the spiritual soul. It seems to me that it is a
fair statement, that every man who has a conviction of the being of God,
has that conviction from inspiration. Many people have it, or think they
have it, as a result of reasoning, or it has been, they say, grounded
and rooted in their minds by the earliest teaching. There are those,
perhaps, who have no other reason than this tradition, for their
supersensuous ideas. Such people, as soon as they come to reason
seriously on or about those ideas, begin to doubt and to lose their
hold. But others have a conviction regarding things unseen, that no
reasoning can shake, except for a moment; because their belief, though
it may have been originally the result of early teaching, is now
established on other foundations. One can no more tell how he knows some
things, than he can tell how he sees; yet he does know them, and all the
world cannot get the knowledge out of him. The source of this knowledge
is transcendental. It is a sixth sense. It is what the Buddhist calls an
activity of the spiritual, as distinct from the human, soul. By his
animal soul man has knowledge of the world around him; he sees, he
hears, he feels bodily pain or pleasure; by his human soul, he reasons,
he receives the conceptions of geometry or the higher mathematics;
by his spiritual soul, he comes to a conception of God and of his
attributes, and receives impressions whose source is unknown to him
because his spiritual soul, in this his fourth planetary round, is, as
yet, only imperfectly active. The reality of the spiritual soul, the
vehicle of inspiration, the source of faith, is the only earnest man has
for this trust in the Divine Father. It is not developed in us as it
will be in our next round through earthly life, when, by its awakening,
faith will become sight, and we shall know even as we are known. Yet
some there are, say the Buddhists, who have, by effort, already pushed
their development to the point that most men will reach millions of
years hence, when we shall return again, not to this life--that we shall
do perhaps in a few thousand years--but to this planet.

It will be seen that the Buddhist idea of spirituality is very unlike
our Christian idea. The thought of man's higher sense striving after the
Divine, the whole conception, in short, of what the word spirituality
suggests to modern thought, is impossible in a system of philosophy
which has no personal God. To apply the term religion to a scheme which
has no place for the dependence of man upon a conscious protector, is to
use the word in a sense entirely new to us. Buddhism--notwithstanding
its claims to revelation--is a philosophy, not a religion.

I have sketched, as well as I can in so short a time, what seem to
me the main points in the book under review. There are many things
unexplained. Of some of them, the author claims to have no knowledge.
Others he does not make clear; but, "take it for all in all," the hook
will probably give the reader a very great number of suggestions. I am
heterodox enough to say that if the idea of a personal God, the Father
of all, were superadded to the system (or perhaps I ought to say were
substituted for the idea of absorption into Nirvana), there would be
nothing in Buddhism contradictory of Christianity. What orthodox
Christians of the present day and of this country believe with regard to
eternal punishment is a question about which they do not altogether
agree among themselves. Whether the so-called hell is a place of
everlasting degradation, is a point on which those who cannot deny to
each other the name of Christian are not in accord. Why, then, should it
be thought heretical to maintain that the future world of _rewards_
is _also_ not eternal? I believe that the Christian Scriptures use
the same words with reference to both conditions--

  "[Greek: To pyr to aiônion:--eis xôên aiônion.]"

The Buddhist denial of the eternity of the condition next following the
separation of soul and body cannot, I think, be pronounced a subversion
of Christian doctrine by any one who will admit that the Greek word
[Greek: aiônios] _may_ mean something less than endless.

Of the antiquity of Buddhistic philosophy, I have already spoken
indirectly. Buddha came upon the earth only 643 B.C. But he was not the
founder of the system. His purpose in reincarnating himself at that time
was to reform the lives of men. Doubtless he made many explanations of
doctrine, perhaps gave some new teaching; but the philosophy comes down
to us from, at least, the times of the fourth root-race, the men of
Atlantis.

However we may regard a claim to so great age, a little reflection will
convince us that the Buddhistic view of what may fairly be called the
natural history of the human soul is very old, for it seems to have been
essentially the doctrine of Pythagoras, who was not its founder, but who
may have got it either from Egypt or from India, since he visited and
studied in both those countries. If, as Sinnett asserts, the true
Chinese belong to the fourth root-race, as appears not improbable, did
not the system come into India from China? Plato was a Buddhist, says
our author. Quintilian, perhaps getting his idea from Cicero, says of
Plato that he learned his philosophy from the Egyptian priests. It is
much more probable that the latter received it from the Atlantids--if we
are to believe in them--than that it came from India. Indeed, when we
seem to trace the same teachings to the Indians, on the one side, and to
the Egyptians on the other, putting the one, through Thibet,--the land,
above all others, of occult science,--into communication with the true
Chinese, and the other, through their tradition, with the lost race of
the Atlantic, the asserted history of the fourth root-race of humanity
assumes a very attractive degree of reasonableness.

That Cicero held to the Buddhist doctrines at points so important as to
make it improbable that he did not have esoteric teaching in the system,
any one will, I believe, admit, who will read the last chapter of the
Somnium Scipionis. And Cicero's ideas must have been those of the
students and scholars of his day. He puts them forward in a manner too
commonplace, too much as if they were things of course, for us to
suppose that there was anything unusual in them. On this subject of the
wide extension of that philosophy which in India we call Buddhism, I
will make only one other suggestion. It is the guess that it lay at the
foundation of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries.

Let me now come back to the idea that the succession of human races upon
this earth is, like that of animal races, a development. Sinnett tells
us that what we recognize as language began with the third root-race. I
imagine that the preceding races had, in progressive development, some
vocal means of communication; for we find that even the lower animals
have that, and the lowest man of the first race was superior to the
highest possible animal, by the very fact that he had developed a human
soul. Now, we are told that the home of the third race was on the
continent "Lemuria," which stretched across the Indian Ocean. I imagine
the Tasmanians, the Papuans, and the degraded races of that part of the
world to be fragments of the third race. Query: Is the famous click of
the Zulu a remainder of the gradual passage from animal noise to human
articulation in speech?

Again, the true Chinese belong to the fourth root-race. They have
reached the height of their possible intellectual advance. They have
been stationary for untold centuries. Query: Does this account for their
apparent inability to develop their language beyond the monosyllable?

There are, have been, or will be, seven branches to each of the seven
great races. These branches must originate at long intervals of time,
one after the other, though several may be running their course at the
same moment. For instance, the second race could not come into the
world, until some human souls had passed at least twice, as we are told,
through "the world of effects." This would occupy at least sixteen
thousand years, according to our author's calculation, though he does
not claim to have on this point exact information. He says, only, that
the initiated know exactly the periods of time: but they are withheld
from him. Now, according to a French savant, geological investigation
proves that the Aryan race--branch-race, I will call it--was preceded in
Europe by at least three others, whose remains are found in the caves
or strata that have been examined. Of these the first has entirely
disappeared: no representatives of it are now to be found in any known
part of the world. The second was driven, apparently, from the north, by
the invasions of the ice, during the glacial period and spread as far,
at least, as the Straits of Gibraltar. With the disappearance of the
ice, they also traveled toward the pole, and are now existing in the
northern regions of the earth, under the name of Esquimaux. Following
them came a race, the fragments of which were powerful within historic
days in the Iberian peninsula,--the Iberians of the Roman writers--the
Basques of to-day. Then came from the east the Aryan race, hitherto the
highest form of humanity. These races do not, of course, begin existence
as new creations. They are developed from--their first members must be
born from--the preceding race. Query: Is a fifth race now in the throes
of nativity? Have the different sub-races of the Aryan branch sent their
contingents to the New World, that from the mixture of their boldest and
most vigorous blood the fifth sub-race might have its origin? "Westward
the star of empire takes its way."

Buddhism gives a peculiar explanation of the disappearance of inferior
races. Since the object of the incarnation of the human soul is its
progress toward the perfect and divine man; since every human soul must
dwell on earth as a member of each one of the sub-races, the time must
come when all shall have passed through a given stage. Then there can be
no more births into that race. There is, at this moment, a finite number
of human souls whose existence is limited to this planet, and no other
planet in our chain is at present the abode of humanity. For the larger
part of all these souls--at least nine hundred and ninety-nine in a
thousand--are, at anyone instant, existing in "the world of effects," in
Devachan. All will remain linked by their destiny to this planet, until
the moment when all--a few rare, unfortunate, negligent laggards
excepted--shall have passed through their last mortal probation, in the
seventh root-race. Then will the tide of humanity overflow to the planet
Mercury, and this earth, abandoned by conscious men, will for a million
years fall back into desolation, gradually deprived of all life, even of
all development. In that condition it will remain, sleeping, as it were,
for ages--"not dead, but sleeping"; for the germs of mineral, vegetable,
and animal life will await, quiescent, until the tide of human soul
shall have passed around the chain, and is again approaching our globe.
Then will earth awake from its sleep. In successive eons, the germs of
life, mineral, vegetable, and animal, in their due order, will awake;
the old miracle of creation will begin again, but on a higher plan than
before, until, at last, the first human being--something vastly higher
in body, mind, and spirituality than the former man--will make his
appearance on the new earth. From this explanation of the doctrine that
life moves not by a steady flow, but by what Sinnett calls gushes, it
follows, of course, that there must come a time when each race, and each
sub-race, must have finished its course, completed its destiny. There
are no more human souls in Devachan to pass through that stage of
progress. For a long time the number has been diminishing, and that race
has been losing ground. Now it has come to its end. So, within a hundred
years, has passed away the Tasmanian. So, to-day, are passing many
races. The disappearance of a lower race is therefore no calamity; it
is evidence of progress. It means that that long line of undeveloped
humanity must go up higher. "That which thou sowest, is not quickened
except it die." If there be "joy among the angels of God, over one
sinner that repenteth," why not when the whole human race, to the last
man, has passed successfully up into a higher class in the great school?

I am constantly turning back to a thought that I have passed by. Let me
now return to the consideration of Buddhism as a religion. It is evident
that, viewed on this side, Buddhism is one thing to the initiated,
another to the masses. So was the religion of the Romans, so is
Christianity. It is necessarily so. No two persons receive the formal
creed of the same church in the same way. The man of higher grade, and
the man of lower, cannot understand things in the same sense because
they have not the same faculties for understanding. Hence the polytheism
among those called Buddhists. There could be no such thing among the
initiated. Religion, then, like everything else, is subject to growth.
Such must be the Buddhist doctrine. If, then, Buddhism, or the
philosophy which bears that name, originated with the fourth root-race
of men, does it not occur to the initiated that the fifth race ought, by
this same theory, to develop a higher form of truth? Looking at the
matter merely on its intellectual side, ought not the higher development
of the power of thought to bring truer conceptions of the highest
things? Again, a query: Is the rise of the Brahmo-Somaj a step toward
the practical extension of Christianity into the domain of Buddhism?

This brings to discussion the whole question of the work done by
missionary effort among the lower races. I do not mean the question
whether we should try to Christianize them, but what result is it
reasonable to expect. And here I imagine that there is a strict limit,
beyond which it is impossible for the members of a given race to be
developed. On the Buddhist principle, given a certain human being, and
we have a human soul passing through a definite stage of its progress.
While it occupies its present body it is, except, our author always
says, in very peculiar cases, incapable of more than a certain
advance,--as incapable as a given species of animal, or tree, or even as
the body of the man itself is incapable of more than a certain growth. I
think that any one who has studied or observed the processes of ordinary
school training, must have been sometimes convinced that he has in hand
a boy whose ability to be further advanced has come to an end. Sometimes
we find a boy who will come forward with the greatest promise; but,
at a certain point, although goodwill is not lacking, the growth seems
to be arrested. The biologist will explain this as due to the physical
character of the brain. The Buddhist affirms, that when that human soul
last came from the oblivion which closes the Devachanic state, it chose
unconsciously, but by natural affinity, out of all the possible
conditions and circumstances of mortal life, that embryonic human body,
for which its spiritual condition rendered it fit.

Some years ago, in conversation with a missionary who had spent many
years in China, I asked him, having this subject in my mind, whether he
thought that his converts were capable of receiving Christianity in the
sense in which he himself held the faith. His answer, which he
illustrated by instances, was that the heathen conceptions and
propensities could not be entirely eradicated; and that, under
unfavorable circumstances, the most trusted converts would sometimes
relapse into a condition as bad as ever they had known.

It is also a matter of common assertion that our American Indians, after
years of training in the society of civilized life, are generally ready
to fall back at once to their old ways. What we call civilization is to
them but an easy-fitting garment.

I do not know what is the belief of scholars regarding the comparative
age of the different minor divisions--sub-branches, as Sinnett calls
them--of the Aryan race. I imagine, however, that of the European
sub-branches, the Celtic is practically the oldest. The Italic or
Hellenic may have broken off from the parent stem earlier than the
Celtic, but they have not wandered so far away, and have not been so
isolated from the influence of later migrations. The Celtic race has
mingled its blood with the Iberian in Spain and with many elements in
Gaul and Italy; but in the northwest of Europe, on its own peculiar
isle, it seems to have remained, if not purer than elsewhere, at least
less affected by mixture with later, that is, higher, races.

What is the practical use of all this study? Ever since I first read
Esoteric Buddhism, my attention has been turned to the confirmation of
its theory of human development. As I ride in the horse-car, as I walk
on the street, still more constantly as I stand before one class after
another in the school-room, I am struck with the thought that here,
behind the face I am looking into, is a human soul whose capacities are
limited--a soul that _cannot_ grasp the thought which catches like
a spark upon the mind of its next neighbor. Yet that half-awakened soul
is destined to work its way through all the phases of human possibility,
and reach at last the harbor of peace. This thought should make one
ashamed to be impatient or negligent. Why should one lose patience with
this boy's inability to learn, more than at the inanimate obstacle in
one's pathway? How can one be unfaithful in one's effort, when it may be
the means of lessening the number of times that that poor soul must pass
through earthly life?

Do I believe in the teachings of this book? I do not know. So far as the
doctrine of repeated incarnation goes, I hold it to be not inconsistent
with Christianity; but rather an explanation of Christ's coming upon
earth at the precise time when he did. I still hold the subject of
Buddhistic philosophy as a matter for very serious and edifying
reflection.

       *       *       *       *       *




COLONEL FLETCHER WEBSTER.

By Charles Cowley, LL.D.


FLETCHER WEBSTER, son of Daniel and Grace (Fletcher) Webster,
was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 23, 1813. He was but three
years old when his father removed to Boston, where he was fitted for
college in the Public Latin School,--the nursery of so many eminent men.

On the seventeenth of June, 1825, when Lafayette laid the cornerstone
of the monument on Bunker Hill, when Daniel Webster delivered one of the
most famous of his orations, Fletcher Webster, then twelve years old,
was present. "The vast procession, impatient of unavoidable delay, broke
the line of march, and, in a tumultuous crowd, rushed towards the
orator's platform," which was in imminent danger of being crushed to the
earth. Fletcher Webster was only saved from being trampled under foot,
by the thoughtful care of George Sullivan, who lifted the boy upon his
own shoulders, shouting, "Don't kill the orator's son!" and bore him
through the crowd, and placed him upon the staging at his father's feet.
It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that
multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted
with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back,
Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster
replied, in tones of thunder: "On Bunker Hill nothing is impossible."
And the crowd stood back.

At the age of sixteen, he lost his mother by death. This was the
greatest of all the calamities that happened to his father, and it was
not less unfortunate for himself, for it deprived him of the best
influence that ever contributed to mould his career.

In 1829, Fletcher Webster entered Harvard College, and was graduated in
the class of 1833, when he delivered the class oration, which Charles
Sumner, who was present, said "was characterized by judgment, sense, and
great directness and plainness of speech."

While at college, he was distinguished for his fine social qualities,
for his exquisite humor, and peculiar "Yankee wit." When participating
in amateur theatrical exhibitions, he always preferred to play the role
of the typical Yankee,--a character now extinct,--which he played to
perfection.

As the son of Daniel Webster, he might almost be said to have inherited
the profession of the law, and in 1836 he was admitted to the bar. In
the same year he married the wife who survives him--a grandniece of
Captain White, who was so atrociously murdered at Salem, six years
before, and whose murderers might have escaped the gallows but for the
genius and astuteness of Daniel Webster.

The Western States, which are now Central States, were then attracting
millions of the young and the enterprising from New England; and
Fletcher Webster began the practice of the law at Detroit, Michigan. But
at the close of the year 1837, he removed to Peru, Illinois, where he
remained three years. During that period, he made the acquaintance of
Abraham Lincoln, then a struggling lawyer at the Sangamon County bar. No
man upon this planet had then less thought of becoming President of the
United States than Abraham Lincoln; and no man had greater expectations
of attaining that distinction than Mr. Webster's father; yet a
master-stroke of the irony of destiny lifted the obscure Western
attorney, not into the presidency merely, but into the highest place in
the pantheon of American history, while it balked and mocked all the
aspirations of New England's greatest son. Pondering on events like
these, well did Horace Greeley exclaim: "Fame is a vapor; popularity an
accident; riches take wings: the only thing certain is oblivion."

In 1841, when his father became Secretary of State under President
Harrison, Fletcher Webster relinquished his professional prospects in
the West, and removed to Washington, where he acted as his father's
assistant. From his father's verbal suggestions, he prepared diplomatic
papers of the first importance; and no man could perform that delicate
service more satisfactorily to his father than he. It is understood
that the famous Hulseman Letter, which, more than anything else,
distinguished Daniel Webster's second term of service in the department
of State, was thus prepared.

Whether he or some one else prepared that extraordinary letter which was
to introduce Caleb Cushing to the Emperor of China, which assumed that
the Chinese were a nation of children, and which Chinese scholars
treated as conclusive evidence that the Americans had not emerged from
barbarism,--we know not. But if he did, he doubtless laughed at it
afterward as a childish performance.

On the seventeenth of June, 1843, Fletcher Webster witnessed the laying
of the capstone of the monument on Bunker Hill, and listened, with
affectionate interest, to the oration which was then delivered by his
father,--an oration which, if inferior to that delivered at the laying
of the cornerstone, was nevertheless every way worthy of the man and the
occasion,--simple, massive, and splendid. A few weeks later, he sailed
from Boston for China, and watched, as he tells us, "while light and
eyesight lasted, till the summit of that monument faded, at last, from
view." Many a departing, many a returning, sailor and traveler, has
given his "last, long, lingering look" to that towering obelisk, but
none with deeper feeling than Fletcher Webster.

As secretary to Commissioner Cushing, he assisted in negotiating the
first treaty between the United States and China, which involved an
absence of eighteen months from the United States. Neither the outward
nor the homeward voyage was made in company with Mr. Cushing. Mr.
Webster left Boston, August 8, 1843, in the brig Antelope, built by
Captain R.B. Forbes, touched at Bombay, November 12, 1843, and arrived
at Canton, February 4, 1844. He returned in the ship Paul Jones, in
January, 1845, the voyage from Canton to New York being made in one
hundred and eleven days. It deserves to be stated, as illustrating the
admiration with which the merchant princes of Boston regarded Daniel
Webster, that the house of Russell and Company, which owned both the
Antelope and the Paul Jones, refused to accept any passage-money from
his son, who was entertained, not as a passenger, but as an honored
guest.

By his voyage to China and by his experiences there, Mr. Webster,
acquired, not only rich stores of curious information and a great
enlargement of his intellectual horizon, but--what is particularly to be
noted--a better appreciation of the splendid destiny of his native land.
Unlike many foolish Americans, who waste their time in foreign capitals,
he never harbored the slightest regret that he had not been born
something other than an American; he never desired to be anything but a
free citizen of the great republic of the West.

He prepared a lecture on China, which he delivered in many of the cities
and large towns. Mr. Cushing had already entered the lecture field with
a discourse on China, and some thought Mr. Webster presumptuous in thus
inviting comparison between his own discourse and Mr. Cushing's. But
competent critics, who heard both these efforts, expressed a preference
for that of Mr. Webster. Vast as was Mr. Cushing's learning, his
oratorical style was never one of the best; while Fletcher Webster's
style, for clearness, simplicity, strength, and majesty, was little
inferior to that of his illustrious father. He afterward expanded this
lecture to the dimensions of a book, but never published it; and, in
1878, this manuscript, and all others left by him, perished by the fire
which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield. One of the few scraps
which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his
father's horse, Steamboat,--a horse of great speed and endurance,--and
which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven. In
English, it ran thus: "Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou
stops here."

On the Fourth of July, 1845, Charles Sumner delivered, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, an oration on Peace, which provoked
much hostile criticism; and on the next succeeding anniversary of
American Independence, Fletcher Webster delivered an oration on War,
which was designed to show that there are cases "where war, with all its
woes, must be endured."

It is probably the only elaborate discourse of his, which has been
preserved entire. It contains many quotable passages; but we must
content ourselves with the following, which are quite in his father's
style:--

"We meet to brighten the memories of a glorious past, to strengthen
ourselves in our onward progress, to remember great enterprises, to look
forward to a great career."

"We celebrate no single triumph, but the result of a long series of
victories; we celebrate the memory of no mere successful battle, but the
great triumph of a people; the victory of liberty over oppression, won
by suffering and struggle and death; the fruit of high sentiment, of
resolute patriotism, of consummate wisdom, of unshaken faith and trust
in God,--a victory and a triumph not for us only, but for all the
oppressed, everywhere, and for every age to come, ... a victory whose
future results to us and to others no imagination can foresee, and which
are yet but commencing to unfold themselves."

"And does any one believe that these results [to wit, the winning of
American independence, and the building of the American nation] could
have been attained in any other method than by arms and successful
physical resistance."

In 1847, he held the only political office to which he was ever elected
by popular suffrage,--that of representative in the Legislature. In
1850, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Boston by President
Taylor, and he was reappointed to the same office by Presidents Pierce
and Buchanan successively. There were many who would have been glad to
see him in a larger sphere, but "the mark which he made upon his times,"
as Mr. Hillard observes, was less than his friends had anticipated.
Occasionally he appeared as an orator in political campaigns, notably in
1856, at Exeter, in his native State, where he spoke with laudable pride
of having "sat at the feet of a great statesman now no more."

The son of Martin Van Buren and the son of Levi Woodbury united their
voices on that occasion with the voice of the son of Webster. A striking
remark then made by him is well remembered. Referring to the speech of
Senator Sumner, which excited the assault of Mr. Brooks, Mr. Webster
said, "If I had been going to make such a speech, I should have worn an
iron pot upon my head."

In 1857, he published two volumes of the Private Correspondence of
Daniel Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult
to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review
correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared
no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient
spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the
moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though
it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none,"
he carefully excised from his father's correspondence every passage
tending to rekindle the fire of any former personal controversy in which
his father had engaged. In this, perhaps, he followed the behests of his
father, who evinced, as he approached the tomb, an earnest desire for
reconciliation with all with whom he had had differences, illustrating
the Scottish proverb, "The evening brings all home."

When the disruption of the Union came to be attempted, none of us who
knew Fletcher Webster doubted for a moment what position he would take.
The same "passionate and exultant nationality," which had nerved him to
bear the loss of friends at the North, and to forego the chance of a
public career, rather than countenance any measure calculated to excite
ill-will at the South, now prompted him to advocate military coercion
for the preservation of the Union. Notwithstanding President Lincoln had
just deprived him of the office upon which he depended for the
maintenance of his family, he did not hesitate to tender to the
administration his personal support in the field.

In the oration already quoted, he had said: "There are certain ultimate
rights which must be maintained; and when force is brought to overthrow
them, it must be resisted by force." Among the rights which must thus be
maintained, in his view, was the right of the United States to maintain,
forever, the union of these States. The policy of coercion, bitterly as
he bewailed its necessity, was not new to him. His father had advocated
the Force Bill almost thirty years before. The time had come, when, in
the words of Jefferson (words spoken when only the Articles of
Confederation held the States in union): "Some of the States must see
the rod; perhaps some of them must feel it." Accordingly, on the
twentieth of April, 1861, while the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the
attack on the Sixth Regiment were firing the Northern heart, Fletcher
Webster called that memorable Sunday-morning meeting in State Street,
which resulted in the organization of the Twelfth Regiment of
Massachusetts Infantry. Referring to that occasion, George S, Hillard
said it recalled to the minds of those present, Colonel Webster's
father, who had then been but nine years in the grave. "To the mind's
eye, that majestic form and grand countenance seemed standing by the
side of his son; and in the mind's ear, they heard again the deep music
of that voice which had so often charmed and instructed them."

Colonel Webster said: "He whose name I bear had the good fortune to
defend the Union and the Constitution in the forum. That I cannot do,
but I am ready to defend them in the field." Like other national men, he
refused to listen to the "sixty-day" prattle by which others were
deceived. He saw that by no "summer excursion to Moscow" could the
Southern Confederacy be suppressed; that immense forces would be
marshalled in aid of that Confederacy; and that the war for the Union,
like the war for Independence, would be won only by 'suffering, and
struggle, and death.

Ten years earlier, it seemed to Rufus Choate as if the hoarded-up
resentments and revenges of a thousand years were about to unsheath the
sword for a conflict, "in which the blood should flow, as in the
Apocalyptic vision, to the bridles of the horses; in which a whole age
of men should pass away; in which the great bell of time should sound
out another hour; in which society itself should be tried by fire and
steel, whether it were of Nature and of Nature's God, or not."

Such a conflict was indeed impending, and Fletcher Webster appreciated
its extreme gravity, when, from the balcony of the Old State House, on
that Sunday morning, he made his stirring appeal: "Let us show the world
that the patriotism of '61 is not less than that of '76; that the noble
impulses of those patriot hearts have descended to us."

On the eighteenth of July, 1861, Edward Everett presented to Colonel
Webster a splendid regimental flag, the gift of the ladies of Boston to
the Twelfth Regiment.[1] It need not be said that the presentation
speech of Mr. Everett, and the reception speech of Colonel Webster, were
of the first order. But not even the words of a Webster or an Everett
could adequately express the profound emotion of the vast concourse of
people then assembled. For it was one of those occasions when, as the
elder Webster said, "Words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and
all elaborate oratory contemptible."

History will transmit the fact that on that day the simple, homely,
stirring, and inspiring melody of Old John Brown was heard for the first
time by the people of Boston. It was a surprising and a gladsome
spectacle--a regiment bearing Daniel Webster's talismanic name,
commanded by his only surviving son, carrying a banner prepared by the
fairest daughters of Massachusetts, carrying also the benediction of
Edward Everett, and of "the solid men of Boston," and marching to the
tune of Old John Brown! Did the weird prophet-orator who spoke of
"carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the Union" ever
dream of such a strange combination?

On the seventeenth of June, 1861, by invitation of Governor Andrew,
Colonel Webster spoke on Bunker Hill: "From this spot I take my
departure, like the mariner commencing his voyage, and wherever my eyes
close, they will be turned hitherward towards this North; and, in
whatever event, grateful will be the reflection, that this monument
still stands--still, still is glided by the earliest beams of the rising
sun, and that still departing day lingers and plays upon its summit."

After referring to the two former occasions when he had visited that
historic shaft, when his father had spoken there, he added, "I now stand
again at its base, and renew once more, on this national altar, vows,
not for the first time made, of devotion to my country, its Constitution
and Union."

With these words upon his lips, with these sentiments in his heart, and
in the hearts of the thousand brave men of his command, Colonel Webster
went forth, the dauntless champion and willing martyr of the Union.
Except that the death of a beloved daughter brought him back for a few
days to his family in the following summer, the people of Massachusetts
saw his living face no more.

On the thirtieth of August, 1862, the second day of the second battle of
Bull Run, late in the afternoon, while gallantly directing the movements
of his regiment, and giving his orders in those clear, firm, ringing
tones, which, in the tumult of battle, fall so gratefully on the
soldier's ear, Colonel Webster was shot through the body; and the
Federal forces being closely pressed at the time, he was left to die on
the field in Confederate hands. As the event became known through the
country, thousands of generous hearts, in the South as well as in the
North, recalled the peroration of his father's reply to Hayne, and
bitterly regretted that, when his eyes were turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, it had been his unhappy lot to "see him
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union,
on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with
internal feuds, and drenched [as then it was] with fraternal blood."

In the time-honored song of Roland, we are told, "Count Roland lay under
a pine-tree dying, and many things came to his remembrance." As it was
with Count Roland in Spain, so it was with Colonel Webster in Virginia.
In the multitude of memories which rushed upon him as he lay dying on
that ill-starred battle-field, we may be sure that Boston, Bunker Hill,
and the home and grave of Marshfield, were not forgotten.

The body of Colonel Webster was willingly given up by the Confederates,
and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall, and adding another to the
immortal recollections which ennoble "the cradle of liberty," it was
buried near his father's grave by the sea.

The Grand Army Post at Brockton, containing survivors of the Webster
Regiment, has adopted Colonel Webster's name; and on each Memorial Day,
members of this Post make a pilgrimage to Marshfield to decorate his
grave. His life is remarkable for its apparent possibilities rather than
for its actual achievements,--for the capabilities which were recognized
in him, rather than for what he accomplished, either in public or
professional life. His military career was cut short by a Confederate
bullet before opportunity demonstrated that capacity for high command,
which his superior officers, as well as his soldiers, believed him to
possess. The instincts of the soldier are often as trustworthy as the
judgment of the commander. All his soldiers loved him,--

  --"honored him, followed him,
  Dwelt in his mild and magnificent eye,
  Heard his great language, caught his clear accents,
  Made him their pattern to do and to die."


While the regret still lingers, that he was not permitted to witness,
and to contribute further effort to secure, the triumph, which he
predicted, of the cause for which he died--that regret is mitigated by
the reflection, that he could never have died more honorably than in a
war which could only have been avoided by the sacrifice of the
Constitution and the Union.

[Footnote 1: This banner now hangs in the Doric Hall at the State House,
where its mute eloquence has often started tears, and "thoughts too deep
for tears," in many a casual visitor.]

       *       *       *       *       *




EARLY HARVARD.

By the Rev. Josiah Lafayette Seward, A.M.


The valuable histories of Harvard University, by Quincy, Peirce, and
Eliot, and the wonderfully full and accurate sketches of the early
graduates, by John Langdon Sibley, the venerable librarian emeritus, are
treasuries of interesting information in regard to the early customs and
the first presidents and pupils of that institution. From these various
works we have gathered the following items of interest, which we will
give, without stopping at every step to indicate the authorities. Mr.
Sibley has preserved the ancient spelling, which is so quaint, that we
shall attempt to reproduce it.

October 28, 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts "agreed to give 400
(pounds) toward a schoale or colledge, whearof 200 (pounds) to be paid
the next yeare, & 200 when the worke is finished, & the next Court to
appoint wheare & what building." On November 15, 1637, the "Colledg is
ordered to be at Newtowne." On November 20, 1637, occurs the following
record of the General Court: "The Governor Mr. Winthrope, the Deputy Mr.
Dudley, the Treasurer Mr. Bellingham, Mr. Humfrey, Mr. Herlakenden, Mr.
Staughton, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Damport, Mr. Wells, Mr. Sheopard,
& Mr. Peters, these, or the greater part of them, whereof Mr. Winthrope,
Mr. Dudley, or Mr. Bellingham, to bee alway one, to take order for a
colledge at Newtowne."

May 2, 1638, the General Court changed the name of Newtowne to
Cambridge, and, on March 13, 1639, "It is ordered that the Colledge
agreed upon formerly to be built at Cambridge shall bee called Harvard
Colledge." It appears that before this time there had been a school; but
the name of college was not assumed until the above date. The teacher of
this school was Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, who has left an unenviable
reputation, and made an inauspicious beginning of that institution which
was to attain to such distinction. He finally got into serious trouble,
in consequence of his brutal conduct and for one act in particular,
which led to his leaving the school and town. Governor Winthrop, in his
History of New England has given a graphic description of the event,
which Mr. Sibley has also reproduced, in a note, and which will interest
more readers than would ever have the privilege of reading either work.
I will therefore give the extract in full. Speaking of Eaton and the
pupil whom he punished, Winthrop says: "The occasion was this: He was a
schoolmaster and had many scholars, the sons of gentlemen and others of
best note in the country, and had entertained one Nathaniel Briscoe, a
gentleman born, to be his usher, and to do some other things for him,
which might not be unfit for a scholar. He had not been with him above
three days but he fell out with him for a very small occasion, and, with
reproachful terms, discharged him, and turned him out of his doors; but,
it being then about eight of the clock after the Sabbath, he told him he
should stay till next morning, and, some words growing between them, he
struck him and pulled him into his house. Briscoe defended himself and
closed with him, and, being parted, he came in and went up to his
chamber to lodge there. Mr. Eaton sent for the constable, who advised
him first to admonish him, etc., and if he could not, by the power of a
master, reform him, then he should complain to the magistrate. But he
caused his man to fetch him a cudgel, which was a walnut tree plant, big
enough to have killed a horse, and a yard in length, and, taking his two
men with him, he went up to Briscoe, and caused his men to hold him till
he had given him two hundred stripes about the head and shoulders, etc.,
and so kept him under blows (with some two or three short intermissions)
about the space of two hours, about which time Mr. Shepherd (the
clergyman) and some others of the town came in at the outcry, and so he
gave over. In this distress Briscoe gate out his knife and struck at the
man that held him, but hurt him not. He also fell to prayer, (supposing
he should have been murdered), and then Mr. Eaton beat him for taking
the name of God in Vain."

He was charged in open court with these cruelties to Briscoe, and it was
there proved that he had been unusually cruel on other occasions, often
punishing pupils with from twenty to thirty stripes, and never leaving
them until they had confessed what he required. He was also charged with
furnishing a scant diet to his pupil boarders, keeping them on porridge
and pudding, though their parents were paying for better fare. He
appears to have admitted the evil, butt threw the blame upon his wife.
The court found him guilty. At first he denied his guilt. He was put in
care of a marshal for safe keeping, and, on the following day, the court
was informed that he had repented in tears. In the open court "he made a
very solid, wise, eloquent, and serious (seeming) confession." The court
was so much moved and pleased by this act of contrition that they only
censured him and fined him twenty pounds and ordered the same amount to
be paid to Briscoe. The church intended to "deal with him," but he fled
to the Piscataqua settlements. He was apprehended, and promised to
return to Cambridge, but finally escaped and fled, on a boat, to
Virginia.

The college was named for the Reverend John Harvard, who came to this
country from England in 1637, settled In Charlestown, and died the
following year. He left a legacy, including his library, to the new
institution of learning, which was a princely benefaction for the time.
As a suitable recognition for this first large donation, the institution
was called Harvard College. The exact place of Mr. Harvard's burial is
unknown. It was somewhere "about the foot of Town Hill." It was in the
old burial-ground near the old prison in Charlestown, in all
probability, and the monument to his memory, if not over his grave, is
likely very near it. The inscriptions on this monument explain the time
and cause of its erection. On the eastern side of the shaft, looking
toward the land of his birth and education, we read:--

"On the twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1828, this Stone was erected
by Graduates of the University of Cambridge in honor of its founder, who
died at Charlestown, on the twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1638."

This is in his mother-tongue. On the side looking toward the seat of
learning which bears his name is the following inscription, in classic
Latin:

"In piam et perpetuam memoriam Johannis Harvardii, annis fere ducentis
post obitum ejus peractis, Academiae quae est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum
alumni, ne diutius vir de literis nostris optime meritus sine monumento
quanivis humili jaceret, hunc lapidem ponendum curaverunt." The
following is a literal translation:--

"In pious and perpetual remembrance of John Harvard, nearly two hundred
years after his death, the alumni of the University at Cambridge, in New
England, have erected this stone, that one who deserves the highest
honors from our literary men may be no longer without a monument,
however humble."

Edward Everett delivered the address at the dedication of the monument.
The closing passage of his oration is as follows:--

"While the College which he founded shall continue to the latest
posterity, a monument not unworthy of the most honored name, we trust
that this plain memorial also will endure; and, while it guides the
dutiful votary to the spot where his ashes are deposited, will teach to
those who survey it the supremacy of intellectual and 'moral desert, and
encourage them, too, by a like munificence, to aspire to a name as
bright as that which stands engraven on its shaft,--

    'Clarum et venerabile nomen
  Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.'"


The citizens of New England entered most heartily into the idea of
establishing this college and contributed whatever they could; utensils
from their homes, stock from their farms, their goods, merchandise,
anything, in fine, which they had to give, so anxious were they to
educate their youth, and especially to provide for an educated ministry.
Peirce, in his History of the college, says:--

"When we read of a number of sheep bequeathed by one man, of a quantity
of cotton cloth worth nine shillings presented by another, of a pewter
flagon worth ten shillings by a third, of a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon,
a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, and one small trencher salt,
by others; and of presents or legacies, amounting severally to five
shillings, one pound, two pounds, &c., all faithfully recorded with the
names of the donors, we are at first tempted to smile; but a little
reflection will soon change this, disposition into a feeling of respect
and even of admiration."

"How just," says President Quincy, "is the remark of this historian!
How forcible and full of noble example is the picture exhibited by
these records? The poor emigrant, struggling for subsistence, almost
houseless, in a manner defenceless, is seen selecting from the few
remnants of his former prosperity, plucked by him out of the flames
of persecution, and rescued from the perils of the Atlantic, the
valued pride of his table, or the precious delight of his domestic
hearth;--'his heart stirred and his spirit willing' to give according
to his means, toward establishing for learning a resting-place, and
for science a fixed habitation, on the borders of the wilderness!"

Mr. Sibley gives an extract from New England's First Fruits, a work
printed in London, not long after the first class was graduated. It
gives us the feelings of the emigrants about their new institution.
It says:--

"After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our
houses, provided necessaries for our liveli-hood, rear'd convenient
places for God's worship, and settled the Civil Government; One of the
next things we longed for, and looked after, was to advance LEARNING and
to perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry
to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the dust. And
as wee were thinking and consulting how to effect this great Work, it
pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. HARVARD (a godly Gentleman,
and a lover of learning, there living amongst us) to give the one halfe
of his Estate (it being in all about 1700 pounds) toward the erecting of
a Colledge, and all his Library." The edifice is described as "faire and
comely within and without, having in it a spacious Hall, where they
daily meet at Commons, Lectures, Exercises, and a large Library, with
some books to it."

The rules and regulations of Harvard in early times are interesting to
us of later generations. The following are specimens:--

"When any scholar is able to read Tully, or such like classical Latin
author EXTEMPORE, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose suo
(ut aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs
in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted into the College, nor shall
any claim admission before such qualifications."

"Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies, to know
God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life."

"Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a
day, that they be ready to give an account of their proficiency therein,
both in theoretical observations of language and logic, and in practical
and spiritual truths, as their Tutor shall require."

"They shall honor as their parents, magistrates, elders, tutors, and
aged persons, by being silent in their presence (except they be called
on to answer)."

"None shall pragmatically intrude or inter meddle in other men's
affairs."

"No scholar shall buy, sell, or exchange any thing, to the value of
sixpence, without the allowance of his parents, guardians or tutors."

"The scholars shall never use their mother tongue, except that in public
exercise of oratory, or such like, they be called to make them in
English."

"Every scholar, that on proof is found able to read the original of the
Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and to resolve them
logically, withal being of honest life and conversation, and at any
public act hath the approbation of the Overseers and Master of the
College, may be invested with his first degree."

"No scholar whatever, without the fore-acquaintance and leave of the
President and his Tutor, or, in the absence of either of them, two of
the Fellows shall be present at or in any of the public civil meetings,
or concourse of people, as courts of justice, elections, fairs, or at
military exercise, in the time or hours of the College exercise, public
or private. Neither shall any scholar exercise himself in any military
band, unless of known gravity, and of approved sober and virtuous
conversation, and that with the leave of the President and his Tutor."

"No scholar shall take tobacco, unless permitted by the President, with
the consent of their parents or guardians, and on good reason first
given by a physician, and then in a sober and private mariner."

"No Freshman shall wear his hat in the College yard, unless it rains,
hails, or snows, provided he be on foot and have not both hands full."

"Freshmen are to consider all the other classes as their Seniors."

"No Freshman shall speak to a Senior with his hat on; or have it on in a
Senior's chamber, or in his own if a Senior be there."

"All Freshmen shall be obliged to go on any errand, for any of his
Seniors, Graduates or Undergraduates, at any time, except in studying
hours, or after nine o'clock in the evening."

The faculty, if they were knowing to it, could stop the performance of
an improper errand. They would have been likely to know little about
them.

Pages might be quoted of these curious and interesting rules and
customs. But these must suffice. Enough has been given to show the
immense progress which has been made from the time of the cruel Eaton to
that of the dignified, able, and judicious President Eliot, under whose
fortunate administration, the University has wonderfully increased,
materially and in every way.

The first President was Henry Dunster, a man of learning and
cultivation. He entered upon his office, August 27, 1640, and left it,
October 24, 1654. It was during his administration that most of those
unique rules were established which I have quoted. We can see in them
the evident origin or occasion of hazing the Freshmen, which would
naturally follow such rules. At the present day, be it known, the custom
has entirely ceased. The Freshmen of to-day are treated like gentlemen
by all classes. All the students are placed on their honor, in every
way, save only in some necessary particulars. Hazing has passed into
history as a barbarous custom of the past, and the deportment of the
students to-day is that of gentlemen, with very rare exceptions, such as
might be expected among so large a number. In the great Memorial Hall,
where they eat, the best of deportment is always to be seen, and
everywhere there is now a pride, in all departments of the University,
in observing the proprieties of good conduct. Indeed this has always
been the rule. The hazing has never been so extensively practised as
many have supposed; and no body of men can anywhere be found, in
Congress, legislatures, schools, academies, or colleges, whose
deportment excels in excellence that of the students of Harvard
University. This observation is demanded from the fact that many
parents, some of whom are known the writer, have decided to send sons
to other institutions, on the very ground of the influence of college
customs and habits.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE DEFENCE OF NEW YORK, 1776.

By Henry B. Carrington, U.S.A., LL.D.


  [The siege of Boston gave to the Continental Army that instruction in
  military engineering, and that contact with a disciplined foe, which
  prepared it for the immediate operations at New York and in New Jersey.
  (See The Bay State Monthly, January, 1884, pages 37-44.)

  The occupation and defence of New York and Brooklyn, so promptly made,
  was a strategic necessity, fully warranted by existing conditions,
  although temporary.]


It is not easy to reconcile the views which we take, in turn, through
the eye and object lenses of a field-glass, so that the real subject of
examination will not be distorted by too great nearness or remoteness.

If we bring back to this hour the events of one hundred years ago, it is
certain that the small armies and the smaller appliances of force then
in use will seem trifling, in contrast with those which have so recently
wearied science and have tasked invention in the work and waste of war.

If we thrust them back to their proper place behind the memory of all
living men, we only see a scattered people, poorly armed, but engaged in
hopeful conflict with Great Britain, then mistress of the seas, proudly
challenging the world to arms, and boldly vindicating her challenge.

In an effort to reproduce that period and so balance the opposing
factors that the siege of Boston and the deliverance of Washington at
Brooklyn and New York shall have fair co-relation and full bearing upon
the resulting struggle for National Independence, there must be some
exact standard for the test j and this will be found by grouping such
data as illustrate the governing laws of military art.

It has never been claimed that the siege of Boston was not the
legitimate result of British blunder and American pluck. In a previous
paper, the siege itself has been presented as that opportunity and
training-school exercise which projected its experience into the entire
war, and assured final triumph. It has not been as generally accepted,
as both philosophical and necessary, that the fortification and defence
of Brooklyn became the wise and inevitable sequence to that siege.

Let us drop a century and handle the old records.

If Great Britain had not called continental auxiliaries to her aid in
1776, her disposable force for colonial service would have been less
than half of the army of Washington.

Until the fortification of Brooklyn and New York had been well advanced,
the British ministry had not been able to assign even fifteen thousand
men for that service. General Clinton did, indeed, anchor at the New
York Narrows, just when General Charles Lee reached that city for its
defence, but did not risk a landing, and sailed for South Carolina, only
to be repulsed.

The British Crown had no alternative but to seek foreign aid. The appeal
to Catharine of Russia for twenty thousand men was met by the laconic
response, "There are other ways of settling this dispute than by resort
to arms." The Duke of Richmond prophetically declared, "The colonies
themselves, after our example, will apply to strangers for assistance."
The opposition to hiring foreign troops was so intense, that, for many
weeks, there was no practical advance in preparations for a really
effective blow at the rebels, while the rebellion itself was daily
gaining head and spirit.

The British army, just before the battle of Long Island, including
Hessians, Brunswickers, and Waldeckers, was but a little larger than
that which the American Congress, as early as October 4, 1775, had
officially assigned to the siege operations before Boston. That force
was fixed at twenty-three thousand, three hundred and seventy-two men.
General Howe landed about twenty thousand men. With the sick, the
reserves on Staten Island, all officers and supernumeraries included,
his entire force exhibited a paper strength of thirty-one thousand, six
hundred and twenty-five men. It is true that General Howe claimed, after
the battle of Long Island, that his entire force (Hessians included) was
only twenty four thousand men, and that Washington opposed the advance
of his division with twenty thousand men. The British muster rolls, as
exhibited before the British Parliament, accord with the statement
already made. The actual force of the American army at Brooklyn was not
far from nine thousand men, instead of twenty thousand, and the
effective force (New York included) was only about twenty thousand men.
As the British regiments brought but six, instead of eight, companies to
a battalion, there is evidence that Washington himself occasionally
over-estimated the British force proper; but the foreign battalions
realized their full force, and they were paid accordingly, upon their
muster rolls. Nearly three fifths of General Howe's army was made up
from continental mercenaries. These troops arrived in detachments, to
supplement the army which otherwise would have been entirely unequal to
the conquest of New York, if the city were fairly defended.

If, on the other hand, Washington had secured the force which he
demanded from Congress, namely, fifty-eight thousand men, which was,
indeed (but too tardily), authorized, he could have met General Howe
upon terms of numerical equality, backed by breast-works, and have held
New York with an equal force.

This estimate, by Washington himself, of the contingencies of the
campaign, will have the greater significance when reference is made to
the details of British preparations in England.

While Congress did, indeed, as early as June, assign thirteen thousand
additional troops for the defence of New York, the peremptory detachment
of ten battalions to Canada, in addition to previous details,
persistently foiled every preparation to meet Howe with an adequate
force. Regiments from Connecticut and from other colonies reported with
a strength of only three hundred and sixty men. While the "paper
strength" of the army was far beyond its effective force, even the
"paper strength" was but one half of the force which the
Commander-in-chief had the right to assume as at his disposal.

Other facts fall in line just here.

At no later period of the war did either commander have under his
immediate control so large a nominal force as then. During but one year
of the succeeding struggle did the entire British army, from Halifax to
the West Indies inclusive (including foreign and provincial
auxiliaries), exceed, by more than seven thousand men, the force which
occupied both sides of the New York Narrows in 1776. The British Army at
that time, without its foreign contingent, would have been as inferior
to the force which had been ordered by Congress (and should have been
available) as the depleted American army of 1781 would have been
inferior to the British without the French contingent.

The largest continental force under arms, in any one year of the war,
did not greatly exceed forty thousand men, and the largest British
force, as late as 1781, including all arrivals, numbered, all told, but
forty-two thousand and seventy-five men.

The annual British average, including provincials, ranged from
thirty-three to thirty-eight thousand men. The physical agencies which
Great Britain employed were;, therefore, far beneath the prestige of her
accredited position among the nations; and the disparity between the
contending forces was mainly in discipline and equipment, with the
advantage to Great Britain in naval strength, until that was supplanted
by that of France.

To free the question from a popular fallacy which treats oldtime
operations as insignificant, in view of large modern armies and
campaigns, it is pertinent to state, just here, that the issues of the
battle-field for all time, up to the latest hour, have not been
determined by the size of armies, or by improvements in weapons of war,
except relatively, in proportion as civilized peoples fought those of
less civilization; or where some precocity of race or invention more
quickly matured the operations of the winning side.

If the maxims of Napoleon are but a terse restatement of those of
Caesar, and the skill of Hannibal at Cannae still holds place as a model
for the concave formation of a battle-line, so have all the decisive
battles of history taken shape from the timely handling of men, in the
exercise of that sound judgment which adapts means to ends, in every
work of life. Thus it is that equally great battles, those in the
highest sense great, have become memorial, although numbers did not
impart value to the struggle; but they were the expression of that skill
and wisdom which would have ensured success, if the opposing armies had
been greater or less.

If a timely fog did aid the retreat of Washington from Brooklyn, in
1776, so did a petty stream, filled to the brim by a midnight shower,
make altogether desperate, if it did not, alone, change, the fortunes of
Napoleon at Waterloo.

If, also, the siege of Yorktown, in 1781, was conducted by few against
few, as compared with modern armies, it is well to note the historical
fact that, at the second siege, in 1861, the same ravine was used by
General Poe (United States Engineers) to connect "parallels," and
thereby save a "regular approach." Numbers did not change relations, but
simply augmented the physical force employed and imperilled.

He who can seize the local, incidental, and seemingly immaterial
elements which enter into all human plans, and convert them into
determining factors, is to be honored; but the man who can so anticipate
the possibilities and risks which lie ahead, that the world counts as a
miracle, or, at least, as marvelous, that which is only the legitimate
result of faith, courage, and skill, is truly great. Washington did it.
His retreat from Long Island was deliberately planned before he had a
conference with his subordinates; and the entire policy and conduct of
his operations at and near New York will defy criticism. To hold the
facts of the issue discussed, right under the light on that military
science (that is, that mental philosophy which does not change with
physical modes and appliances), is simply to bring out clearly the
necessity for the occupation of New York and Brooklyn by Washington in
1776.

The mere statement of the British forces which were available in 1776
will show that if Washington knew, in advance, exactly what he had to
meet, then he had a right to anticipate a successful resistance. As
early as July, 1775, he demanded that the army should be enlisted "for
the war." In a previous article, the policy of the Commander-in-chief
and of General Greene was noticed, and the formulated proposition, then
accepted by both, gave vitality and hope to the struggle. When the issue
ripened at New York, and, swiftly as possible, the besieging force
before Boston became the resisting force at New York, there was one man
who understood the exact issue. The temper of the British press, and
that of the British House of Commons, was fully appreciated by the
American Commander-in-chief. He knew that General Gage had urged that
"thirty thousand men, promptly sent to America, would be the quickest
way to save blood and end the war." He also knew that when John Wesley
predicted that "neither twenty, forty, nor sixty thousand men would
suppress the rebellion," the British Cabinet had placed before
Parliament a careful statement of the entire resources which were deemed
available for military purposes abroad. As early as May, 1776,
Washington was advised of the following facts:--

First, That the contracts at that time made with continental States,
including that with Hesse and Brunswick, would place at British disposal
a nominal strength of fifty-five thousand men.

Second, That, with all due allowance for deficiencies, the effective
force, as claimed by the ministry, could not exceed, but might fall
below, forty thousand men.

The debate in Parliament was so sharp, and the details of the proposed
operations were so closely defined and analyzed, that Washington had
full right to assume, as known, the strength of his adversary.

When, during May, 1776, the American Congress sent troops from New York
to Canada, he sharply protested, thus: "This diversion of forces will
endanger both enterprises; for Great Britain will attempt to capture New
York as well as Canada, if they have the men." He did not believe that
they would capture New York, if he could acquire and retain the force
which he demanded.

The point to be made emphatic, is this: That, from the date of the call
of Massachusetts, early in 1775, for thirty thousand men, up to the
occupation of New York, the force which he had the right to assume as at
his own disposal was equal to the contingencies of the conflict; and
that, when he did occupy New York, and begin its exterior defences at
Brooklyn, the British ministry had admitted its inability to send to
America a force sufficiently strong to capture the city. The maximum
force proposed was less than that which Congress could easily supply for
resistance. In other words, Washington would not have to fight Great
Britain, but a specific force; namely, all that Great Britain could
spare for that service; so that the issue was not between the new
Republic and England, but between the Republic and a single army, of
known elements and numbers. In fact, the opinion that France had already
made war upon England had so early gained credit, that Washington, while
still in New York, was forced to issue an order correcting the rumor,
and thus prevent undue confidence and its corresponding neglect to meet
the demands of the crisis.

Thus far, it is clear that there was nothing extravagant in the American
claim to independence; nor in the readiness of Washington to seize and
hold New York; nor in his belief that the colonial resources were equal
to the contest.

One other element is of determining value as to the necessity for his
occupation and defence of Brooklyn Heights. New York was the only base
from which Great Britain could operate against the colonies as an
organized State. By Long Island Sound and the Hudson River, her right
hand would hold New England under the guns of her warships, and by quick
occupation of Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and their tributary streams,
her left hand would cut off the South.

If the views of Lord Dartmouth had prevailed, in 1775, there would have
been no siege of Boston; but New York would have had a garrison fully
equal to its defence, while sparing troops for operations outside. But
the prompt occupation of New York, as the headquarters of revolution,
was a clear declaration to the world, and to the scattered people of the
colonies, that a new nation was asserting life, and that its soil was
free from a hostile garrison. The occupation of New York centralized, at
the social, commercial, and natural capital of the Republic, all
interests and resources, and gave to the struggle real force,
inspiration, and dignity.

Just as the men at Bunker Hill fought so long as powder and ball held
out, but could not have been led to assail, in open field, the veterans
whom they did, in fact, so effectively resist; and, as very often, a
patriotic band has bravely defended, when unequal to aggressive
action,--so the possession, defence, and even the loss, of New York, as
an incident of a campaign, were very different from an effort to wrest
the city from the grasp of a British garrison, under cover of yawning
broadsides.

History is replete with facts to show how hopefully men will seek to
regain lost positions, when an original capture would have been deemed
utterly hopeless. Poland wellnigh regained a smothered nationality
through an inspiration, which never could have been evoked, in a plan to
seize from the Russian domain a grand estate, upon which to establish an
original Poland.

To have held but to have lost New York, would simply show the defects of
the defence, and the margin wanting in ability to retain, while no less
suggesting how, in turn, it might be regained, at the right time, by
adequate means and methods. The occupation and defence of Brooklyn
Heights was the chief element of value in this direction. It not only
combined the general protection of the city and post, in connection with
the works upon Governor's Island, but to have neglected either would
have admitted an inability to retain either.

British troops at Brooklyn would command New York. American troops at
Brooklyn presented the young nation in the attitude of guarding the
outer doorway of its freshly-asserted independence. It put the British
to the defensive, and compelled them to risk the landing of a large
army, after a protracted ocean voyage, before they could gain a footing
and measure strength with the colonists. It does not lessen our estimate
of the skill of Washington to know that Congress failed to supply
adequate forces; but he made wise estimates, and had reason to expect a
prompt response to his requisitions.

That episode at Breed's Hill, which tested the value of even a light
cover for keen sharpshooters, had so warned Howe of the courage of his
enemy that the garrison of Bunker Hill had never worried Putnam's little
redoubt across the Charlestown Isthmus; neither had the troops at Boston
ever assailed, with success, the thin circumvallation which protected
the besiegers.

At Brooklyn, Washington established ranges for firing-parties, so that
the rifle could be intelligently and effectively used, as the British
might, in turn, approach the danger line. All these preparations,
although impaired by the illness and absence of General Greene, had been
so well devised, that even after General Howe gained the rear of
Sullivan and Stirling and captured both, he halted before the
entrenchments and resorted to regular approaches rather than venture an
assault.

If that portion of the proper garrison of New York which had been sent
to Canada, to waste from disease and fill six thousand graves, had been
available at New York, they might have made of Jamaica Ridge and
Prospect Hill a British Golgotha before the lines of Brooklyn.

If we conceive of an invasion of New York to-day, other than by some
devastating fleet, we can at once see that the whole outline of defence
as proposed by Washington, until he ordered the retreat, was
characteristic of his wisdom and his settled purpose to resist a
landing, fight at every ridge, yield only to compulsion, enure his men
to face fire, and "make every British advance as costly as possible to
the enemy."

The summary is briefly this: There was an universal revolt of the
colonies, and a fixed purpose to achieve and maintain independence.
There was, at the same time, in England, not only a vigorous opposition
to the use of force, but a clearly-defined exhibit of the maximum
military resources which its authorities could call into exercise.
Imminent European complications were already bristling for battle, both
by land and sea, and Great Britain was without a continental ally or
friend. As the British resources were thus definitely defined, so was
the military policy distinctly stated; namely, to make, as the first
objective, the recovery of New York, and its acceptance as the permanent
base for prosecution of the war. The first blow was designed to be a
fatal blow. It was for Washington to take the offensive. He did so, and
by the occupation of New York and Brooklyn put himself in the attitude
of resisting invasion, rather than as attempting the expulsion of a
rightful British garrison from the British capital of its American
colonies.

Not only did the metal of such men as he commanded stand fire on the
seventeenth of June, 1775, at Breed's Hill, but when he followed up the
expulsion of the garrison of Boston by the equally aggressive
demonstrations at New York, he gave assurance of the thoroughness of his
purpose to achieve independence, and thereby inspired confidence at home
and abroad. The failure to realize a competent field force for the issue
with Howe, and the circumstances of the retreat and evacuation, do not
impair the statement that, in view of his knowledge of British resources
and those of America, the occupation and defence of Brooklyn and New
York was a military necessity, warranted by existing conditions, and not
impaired by his disappointment in not securing a sufficient force to
meet his enemy upon terms of equality and victory. It increases our
admiration of that strategic forethought which habitually inspired him
to maintain an aggressive attitude, until the surrender at Yorktown
consummated his plans, and verified his wisdom and his faith.

       *       *       *       *       *




LOWELL.


Twenty-six miles northwest from Boston, on the banks of the Merrimack at
its confluence with the Concord, is situated the city of Lowell,--the
Spindle City, the Manchester of America. The Merrimack, which affords
the chief water-power that gives life to the thousand industries of
Lowell, takes its rise among the White Mountains, in New Hampshire, its
source being in the Notch of the Franconia Range, at the base of Mount
Lafayette. For many miles it dashes down toward the sea, known at first
as the Pemigewasset, until finally its waters are joined by the outflow
from Lake Winnipiseogee, and a great river is formed, which, in its fall
of several hundred feet, offers immense power to the mechanic. Past
Penacook the river glides, its volume increased by the Contcocook;
through fertile intervales, over rapids and falls, past Suncook and
Hooksett, it comes to the Falls of Amoskeag, where Lowell's fair rival
is built; thence onward past Nashua, to the Falls of Pawtucket, where
its waters are thoroughly utilized to propel the machinery of a great
city.

The men are still living who have witnessed the growth of Lowell from an
inconsiderable village to a great manufacturing city, whose fabrics are
as world-renowned as those of Marseilles and Lyons, or ancient Damascus.

[Illustration: LOWELL AS IT APPEARED IN 1840.]

With the dawn of American history, the Penacooks, a tribe of Indians,
were known to have occupied the site of Lowell as their favorite
rendezvous. Here the salmon and shad were caught in great abundance by
the dusky warriors. Passaconaway was their first great chief known to
the white man, and he was acknowledged as leader by many neighboring
tribes. He was a friend to the English. Before the coming of the
Pilgrims a great plague had swept over New England, making desolate
the Indian villages. Added to the terrors of the pestilence, which was
resistless as fate to the children of the forest, was the fear and dread
of their implacable enemies, the fierce Mohawks of the west. The spirit
of the Indian was broken. In 1644, Passaconaway renounced his authority
as an independent chief, and placed himself and his tribe of several
thousand souls under the protection of the colonial magistrates. The
Indian villages at Pawtucket Falls, on the Merrimack, and Wamesit Falls,
on the Concord, the Musketaquid of the aborigines, were first visited in
1647 by the Reverend John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. In 1652,
Captain Simon Willard and Captain Edward Johnson made their tour up the
Merrimack Paver to Lake Winnipiseogee, and marked a stone near the Weirs
as the northern boundary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The following
year the work of settlement swept onward, crowding in upon the
cornfields of the red men; and Eliot, caring for his charges, procured
the passage of an act by the General Court reserving a good part of the
land on which Lowell now stands to the exclusive use of the Indians.

[Illustration: MERRIMACK RIVER BELOW HUNT'S FALLS.]

The towns of Chelmsford and Billerica were incorporated May 29, 1655.

In 1656, Major-General Daniel Gookin was appointed superintendent of all
the Indians under the jurisdiction of the Colony. By his fair dealing he
won their entire confidence. They had good friends in Judge Gookin and
the Apostle Eliot, who were ever ready to protect them from
encroachments of their neighbors.

In 1660, Passaconaway relinquished all authority over his tribe,
retiring at a ripe old age, and turning over his office of sachem to his
son Wannalancet, whose headquarters were at Penacook. Numphow, who was
married to one of Passaconaway's daughters, was the chief for some years
of the village of Pawtucket. In 1669, Wannalancet, in dread of the
Mohawks, came down the river with his whole tribe, and located at
Wamesit, and built a fortification on Fort Hill in Belvidere, which was
surrounded with palisades. The white settlers of the vicinity, catching
the alarm, took refuge in garrison-houses.

[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE OVER PAWTUCKET FALLS.]

In 1674, there were at Wamesit fifteen families, or seventy-five souls,
enumerated as Christian Indians, aside from about two hundred who
adhered to their primitive faith in the Great Spirit. Numphow was their
magistrate as well as chief, his cabin standing near the Boott Canal.
The log chapel presided over by the Indian preacher, Samuel, stood at
the west end of Appleton Street near the site of the Eliot Church. In
May of each year came Eliot and Gookin; the former to give spiritual
advice; the latter to act as umpire or judge, having jurisdiction of
higher offences, and directing all matters affecting the interests o£
the village. Wannalancet held his court, as sachem, in a log cabin near
Pawtucket Falls.

[Illustration: SAINT ANNE'S CHURCH, 1850.]

King Philip's War broke out in 1675. Wannalancet and the local Indians,
faithful to the counsels of Passaconaway, took sides with the settlers,
or remained neutral. Between the two parties they suffered severely.
Some were put to death by Philip, for exposing his designs; some were
put to death by the colonists, as Philip's accomplices; some fell in
battle, fighting for the whites; some were slain by the settlers, who
mistrusted alike praying and hostile Indians.

During the following year, 1676, the able-bodied Indians of Wamesit and
Pawtucket withdrew to Canada, leaving a few of their helpless and infirm
old people at the mercy of their neighbors. Around their fate let
history draw the veil of oblivion, lest the present generation blush for
their ancestors. The Indians of those days, like their descendants, had
no rights which the white men were bound to respect.

During the war the white settlers were gathered for protection in
garrison-houses. Billerica escaped harm, but Chelmsford was twice
visited by hostile bands and several buildings were burned. Two sons of
Samuel Varnum were shot while crossing the Merrimack in a boat with
their father.

In April, 1676, Captain Samuel Hunting and Lieutenant James Richardson
built a fort at Pawtucket Falls, which, with a garrison, was left under
command of Lieutenant Richardson. A month later it was reinforced and
the command entrusted to Captain Thomas Henchman. This proved an
effectual check to the incursions of marauding Indians.

[Illustration: RUINS OF A CELLAR, BELVIDERE.]

When the war was over, Wannalancet returned with the remnant of his
tribe, to find the reservation in possession of the settlers. The tribe
was placed on Wickasauke Island, in charge of Colonel Jonathan Tyng,
where they remained until their last rod of land had been bartered away,
when they retired to Canada and joined the St. Francis tribe. Colonel
Tyng and Major Henchman purchased of the Indians all their remaining
interest in the land about Pawtucket Falls.

[Illustration: OLD BUTMAN HOUSE, BELVIDERE.]

During the nine years of King William's War, which followed the English
Revolution of 1688, the people of Chelmsford and neighboring towns again
took refuge in forts and garrison-houses. Major Henchman had command of
the fortification at the Falls. August 1, 1682, a hostile raid was made
into Billerica and eight of the inhabitants were killed. August 5, 1695,
fourteen inhabitants of Tewksbury were massacred. Colonel Joseph Lynde,
from whom Lynde Hill in Belvidere derives its name, was in command of a
force of three hundred men who ranged through the neighboring country to
protect the frontier.

The town of Dracut was incorporated in 1701. It contained twenty-five
families, and was set off from Chelmsford.

The Wamesit purchase was divided into small parcels of land and sold to
settlers. Samuel Pierce, who had his domicile on the Indian reservation,
was elected a member of the General Court, in 1725, but was refused his
seat on the ground that he was not an inhabitant of Chelmsford.
Accordingly the people of the reservation refused to pay taxes to the
town of Chelmsford until an act was passed legally annexing them to the
town. The place was afterward known as East Chelmsford.

The year 1729 is memorable for the great earthquake which occurred on
October 29, and did considerable damage in the Merrimack valley.

Tewksbury was incorporated in 1734, its territory before having been
included in Billerica.

At the battle of Bunker Hill two companies of Chelmsford men were
present, one under command of Captain John Ford, the other under Captain
Benjamin Walker; and one company composed largely of Dracut men was
under Captain Peter Colburn.

[Illustration: FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 1840.]

Captain Ford had served previously at the siege and capture of
Louisburg, in 1745. When the first man in his company fell at Bunker
Hill, an officer prevented a panic by singing Old Hundred. When closely
pressed by the British, and the ammunition had been exhausted, Captain
Colburn, on the point of retreating, threw a stone at the advancing
enemy and saw an officer fall from the blow.

Colonel Simeon Spaulding, of Chelmsford, was an active patriot during
the Revolution and did good service in the Provincial Congress.

During Shays' Rebellion, in 1786, a body of Chelmsford militia under
command of General Lincoln served in the western counties.

The people of Chelmsford, from the earliest settlement, gave every
encouragement to millers, lumbermen, mechanics, and traders, making
grants of land, and temporary exemption from taxation, to such as would
settle in their town. It became distinguished for its sawmills,
gristmills, and mechanics' shops of various kinds. Billerica, Dracut,
and Tewksbury gave like encouragement. About the time of the Revolution
a sawmill was built below Pawtucket Falls and owned by Judge John Tyng.

[Illustration: PAIGE-STREET FREEWILL BAPTIST CHURCH, 1840.]

Toward the close of the last century the lumbering industry on the
Merrimack grew into prominence; and, in 1792, Dudley A. Tyng, William
Coombs, and others, of Newburyport, were incorporated as "The
Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River." This canal,
which was demanded for the safe conduct of rafts by the Falls, was
completed in 1797, at an expense of fifty thousand dollars. The fall of
thirty-two feet was passed by four sets of locks.

The first bridge across the Merrimack was built, in 1792, by Parker
Varnum and associates; the Concord had been bridged some twenty years
earlier.

[Illustration: DAM AT PAWTUCKET FALLS.]

In 1793, the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal were incorporated.
Loammi Baldwin, of Woburn, superintended the construction. The canal
began at the Merrimack, about a mile above Pawtucket Falls, extended
south by east thirty-one miles, and terminated at Charlestown. It was
twenty-four feet wide and four feet deep and was fed by the Concord
River. It cost $700,000, and was completed in 1804,--the first canal
in the United States opened for the transportation of passengers and
merchandise. For forty years it was the outlet of the whole Merrimack
valley north of Pawtucket Falls.

The first boat voyage from Boston, by the Middlesex Canal and the
Merrimack River, to Concord, New Hampshire, was made in 1814; the first
steamboat from Boston reached Concord in 1819.

The competition of the Middlesex Canal ruined the Pawtucket Canal, as it
in turn, in after years, was ruined by the Boston and Lowell Railroad.
Navigation finally ceased on its waters in 1853, since which date its
channel has been filling up and its banks have been falling away.

In 1801, Moses Hale, whose father had long before started a fulling-mill
in Dracut, established a carding-mill on River Meadow Brook,--the first
enterprise of the kind in Middlesex County.

In 1805, the bridge across the Merrimack was demolished and a new bridge
with stone piers and abutments was constructed. It was a toll-bridge as
late as 1860.

The second war with England stimulated manufacturing enterprises
throughout the United States; and several were started, depending upon
the water-power of the Concord River. In 1813, Captain Phineas Whiting
and Major Josiah Fletcher erected a wooden cotton-mill on the site of
the Middlesex Company's mills, and were successful in their enterprise.
John Golding, in the same neighborhood, was not so fortunate.

[Illustration: JOHN-STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]

The year 1815 is memorable for the most disastrous gale that has
devastated New England during two centuries; it was very severe in
Chelmsford.

The sawmill and gristmill of the Messrs. Bowers, at Pawtucket Falls, was
started in 1816. The same year Nathan Tyler started a gristmill where
the Middlesex Company's mill No. 3 now stands. Captain John Ford's
sawmill stood near the junction of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

In 1818, Moses Hale started the powder-mills on Concord River. The
following year Oliver M. Whipple and William Tileston were associated
with him in business. In 1821, the firm opened Whipple's Canal. The
business was enlarged from time to time and was at its zenith during the
Mexican War, when, in one year, nearly five hundred tons of powder were
made. The manufacture of powder in Lowell ceased in 1855. In 1818, also,
came Thomas Hurd, who purchased the cotton-mill started by Whiting and
Fletcher and converted it into a woolen-mill. He soon enlarged his
operations, building a large brick mill near the other. He was the
pioneer manufacturer of satinets in this country. His mill was destroyed
by fire and rebuilt in 1826. About this time he built the Middlesex
(Mills) Canal, which conveyed water from the Pawtucket Canal to his
satinet-mills, thus affording additional power. His business was ruined
in 1828 by the reaction in trade; and two years later the property
passed into the hands of the Middlesex Company.

[Illustration: FREE CHAPEL, 1860.]

The year 1818 also brought Winthrop Howe to town. He started a mill for
the manufacture of flannels at Wamesit Falls, in Belvidere, and
continued in the business until 1827, when he sold out to Harrison G.
Howe, who introduced power-looms, and who, in turn, sold the property to
John Nesmith and others in 1831. In the year 1819 a new bridge across
the Concord River was built to replace the old one built in 1774. About
this time the dam across the Concord at Massic Falls was constructed,
and the forging-mill of Fisher and Ames was built. The works were
extended in 1823, and continued by them until 1836, when the privilege
was sold to Perez O. Richmond.

[Illustration: KIRK BOOTT.
Born in Boston, October 20, 1790. Died in Lowell, April 21, 1837.]

In 1821, the capabilities of Pawtucket Falls for maintaining vast
mechanical industries were brought to the attention of a few successful
manufacturers, who readily perceived its advantages and hastened to
purchased the almost worthless stock of the Pawtucket Canal Company. In
November, Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Kirk Boott, Warren
Dutton, Paul Moody, and John W. Boott, visited the canal, which they
now controlled, perambulated the ground, and planned for the future.
February 5, 1822, these gentlemen and others were incorporated as the
Merrimack Manufacturing Company, with Warren Dutton as president.
The first business of the new company was to erect a dam across the
Merrimack at Pawtucket Falls, widen and repair Pawtucket Canal, renew
the locks, and open a lateral canal from the main canal to the river,
on the margin of which their mills were to stand. Five hundred men were
employed In digging and blasting, and six thousand pounds of powder were
used. The canal, as reconstructed, is sixty fee wide and eight feet
deep. The first mile of the company was completed and started September
1, 1823. The first treasurer and agent was Kirk Boott, a man of great
influence, who left his mark on the growing village.

[Illustration: SECOND UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, SHATTUCK STREET.]

Paul Moody settled in the village in 1823, and took charge of the
company's machine-shop, which was completed in 1826. Ezra Worthen was
the first superintendent. The founders of the Merrimack Company
contemplated from the first the introduction of calico-printing. In this
they were successful, in 1826, when John D. Prince, from Manchester,
England, took charge of the Merrimack print-works. Mr. Prince was
assisted by the chemist, Dr. Samuel L. Dana; and together they made the
products of the mills famous in all parts of the globe.

[Illustration: APPLETON-STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.]

In 1825, the old Locks and Canals Company of 1792 was re-established as
a separate corporation, with the added right to purchase, hold, sell, or
lease land and water-power, and the affairs of the company were placed
in the hands of Kirk Boott.

In 1820, there were in the villages of East Chelmsford, Belvidere, and
Centralville, about two hundred and fifty inhabitants. Whipple's
powder-mills and Howe's flannel-mill were then in operation, and there
were several sawmills and gristmills. Ira Frye's Tavern stood on the
site of the American House. There was Hurd's mill, a blacksmith shop at
Massic Falls, a few other such establishments as a country village
usually affords, and several substantial dwelling-houses, farmhouses,
and cottages, conspicuous among which was the Livermore House in
Belvidere.

[Illustration: ROGERS HOMESTEAD, BELVIDERE.]

The operations of the Merrimack Company soon attracted settlers. In
1822, a regular line of stages was established between East Chelmsford
and Boston. In 1824, the Chelmsford Courier was established, and
became at once the organ of the growing community. The next year a
militia company was organized; the Fourth of July was celebrated with
appropriate ceremonies; the Middlesex Mechanics' Association and the
Central Bridge Corporation were incorporated; the Hamilton Manufacturing
Company was established; and the inhabitants of the village of East
Chelmsford petitioned to be incorporated. The petition was granted, and
Lowell became a town March 1, 1826, with a population of about two
thousand. The name of the town was adopted in honor of Francis Cabot
Lowell, a business associate of Nathan Appleton, and a promoter of the
manufacture of cotton goods in this country.

The years of 1827 and 1828 were marked by great depression in the
commercial and manufacturing circles of the country, but Lowell had
a good start, and her prosperity was assured. The Lowell Bank, the
Appleton Company, and the Lowell Manufacturing Company, were established
in 1828,--the year the first ton of coal was brought to town. The coal
was used for fuel in the law office of Samuel H. Mann.

In 1829, the Lowell Institution for Savings was incorporated, and
William Livingston established himself in trade. For a quarter of a
century Mr. Livingston was one of the most active, most enterprising,
and most public-spirited citizens of Lowell. Much of the western portion
of the city was built up by his instrumentality.

[Illustration: WORTHEN-STREET OR SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH.]

The Middlesex Company was established in 1830, as was the Lowell fire
department. The Town Hall was also built; and Lowell numbered sixty-four
hundred and seventy-seven inhabitants.

[Illustration: CENTRAL METHODIST CHURCH.]

In 1830, Mr. Jackson undertook to connect Boston and Lowell with a
railroad. A macadamized road had been surveyed, when this new road was
projected; and it was a part of the original plan to have the cars
drawn by horses. The successful operation of Stephenson's Liverpool and
Manchester Railroad was known to Mr. Jackson, and he was encouraged
to persevere. The road was completed at a cost of $1,800,000 and was
opened to the public, July 4, 1835. The cars and locomotive would be a
curiosity to-day. The former, resembling Concord coaches, were divided
by a partition into two compartments, each entered by two doors,
on the sides. The interiors of the compartments were upholstered with
drab-colored cashmere, and each accommodated eight passengers. The
conductor and engineer had each a silver whistle. After the former
had ascertained the destination of each passenger and collected the
necessary fare, he would close the car doors, climb to his place in a
cab at the top of the coach, and whistle to the engineer as a signal for
starting. The engineer, who was protected by no cab, would respond with
his whistle, when the train would dash out of the station. The brakes
were such as are used on a coach, and it was a scientific matter, when
the engineer gave his warning-whistle to break up a train on arriving at
a station. The rails were secured to granite ties, by means of cast-iron
plates, and the road was very, _very_ solid. Frost soon rendered it
necessary to introduce wooden ties, and nothing has yet been discovered
which can be used as a substitute for them.

[Illustration: JOHN NESMITH.
Born in Londonderry, New Hampshire, August 3, 1793.]

The Lowell Railroad was not the first opened in the United States, but
it was the first passenger road in successful operation in New England.

In 1831, the Railroad Bank was established.

In 1832, the Suffolk and Tremont Mills were established.

In 1833, the town felt the need of a police court, and one was
established. Joseph Locke was the first justice. During the same year
the Lawrence Mills were started; and the town was visited by President
Andrew Jackson and members of his Cabinet, and later by the great
statesman, Henry Clay.

In 1834, Belvidere was included in Lowell, and the town had the honor of
entertaining Colonel David Crockett, George Thompson, M.P., the English
abolitionist (not cordially), and M. Chevalier, the French political
economist.

In 1835, Joel Stone, of Lowell, and Joseph P. Simpson, of Boston, built
the steamboat Herald, for navigating between Lowell and Nashua, but the
enterprise proved a failure; the Nashua and Lowell Railroad Company
was incorporated; the Lowell Almshouse was started; the hall of the
Middlesex Mechanics' Association was built; and the Lowell Courier, the
oldest daily newspaper in Middlesex County, was established.

[Illustration: SUFFOLK-STREET ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.]

In 1836, the population of Lowell was 17,633. During the year the Boott
Mills were started, and a city charter was adopted.

[Illustration: THE THIRD UNIVERSALIST CHURCH.
Now Barristers' Hall.]

Dr. Elisha Bartlett was elected first mayor of the city of Lowell. He
was succeeded, in 1838, by the Honorable Luther Lawrence; in 1840, by
the Honorable Elisha Huntington, M.D.; in 1842, by the Honorable
Nathaniel Wright; in 1844, by Dr. Huntington; in 1846, by the Honorable
Jefferson Bancroft; in 1849, by the Honorable Josiah B. French; in 1851,
by the Honorable J.H.B. Ayer; in 1852, by Dr. Huntington; in 1853, by
the Honorable Sewall G. Mack; in 1855, by the Honorable Ambrose
Lawrence; in 1856, by Dr. Huntington; in 1857, by the Honorable Stephen
Mansur, the first Republican mayor; in 1858, by Dr. Huntington, for his
eighth term; in 1859, by the Honorable James Cook; in 1860, by the
Honorable Benjamin C. Sargent; in 1862, by the Honorable Hocum Hosford;
in 1865, by the Honorable Josiah G. Peabody; in 1867, by the Honorable
George F. Richardson; in 1869, by the Honorable Jonathan P. Folsom; in
1871, by the Honorable Edward F. Sherman; in 1872, by the Honorable
Josiah G. Peabody; in 1873, by the Honorable Francis Jewett; in 1876, by
the Honorable Charles A. Stott; in 1878, by the Honorable John A.G.
Richardson; in 1880, by the Honorable Frederic T. Greenhalge; in 1882,
by the Honorable George Runels; in 1883, by the present mayor, the
Honorable John J. Donovan.

The young city met with a serious loss April 11, 1837, in the sudden
death of Kirk Boott.

A county jail was built in 1838, and the Nashua and Lowell Railroad was
opened for travel.

Luther Lawrence was killed, April 17, 1839, by a fall into a wheel-pit.
He was serving his second term as mayor of the city at the time of the
accident. His residence was bought by the corporations and converted
into the Lowell Hospital.

[Illustration: WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON.
Born April 12, 1803. Died March 17, 1855.]

In 1840, the Massachusetts Mills were established; and the South Common,
of about twenty acres, and the North Common, of about ten acres, were
laid out. During this year appeared the Lowell Offering, a monthly
journal, edited by Miss Harriet Farley and Miss Hariot Curtiss, two
factory girls. The journal was praised by John G. Whittier, Charles
Dickens, and other gifted writers, for its intrinsic merits.

Lowell is largely indebted to Oliver M. Whipple for its cemetery, which
was consecrated June 20, 1841. It contains about forty-five acres, and
has near the centre a small gothic chapel.

In January, 1842, Charles Dickens made a flying visit to Lowell, and has
left on record in American Notes his impressions of the city.

During this period the court-room of the city was occasionally graced by
the presence of Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate.

The City Library was instituted in 1844.

The Stony Brook Railroad Company was incorporated in 1845.

The Honorable Nathan Crosby was appointed justice of the police court in
1846, and still continues in office. The Lowell and Lawrence Railroad
was incorporated this year, and the population of Lowell numbered
29,127.

[Illustration: SAINT ANNE'S CHURCH, 1840.]

President James K. Polk visited Lowell in 1847; and the city met with
the loss of Patrick Tracy Jackson, a man whose name should be always
honored in Lowell. The great Northern Canal was completed this year by
James B. Francis, the most distinguished hydraulic engineer in the
United States. It was a stupendous work and stands a monument to the
genius of its constructor. Daniel Webster, in company with Abbott
Lawrence, rode along its dry channel, before the water was admitted, and
fully appreciated the immense undertaking.

The Salem and Lowell Railroad was incorporated in 1848, and was opened
for travel two years later.

The reservoir on Lynde's Hill was constructed in 1849.

Gas was introduced, and the Court House on Gorham Street built, in 1850.

In 1851, Centralville, previously a part of Dracut, was included within
the city limits, and the Lowell Reform School was established.

In 1852, George Wellman completed his first working model of his self
top card stripper--one of the most valuable inventions of the present
century; Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, visited Lowell; and the
Legislature of Massachusetts enacted the first prohibitory liquor law.

The City Hall was reconstructed in 1853. The Lowell Jail was built in
1856. Thomas H. Benton visited Lowell in 1857. Washington Square was
laid out in 1858.

[Illustration: OLIVER M. WHIPPLE.]

During the dark days of the Rebellion, Lowell responded loyally to the
appeal for soldiers and money, and of her young men many of the best
were sacrificed to preserve the Union.

The fall of Fort Sumter produced a profound sensation in Lowell. Four
companies from the city hastened to join their regiment: the Mechanic
Phalanx, under command of Captain Albert S. Follansbee; the City Guards,
Captain James W. Hart; the Watson Light Guard, Captain John F. Noyes,
and the Lawrence Cadets (National Grays), Captain Josiah A. Sawtelle.
They assembled at Huntington Hall, the day after President Lincoln's
call for troops, and were mustered into the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment
under command of Colonel Edward F. Jones. They at once proceeded to
Boston and were joined at Faneuil Hall by the other companies of the
regiment and the next day were on their way to the seat of war. A
detachment of the regiment had to fight their way through a mob in
Baltimore, and four of the Lowell City Guards were the first to lay down
their lives in the great drama of war known as the Rebellion. Addison
O. Whitney and Luther C. Ladd, of Lowell, were the first martyrs; their
last resting-place is commemorated by a monument in a public square of
the city. The regiment arrived at Washington, were quartered in the
Senate Chamber, and formed the nucleus of the rapidly gathering Northern
army. The Hill Cadets, under Captain S. Proctor, and the Richardson
Light Infantry, Captain Phineas A. Davis, were formed the day after the
Baltimore riot. The company known as the Abbott Grays, under Captain
Edward Gardner Abbott, was organized five days later. That called the
Butler Rifles was organized May 1, by Eben James and Thomas O'Hare.

[Illustration: FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, 1860.]

While these active preparations for war were progressing, Judge Crosby
called a public meeting, April 20, at which the Pioneer Soldiers' Aid
Association, the germ of the Sanitary Commission, was formed. The city
government was liberal, too, in its appropriations for the families of
absent soldiers. In September, Camp Chase, a military rendezvous, was
established at Lowell.

[Illustration: KIRK-STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 1840.]

Among the first, and most distinguished, of the citizens of Lowell to
offer his services to the general government at this crisis, was General
Benjamin F. Butler, already a lawyer and orator of great reputation, who
had previously held high rank in the militia. Six companies from Lowell
joined his expedition to the Gulf.

Early in 1862, the Sixth and Seventh Batteries, mostly Lowell men, were
organized. In response to the President's call in July, 1862, three
companies joined the Thirty-third Regiment. In August, the Sixth
Regiment again entered the field for a campaign of nine months.

[Illustration: FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 1840.]

In February, 1863, Lowell sent to the war the Fifteenth Battery, in
command of Captain Timothy Pearson and Lieutenant Albert Rowse. During
this month the ladies of the city raised about five thousand dollars for
the Sanitary Commission by a Soldiers' Fair--the second held in the
Northern States. In July, 1863, the "draft" called for over four hundred
additional soldiers from Lowell; less than thirty were forced into the
service. These were the palmy days for the substitute brokers and
bounty-jumpers. In July, 1864, the Sixth Regiment again responded, and
served one hundred days.

In 1865, came the close of the war and the return of the battle-scarred
veterans. During the long struggle more than five thousand citizens of
Lowell were in the army and navy of the United States, and the city
expended over $300,000 in equipment and bounties.

The Lowell Horse Railroad Company and the First National Bank were
incorporated in 1864. The French-Canadians began to settle in Lowell
just after the war.

[Illustration: ST. PETER'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1860.]

In October, 1866, Dr. J.C. Ayer presented the city with the statue of
Victory which stands in Monument Square.

The Old Ladies' Home was dedicated July 10, 1867. St. John's Hospital
was completed and opened in 1868. It occupies the site of the old yellow
house built in 1770 by Timothy Brown. In November of the same year the
first meeting of the Old Residents' Historical Association of Lowell was
held at the store of Joshua Merrill; in December, the city was visited
by General Grant.

In 1869, the city authorities undertook a system of water-supply works
which was completed four years later; the Lowell Hosiery Company was
incorporated in May. The Thorndike Manufacturing Company commenced
operations in June, 1870.

The fire-alarm telegraph was introduced in 1871; in August, trains on
the Lowell and Framingham Railroad commenced running; in November, the
new iron bridge across the Merrimack was finished; during the year, the
city suffered severely from the scourge of small-pox.

The boundaries of Lowell were extended, in 1873, to include Middlesex
Village, taken from Chelmsford, and a part of Dracut and Tewksbury. A
new railroad by the way of Andover connected Lowell with Boston in 1874.

[Illustration: OLD FIRST UNIVERSALIST CHURCH,
Which stood on site of the Boston and Maine Railroad Station.]

The city celebrated the semi-centennial of its incorporation, March 1,
1876.

The Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil visited the city in June of the same
year.

The Lowell Art Association was formed in May, 1878. In December of that
year the waters of the Merrimack rose nearly eleven feet on Pawtucket
Dam; in the same month the Merrimack Company introduced the electric
light.

[Illustration: JOHN  DYNELY PRINCE.
Born in England, 1780. Died January 5, 1860.]

Merrimack Company introduced the electric light.

In August, 1880, Boston and Lowell were connected by telephone.

As one glances over the history of Lowell, he recognizes the fact that
the city has gained its prominence, its wealth, and its population,
chiefly through the great corporations, and the wisdom of their early
managers; accordingly the record of these corporate bodies is intimately
connected with the annals of the city. The reader has noted the fact
that the first impetus was given to the place by the acts of the
Merrimack Manufacturing Company. This company was incorporated February
5, 1822; and the first mill was started the following year. The company
is not only the oldest in the city but is the largest, employing the
most operatives and producing the most cloth; their chimney, two hundred
and eighty-three feet high, is the tallest in the country.

Ezra Worthen, the first superintendent of the mills, died, suddenly,
June 18, 1824, and was succeeded by Warren Colburn, the author of the
popular arithmetic. Mr. Colburn died September 13, 1833, and was
succeeded by John Clark, who held the office until 1848. Mr. Clark was
succeeded by Emory Washburn, afterward Governor of Massachusetts, by
Edward L. Lebreton, and from 1850 to 1865 by Isaac Hinckley, now
president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad. John
C. Palfrey was superintendent from 1865 to 1874, when Joseph S. Ludlam
was appointed. The print-works were in charge of Kirk Boott in 1822;
after him was Allen Pollock, 1823 to 1826; John D. Prince, 1826 to 1855;
Henry Barrows, 1855 to 1878; James Duckworth, 1878 to 1882; Robert
Latham, since 1882. The treasurers of the company have been Kirk Boott,
Francis C. Lowell, Eben Chadwick, Francis B. Crowinshield, Arthur T.
Lyman, Augustus Lowell, and Charles H. Dalton.

[Illustration: UNITARIAN CHURCH, 1845.]

The property of the company occupies twenty-four acres of land. They
have five mills besides the print-works, 153,552 spindles, 4,465 looms,
and employ 3,300 operatives. They use up 18,000 tons of coal. The prints
made at this establishment, are marked "Merrimack," and are too well
known to require description.

The Hamilton Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1825. The
treasurers have been William Appleton, 1825; Ebenezer Appleton, 1830;
George W. Lyman, 1833; Thomas G. Cary, 1839; William B. Bacon, 1859;
Arthur T. Lyman, 1860; Arthur L. Devens, 1863; Eben Bacon, 1867; Samuel
Batchelder, 1869; George R. Chapman, 1876;

[Illustration: FIRST UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, HURD STREET.]

James A. Dupee, since 1870. The agents have been Samuel Batchelder,
1825; John Avery, 1831; O.H. Moulton, since 1864. The superintendents
of print-works have been William Spencer, 1828; William Hunter, 1862;
William Harley, 1866; Thomas Walsh, 1876. The company manufactures
flannels, prints, ticks, stripes, drills, and sheetings.

The Appleton Company was incorporated in 1828. The treasurers have been
William Appleton, 1828; Patrick T. Jackson, 1829; George W. Lyman, 1832;
Thomas G. Cary, 1841; William B. Bacon, 1859; Arthur T. Lyman, 1861;
Arthur L. Devens, 1863; John A. Burnham, 1867; George Motley, 1867;
James A. Dupee, since 1874. The superintendents have been John Avery,
1828; George Motley, 1831; J.H. Sawyer, 1867; Daniel Wright, 1881. The
company manufactures sheetings, drillings, and yarn.

[Illustration: NATHAN CROSBY.
Born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, February 12, 1798.]

The Lowell Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1828. The
treasurers have been Frederick Cabot, 1828; George W. Lyman, 1831;
Nathaniel W. Appleton, 1841; William C. Appleton, 1843; J. Thomas
Stevenson, 1847; Israel Whitney, 1848; Charles L. Harding, 1863; David
B. Jewett, 1865; Samuel Fay, 1874; George C. Richardson, 1880; Arthur T.
Lyman, 1881. The superintendents have been Alexander Wright, 1828;
Samuel Fay, 1852; Andrew F. Swapp, 1874; Albion C. Lyon was appointed
June 1, 1883. The company makes ingrain, Brussels, and Wilton carpets.

[Illustration: FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH.]

The Middlesex Company was incorporated in 1830. The treasurers have
been William D. Stone, 1830; Samuel Lawrence, 1840; R.S. Fay, 1857;
George Z. Silsbee, 1882. The agents have been James Cook, 1830; Nelson
Palmer, 1845; Samuel Lawrence, 1846; O.H. Perry, 1848; William T. Mann,
1851; Josiah Humphrey, 1852; James Cook, 1858; O.H. Perry, 1858;
G.V. Fox, 1869; William C. Avery, 1874; O.H. Perry, from June, 1882.
O. Saunderson, superintendent. The company makes indigo blue coatings,
cassimeres, police, yacht, and cadet cloth, ladies' sackings, beavers,
and shawls.

The Suffolk Manufacturing Company was incorporated January 17, 1831. The
proprietors of the Tremont Mills were incorporated March 19, 1831. The
two were consolidated in 1871. The treasurers of Suffolk Manufacturing
Company were John W. Boott, 1831; Henry Hall, 1832; Henry V. Ward, 1857;
Walter Hastings, 1865; William A. Burke, 1868; James C. Ayer, 1870. The
treasurers of the proprietors of the Tremont Mills were William
Appleton, 1831; Henry Hall, 1832; Henry V. Ward, 1857; Walter Hastings,
1865; William A. Burke, 1868; James C. Ayer, 1870. The treasurers of
Tremont and Suffolk Mills have been James C. Ayer, 1871; John C.
Birdseye, 1872. The agents of Suffolk Manufacturing Company were Robert
Means, 1831; John Wright, 1842; Thomas S. Shaw, 1868.

[Illustration: WORTHEN-STREET METHODIST CHURCH.]

The agents of the proprietors of the Tremont Mills were Israel Whitney,
1831; John Aiken, 1834; Charles L. Tilden, 1837; Charles F. Battles,
1858; Thomas S. Shaw, 1870. The agent of Tremont and Suffolk Mills is
Thomas S. Shaw, appointed August 19, 1871. These mills make jeans,
cotton flannels, drillings, sheetings, shirtings and print cloth.

The Lawrence Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1831. The
treasurers have been William Appleton, 1831; Henry Hall, 1832; Henry V.
Ward, 1857; T. Jefferson Coolidge, 1868; Lucius M. Sargent, 1880. The
agents have been William Austin, 1830; John Aiken, 1837; William S.
Southworth, 1849; William F. Salmon, 1865; Daniel Hussey, 1869; John
Kilburn, 1878. The company makes shirtings, sheetings, cotton flannels,
and cotton and merino hosiery.

[Illustration: GEORGE WELLMAN.
Born in Boston, March 16, 1810. Died April 4, 1864.]

The Boott Cotton Mills were incorporated in 1835. The treasurers have
been John Amory Lowell, 1835; J. Pickering Putnam, 1848; T. Jefferson
Coolidge, 1858; Richard D. Rogers, 1865; Augustus Lowell, 1875. The
agents have been Benjamin F. French, 1836; Linus Child, 1845; William A.
Burke, 1862; Alexander G. Cumnock, 1868. The company makes sheetings,
shirtings, and printing cloth.

The Massachusetts Cotton Mills were incorporated in 1838. The treasurers
have been John Amory Lowell, 1839; Homer Bartlett, 1848; George
Atkinson, 1872. The agents have been Homer Bartlett, 1840; Joseph White,
1848; Frank F. Battles, 1856. The mills turn out sheetings, shirtings,
and drillings.

[Illustration: LEE-STREET UNITARIAN CHURCH.
Now French Catholic. Enlarged and rebuilt.]

The Lowell Machine Shop was incorporated in 1845. The treasurers have
been J. Thomas Stevenson, 1845; William A. Burke, from 1876. The agents
have been William A. Burke, 1845; Mertoun C. Bryant, 1862; Andrew Moody,
1862; George Richardson, 1870; Charles L. Hildreth, 1879. The company
makes all kinds of machinery for mills.

The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River were incorporated
in 1792. The treasurers have been Joseph Cutler, 1792; W.W. Prout,
1804; Samuel Cutler, 1809; Samuel Tenney, 1817; Kirk Boott, 1822; Joseph
Tilden, 1837; P.T. Jackson, 1838; John T. Morse, 1845. The agents have
been Kirk Boott, 1822; Joseph Tilden, 1837; William Boott, 1838; James
B. Francis, 1845, to present date.

[Illustration: PRESCOTT-STREET CHURCH.]

The Winnipiseogee Lake Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company was
incorporated in 1831. The presidents were Abbott Lawrence, from August,
1846, to July, 1850; Henry Hall, to June, 1856; Francis B. Crowinshield,
to August, 1857; John Amory Lowell, to June, 1864; J. Thomas Stevenson,
to June, 1877; Richard S. Fay, until his decease, March 7, 1882. The
treasurers were James Bell, from 1845 until his decease, in May, 1857;
Francis B. Crowinshield, to October, 1861; J. Thomas Stevenson, to June,
1864; Homer Bartlett, to June, 1872; Charles S. Storrow, to June, 1878;
James A. Dupee, to June, 1882. Directors, 1883: Charles Storrow,
president; James A. Dupee, Augustus Lowell, Howard Stockton, George
Atkinson. Clerk of corporation, Augustus T. Owen; treasurer, George
Atkinson; agent, T.P. Hutchinson. The company guards the storage of
water at Lake Winnipiseogee.

[Illustration: LOWELL MACHINE SHOP About 1860.]

[Illustration: APPLETON MILLS. 1845.]

Nor would a sketch of Lowell be complete without mention of the firm of
J.C. Ayer and Company. Dr. J.C. Ayer started the business in 1837, when
he offered to physicians the prescription of cherry pectoral. It soon
became a very popular remedy, and he was soon embarked in the enterprise
of manufacturing it. Liter he added to the list of his proprietary
medicines cathartic pills, sarsaparilla, ague cure, and hair vigor. He
died July 3, 1878, after having accumulated a princely fortune. His
brother, and partner, Frederick Ayer, conducts the business. The firm
occupy several large buildings and employ three hundred people. The
world demands fifteen tons of Ayer's pills yearly. They publish thirteen
million almanacs, in ten languages, issuing twenty-six editions for
different localities, keeping several large presses constantly at work.

[Illustration: HIGH-STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]

C.J. Hood and Company also make sarsaparilla and other proprietary
medicines. They employ seventy-five operatives.

E.W. Hoyt and Company employ twenty hands, and make two million bottles
of German cologne.

There are numerous other manufactories in the city, of more or less
extent. Their products consist of porus and adhesive plasters, lung
protectors, sulphuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids, and other
chemicals and dye-stuffs, belting, paper stock, yarns, shoulder-braces,
suspenders, shoe-linings, elastic webbing, sackings, rugs, mats, gauze
undergarments, looms, harnesses, felting, hose, bunting, seamless flags,
awning stripes, reeds, braid, cord, chalk-lines, picture cords, twines,
belts, fire hose, leather, bolts, nuts, screws, washers, boilers,
tanks, kettles, presses, fire-escapes, water-wheels, wire-heddles,
card-clothing, wood-working and knitting machinery, cartridges,
chimney-caps, stamps, tools, lathes, files, wire-cloth, scales, steel
wire, paper boxes, music stands, mouldings, carriages, sleighs,
shuttles, doors, sashes, blinds, furniture, asbestos covering, blotters,
crayons, drain-pipe, glue, lamp-black, machine brushes, matches, croquet
sets.

[Illustration: MERRIMAC HOUSE.
Built in 1833, rebuilt in 1873. Henry Emery proprietor since 1845.]

Proper attention has always been paid to education in Lowell, In 1822,
there were two schoolhouses within the territory, one near the pound,
the other near the stone house at Pawtucket Falls. The Merrimack Company
soon after its organization built a schoolhouse on Merrimack Street and
paid the teacher. The Reverend Theodore Edson had charge of the school.
Joel Lewis was the first male teacher. Alfred V. Bassett was the second.
In 1829, the school had one hundred and sixty-five pupils. In 1834, the
school was divided. The High School building on Kirk Street was erected
in 1840, and remodeled in 1867. Charles C. Chase was teacher from 1845
to 1883. He was succeeded by Frank F. Coburn, the present teacher.

[Illustration: SOLON A. PERKINS.
Born in Lancaster, N.H., December 6, 1836. Killed in Louisiana,
June 3, 1863.]

After the log chapel presided over by the Indian Samuel had fallen into
decay, a century and a half passed before another place of worship was
erected within the limits of Lowell. In December, 1822, a committee was
appointed by the Merrimack Corporation to build a suitable church, and
in April, 1824, the sum of nine thousand dollars was appropriated for
the purpose. The church was organized February 24, 1824, as "The
Merrimack Religious Society," and the Episcopal form of worship was
adopted. The first religious services were conducted by the Reverend
Theodore Edson, on Sunday, March 7, 1824, in the schoolhouse. The church
edifice is known as St. Anne's, and was consecrated by Bishop Griswold,
March 16, 1825. The Reverend Dr. Edson was the first rector. After a
pastorate of over half a century, he died in 1883. In the tower of St.
Anne's is a chime of eleven bells, mounted in 1857, and weighing five
tons.

[Illustration: Bvt. Brig. Gen. HENRY LIVERMORE ABBOTT.
Born in Lowell, January 21, 1842. Killed in battle of the
Wilderness, May 6, 1864.]

[Illustration: Major EDWARD GARDNER ABBOTT.
Born in Lowell, September 29, 1840. Killed at the battle
of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862.]

The First Baptist Church was organized February 8, 1826. The church
edifice, built the same year, occupied land given to the society by
Thomas Hurd. It was dedicated November 15, 1826, when the Reverend John
Cookson was installed as pastor. He was dismissed August 5, 1827, and
was succeeded, June 4, 1828, by the Reverend Enoch N. Freeman, who died
September 22, 1835. The Reverend Joseph W. Eaton was ordained pastor,
February 24, 1836, and dismissed February 1, 1837. The Reverend Joseph
Ballard was installed December 25, 1837, and dismissed September 1,
1845. The Reverend Daniel C. Eddy was ordained January 29, 1846, was
speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1855, was
chaplain of the Senate in 1856, and was dismissed at the close of 1856.
The Reverend William H. Alden was installed June 14, 1857, and dismissed
in April, 1864. The Reverend William E. Stanton was ordained November 2,
1865, and resigned June 30, 1870; the Reverend Norman C. Mallory was
settled September 14, 1870, and resigned June 30, 1874; the Reverend
Orson E. Mallory was settled March 24, 1875, resigned February 28, 1878;
the Reverend Thomas M. Colwell was settled May 4, 1878.

[Illustration: NORTHERN RAILROAD STATION.]

The First Congregational Church was organized June 6, 1826. The church
edifice was built, in 1827, on land given by the Locks and Canals
Company. The Reverend George C. Beckwith, the first pastor, was ordained
July 18, 1827, and dismissed March 18, 1829. The Reverend Amos
Blanchard, D.D., was ordained December 5, 1829, and dismissed May 21,
1845, when he became pastor of the Kirk-street Church. The Reverend
Willard Child was installed pastor, October 1, 1845, and dismissed
January 31, 1855. The Reverend J.L. Jenkins was ordained October, 17,
1855, and dismissed in April, 1862. The Reverend George N. Webber was
installed in October, 1862, and dismissed April 1, 1867. The Reverend
Horace James was installed October 31, 1867, and dismissed December 13,
1870. The Reverend Smith Baker was installed September 13, 1871.

[Illustration: BLOCK AT CORNER OF CENTRAL AND MIDDLE STREETS, 1848.]

The Hurd-street Methodist Episcopal Church dates from 1826; the church
edifice was built in 1839. The Reverend Benjamin Griffin was pastor in
1826; the Reverend A.D. Merrill, in 1827; the Reverend B.F. Limbert, in
1828; the Reverend A.D. Sargent, in 1829; the Reverend E.K. Avery, in
1830 and 1831; the Reverend George Pickering, in 1832; the Rev. A.D.
Merrill, in 1833 and 1834; the Reverend Ira M. Bidwell, in 1835; the
Reverend Orange Scott, in 1836; the Reverend E.M. Stickney, in 1837 and
1838; the Reverend Orange Scott, in 1839 and 1840; the Reverend Schuyler
Hoes, in 1841 and 1842; the Reverend W.H. Hatch, in 1843 and 1844; the
Reverend Abel Stevens, in 1845; the Reverend C.K. True, in 1846 and
1847; the Reverend A.A. Willets, in 1848; the Reverend John H. Twombly,
in 1849 and 1850; the Reverend G.F. Cox, in 1851 and 1852; the Reverend
L.D. Barrows, in 1853 and 1854; the Reverend D.E. Chapin, in 1855; the
Reverend George M. Steele, in 1856 and 1857; the Reverend H.M. Loud, in
1858 and 1859; the Reverend William R. Clark, in 1860 and 1861; the
Reverend Daniel Dorchester, in 1862 and 1863; the Reverend Samuel F.
Upham, in 1864, 1865, and 1866 (during the year 1865 he was chaplain of
the Massachusetts House of Representatives); the Reverend S.F. Jones,
in 1867. The church is known as St. Paul's, and the Reverend Hiram D.
Weston is the present pastor.

[Illustration: COUNTY COURT HOUSE, GORHAM STREET, 1860.]

[Illustration: LOWELL SKATING RINK, GORHAM STREET.]

The First Universalist Church was organized in July, 1827. The following
year they built their church on Chapel Street, but removed it in 1837
to Central Street. The Reverend Eliphalet Case was pastor from 1828 to
1830; the Reverend Calvin Gardner, from 1830 to 1833; the Reverend
Thomas B. Thayer, from 1833 to 1845; the Reverend E.G. Brooks, in 1845;
the Reverend Uriah Clark, from 1846 to 1850; the Reverend Thomas B.
Thayer, from 1851 to October, 1857; the Reverend J.J. Twiss, from 1859
to January 1, 1872; the Reverend G.T. Flanders was settled in 1872; the
Reverend George W. Bicknell was settled December 21, 1880.

The South Congregational (Unitarian) Church was organized November 7,
1830, and the edifice was dedicated December 25, 1832. The Reverend
William Barry was pastor from 1830 to 1835; the Reverend Henry A. Mills,
D.D., from 1836 to 1853; the Reverend Theodore Tibbetts, in 1855 and
1856; the Reverend Frederick Hinckley, from 1856 to 1864; the Reverend
Charles Grinnell was settled February 19, 1867; the Reverend Henry
Blanchard was ordained January 19, 1871; the Reverend Josiah Lafayette
Seward was ordained December 31, 1874.

[Illustration: DANIEL LOVEJOY AND SON'S MACHINE KNIFE WORKS.]

The Appleton-street (Orthodox) Congregational Church was organized
December 2, 1830; their edifice was built the following year. The
Reverend William Twining was pastor from 1831 to 1835; A.C. Burnap,
from 1837 to 1852; the Reverend George Darling, from 1852 to 1855; the
Reverend John P. Cleaveland, D.D., from 1855 to 1862, when he became
chaplain of the Thirtieth Massachusetts Regiment in the Department of
the Gulf; the Reverend J.E. Rankin, from 1863 to 1865; the Reverend A.P.
Foster, was settled October 3, 1866, resigned October 17, 1868; the
Reverend J.M. Green was installed July 30, 1870.

The Worthen-street Baptist Church was organized in 1831. The edifice
known as St. Mary's Church was built for this society. Their present
edifice was built in 1838. The Reverend James Barnaby was pastor from
1832 to 1835; the Reverend Lemuel Porter, from 1835 to 1851; the
Reverend J.W. Smith, from 1851 to 1853; the Reverend D.D. Winn, from
1853 to 1855; the Reverend T.D. Worrall, from 1855 to 1857; the Reverend
J.W. Bonham, from 1857 to 1860; the Reverend George F. Warren, from 1860
to 1867; the Reverend F.R. Morse, from 1867 to 1870; the Reverend D.H.
Miller, D.D., from 1870 to 1873; the Reverend E.A. Lecompte, in 1873.
The present pastor is the Reverend John C. Emery.

[Illustration: HOYT & SHEDD'S BLOCK, MIDDLESEX STREET.]

In 1831, the St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church was erected, but was
replaced in 1854 by the present more spacious edifice. The church was
consecrated October 29, 1854, by Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, and
Bishop O'Riley, of Hartford. The pastors have been the Reverend John
Mahoney, the Reverend Peter Connelly, the Reverend James T. McDermott,
the Reverend Henry J. Tucker, and the Reverend John O'Brien.

In 1833, a free church of the Christian denomination was organized under
the ministry of the Reverend Timothy Cole. The experiment proved a
failure and the building was afterwards converted to the uses of an
armory.

The Freewill Baptist Church was organized in 1834, and in 1837 a
spacious edifice was erected. Through mismanagement the society came to
grief and the building was used for commercial purposes. In 1853, the
society built another edifice on Paige Street. The pastors of this
church have been the Reverend Nathaniel Thurston, the Reverend Jonathan
Woodman, the Reverend Silas Curtis, the Reverend A.K. Moulton, the
Reverend J.B. Davis, the Reverend Darwin Mott, the Reverend George W.
Bean, the Reverend J.B. Drew, the Reverend D.A. Marham, the Reverend
J.E. Dame, and the Reverend E.W. Porter.

[Illustration: CHALIFOUX BLOCK.]

The Second Universalist Church was organized in 1836, and their house
was built the following year. The pastors of this church have been the
Reverend Z. Thompson, from 1837 to 1839; the Reverend Abel C. Thomas,
from 1839 to 1842; the Reverend A.A. Miner, D.D., from 1842 to 1848; the
Reverend L.J. Fletcher; the Reverend L.B. Mason, from 1848 to 1849; the
Reverend I.D. Williamson, from 1849 to 1850; the Reverend N.M. Gaylord,
from 1850 to 1853; the Reverend John S. Dennis; the Reverend Charles
Cravens; the Reverend Charles H. Button; the Reverend L.J. Fletcher,
from 1859 to 1862; the Reverend F.E. Hicks, from 1862 to 1866; the
Reverend John G. Adams, from 1866; the Reverend R.A. Greene, from 1877.

The John-street (Orthodox) Congregational Church was organized May 9,
1839. The house was dedicated January 24, 1840. The Reverend Stedman W.
Hanks, the first pastor, was ordained March 20, 1840, and dismissed
February 3, 1853. He was succeeded by the Reverend Eden B. Foster, D.D.,
who resigned his charge in 1861, but resumed it in 1866. During his
absence the Reverend Joseph W. Backus was pastor. The Reverend J.B.
Seabury was installed as associate pastor in 1875. The present pastor is
the Reverend Henry T. Rose.

[Illustration: FIVE CENTS SAVINGS BANK.]

In 1840, the Third Baptist Church was organized. In 1846, the edifice,
afterwards occupied by the Central Methodist Church, was built for this
society. The pastors were the Reverend John G. Naylor, the Reverend Ira
Person, the Reverend John Duncan, the Reverend Sereno Howe, the Reverend
John Duer, and the Reverend John Hubbard. The church was disbanded in
1861.

The Worthen-street Methodist Episcopal Church was organized October 2,
1841, and the edifice was erected the following year. The succession of
pastors has been the Reverend A.D. Sargent, the Reverend A.D. Merrill,
the Rev. J.S. Springer, the Reverend Isaac A. Savage, the Reverend
Charles Adams, the Reverend I.J.P. Collyer, the Reverend M.A. Howe, the
Reverend J.W. Dadmun, the Reverend William H. Hatch, the Reverend A.D.
Sargent, the Reverend L.R. Thayer, the Reverend William H. Hatch, the
Reverend J.O. Peck, the Reverend George Whittaker. The present pastor
is the Reverend Nicholas T. Whittaker.

[Illustration: APPLETON BLOCK, CENTRAL STREET.]

The St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church was gathered on Christmas, 1841.
The Reverend James Conway, the first pastor, was succeeded in March,
1847, by the Reverend Peter Crudden. The present rector is the Reverend
M. Ronan, assisted by the Reverends John D. Colbert and Thomas F.
McManus.

In 1843, the Lowell Missionary Society was established. The Reverend
Horatio Wood officiated in the ministry and labored in free evening
schools and Sunday mission schools, successfully.

The Kirk-street Congregational Church was organized in 1845; the edifice
was built in 1846. The Reverend Amos Blanchard was installed the first
pastor and continued to his death, January 14, 1870. He was succeeded by
the Reverend C.D. Barrows. The present pastor is the Reverend Charles A.
Dickinson.

The High-street Congregational Church was organized in 1846. Their
edifice was built by the St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which was formed
in 1842 and was disbanded, in 1844, under the ministration of the
Reverend A.D. McCoy. The Reverend Timothy Atkinson was pastor from 1846
to 1847; the Reverend Joseph H. Towne, from 1848 to 1853; the Reverend
O.T. Lanphier, from 1855 to 1856; the Reverend Owen Street, from
September 17, 1857.

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church was originally built for the Baptists,
but was purchased in 1846 by the Reverend James T. McDermott, and
consecrated March 7, 1847.

[Illustration: SCENE BELOW HUNT'S FALLS.]

The Third Universalist Church was organized in 1843, and the edifice
known as Barristers' Hall was built for its use. It was disbanded after
a few years. The pastors were the Reverend H.G. Smith, the Reverend John
Moore, the Reverend H.G. Smith, and the Reverend L.J. Fletcher. The
Central Methodist Church occupied the edifice for a time, before they
secured the building of the Third Baptist Society. The Society was
gathered in 1854. The pastors have been the Reverend William S. Studley,
the Reverend Isaac S. Cushman, the Reverend Isaac J.P. Collyer, the
Reverend Chester Field, the Reverend Lorenzo R. Thayer, the Reverend
J.H. Mansfield, the Reverend Andrew McKeown, in 1865 and 1866, the
Reverend William C. High, in 1867. The Reverend Isaac H. Packard is the
present pastor.

[Illustration: FISKE'S BLOCK, CENTRAL STREET.]

In 1850, a Unitarian Society, organized in 1846, built the Gothic Chapel
on Lee Street, and occupied it until 1861, when it passed into the hands
of a society of Spiritualists. The Unitarian pastors were the Reverend
M.A.H. Niles, the Reverend William Barry, the Reverend Augustus
Woodbury, the Reverend J.K. Karcher, the Reverend John B. Willard, and
the Reverend William C. Tenney. It became the property of the St. Joseph
(French) Roman Catholic Church.

On July 5, 1855, the stone church on Merrimack Street was dedicated as a
Methodist Protestant Church. There preached the Reverend William Marks,
the Reverend Richard H. Dorr, and the Reverend Robert Crossley. The
building passed into possession of the Second Advent Society, which had
been organized as early as 1842.

[Illustration: LOWELL MACHINE SHOP.]

St. John's Episcopal Church was erected in 1861, and consecrated by
Bishop Eastburn, July 16, 1863. The Reverend Charles W. Homer was the
first rector. He was succeeded by the Reverend Cornelius B. Smith, in
1863, who, in 1866, was succeeded by the Reverend Charles L. Hutchins.
The present pastor is the Reverend Leander C. Manchester.

There are in Lowell thirty edifices exclusively devoted to public
worship.

[Illustration: EDSON BLOCK MERRIMACK STREET.]

We have followed the course of events which have developed the city of
Lowell from a small, scattering settlement to an important city, with an
area of nearly twelve square miles, occupied by more than sixty thousand
inhabitants. The daily life of its continually changing population has
not been dwelt upon. In the early days the projectors of the city cared
for the religion, the education, and the savings of those whom they
employed. New England farms contributed their fairest children to the
mills. The field was open to the world, and from every section flocked
those seeking honest employment. First in great numbers came the people
from England and Ireland, and, later, the thrifty French, Germans,
Swedes, and Canadians. All nations have contributed to the advancement
of Lowell, each adding of his labor or thought to the improvement of the
city.

Lowell is laid out with a certain irregular regularity. The mills came
first: the business came afterward; and one finds canals, business
blocks, and mills built close together. Only an intelligent study of a
map of the city will give one an idea of its plan. It was not modeled
after the city of Philadelphia.

[Illustration: A PLAN of SUNDRY FARMS &c. PATUCKET in the town of
CHELMSFORD. MDCCCXXI.]

Over seventeen millions of dollars are invested in manufacturing. There
are one hundred and fifty-three mills, over eight hundred thousand
spindles, and twenty thousand looms. The mills give employment to
thirteen thousand female operatives and ten thousand male operatives.
Two hundred million yards of cotton goods are yearly sent from Lowell to
clothe the world. Of woolen goods, more than eight million yards. Nearly
three million yards of carpeting are made in the city every year, and a
fabulous number of shawls. Thirteen million pairs of stockings were the
last year's product. The Southern States contribute yearly thirty-four
thousand tons of cotton, which is here made into the most delicate
fabrics. The calico and printed goods made in Lowell in the year 1882
would twice encircle the earth at the equator--and then all would not be
used to do it.

[Illustration]