USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Woodbury > History of ancient Woodbury, Connecticut : from the first Indian dead in 1659 to 1872, Vol. II > Part 22
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Rev. Austin Isham was next called up by the chairman, and gave some very interesting reminiscenses, a copy of which the editor has been unable to obtain.
The following letters were then read by the pastor:
Letter of Rev. CHARLES E. ROBINSON, of Troy, N. Y.
DEAR BROTHER LINSLEY :- I would greatly like to be with you at the celebration of the bi-centennial anniversary of your dear old church. I have an interest in, and love for that field which can never die. The fresh dewy morning of my ministry dawned there. There are souls there either brought to Jesus under my Ministry, or through the goodness of God quickened by it, whose .Christian lives, characteristics and graces, stand out with crys- taline distinctness. There are certain hours and days, which, amid the long procession of indistinguishable days, are radiant with sacred memories. There are some of those precious Tuesday evening Cottage prayer meetings, where the position of indi- vidnals at the meeting, the expression of their faces, the words spoken, and the songs we sang, are as clearly before me as if no time had elapsed.
Faces which we shall see no more. Blessed ones anticipating us in the joys of Heaven.
There are fields over which I strayed, bridges, leaning from which, I quieted my disturbed soul in the sweet murmuring of the
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stream. There are certain points on the summit of those Orenau rocks, from which I took in the unsurpassed loveliness of th Woodbury valley, all of which are now, by the power of memor a part of my life, and which I would not willingly forget.
There was an impression made upon me in my pastorate ther growing out of the old associations which enfolded mne, which, cannot help feeling, must be valuable to any laborer in that fiel Those three graves of Walker, Stoddard and Benedict, with the flocks all folded about them, (for I think that I laid away to he last resting place, the last member of the church under Pasto Benedict), all seemed to tell me to be faithful. I could not hel the feeling that those old fathers were looking down with intere; upon the thread of their work which they had let drop, at deat and which, in God's providence, after passing through variou faithful hands, I had taken up.
May God continue to bless that old First Church through a the years until the bridegroom comes !
Present to the friends gathered there my fraternal greeting and my sincere regrets, that in this case, I cannot be in two place at once.
Believe me, my dear Brother, to be your attached friend now, : I was formerly your Pastor.
CHARLES E. ROBINSON. TROY, N. Y., April 20th, 1870.
P. S .- Please send me, if convenient, some account of you gathering.
Letter of Rev. CHARLES LITTLE, of Nebraska.
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, April 13th, 1870. P. M. TROWBRIDGE, Esq., Chairman of Committee.
DEAR BROTHER :- I have the honor to acknowledge the receij of your note of the 4th inst., inviting me to participate in the pr posed observance of the two hundredth anniversary of your church
It would give me very great pleasure to be present on th: occasion, there to renew the friendships of the past. Of the place on earth, not few nor very many, to which memory delights
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return and to recall the sacred associations there formed, one of the freshest and most cherished is Woodbury.
The parsonage, the office-study, the church, the lecture-room, the domestic circles, the familiar faces, the cemeteries, the hills and valleys-these all come before me with dear remembrances.
Though my stay with you was short, yet I expect to enjoy the fruits of it throughout eternity.
That old church-it ought to be greatly profitable for you to rehearse its history for two hundred years.
The good which it has accomplished-there are many in heaven who know more fully what that is than the Orators who will address you.
That invisible company-those gone before; I see no reason why God may not commission them to be present; how much more deeply interesting will they 'appear to those permitted to behold them, than the crowds which in bodily presence will honor the occasion.
Most gladly would I be with you then and there, but to go and return would require a journey of three thousand miles, which is more than I can perform at present.
Please present my love and best wishes to all my friends, and accept the assurance of my earnest desire for the future prosperity of the church.
I remain yours, in the bonds of the Gospel,
CHARLES LITTLE.
Letter of' Rev. PHILO JUDSON, of Rocky Hill.
[Mr. Judson was born in this church, and baptized the " eighth day." He graduated in 1809; became a successful minister, and it is said more than 1600 persons have been gathered into the churches in which he has labored, through his instrumentality. He is now 90 years old.]
ROCKY HILL, May 2d.
BR. TROWBRIDGE :
Dear Sir :- O, I thank you for your very interesting and talented letter. I am feeble, not able to go out ; been confined all winter ;
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do not go out now. I should be glad to be there ; it would do my soul good. I hope I may have health to call on you at Wood- bury. Your letter did my soul good. Head is much affected; severe congh.
Your letter took deep hold of my feelings. The Lord bless you. Pray for me. Yours truly,
PHILO JUDSON.
[Extract from a recent letter written by MISS CHARLOTTE R. ANDREW, daughter of the late REV. SAMUEL R. ANDREW of New Haven.]
You ask for the date of my blessed father's death, and his age. He was seventy-one, and died May 26, 1858. If it ever be per- mitted the spirits of the departed to revisit their dear old homes on earth, will it not be permitted him to unite on that anniversary day with his beloved church in their service of praise and thanks- giving to God ? I am almost sure he will be invisibly present.
At the close of reading the letters, a pleasing incident occurred. During the collation at the Town Hall, a large and beautiful loaf of cake, made by Mrs. Judson, wife of Deacon Truman Judson, bearing a miniature flag, labeled "Stratford," surrounded by seven smaller loaves, bearing the names of the other churches represented on the occasion, occupied the place af honor at the principal table. This loaf was, at this point, presented by Rev. Mr. Churchill, with appropriate remarks, to Rev. Mr. Hall, the representative of the mother church, as a token of filial regard from her daughter. Mr. Hall received the gift with some playful and fitting remarks, and promised to be " faithful to his charge."
The closing prayer of the day was then made by the pastor :
And now, Gracious God, our Heavenly Father, from whom
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cometh every good and perfect gift, we bless Thee for casting our lot in this land of civil and religious freedom, and for crowning our lives with such signal tokens of Thy goodness. We praise Thee for wise, virtuous, heroic Christian ancestors, and beseech Thee that we may copy their example, and carry forward their work. May we remember the word of our Puritan leader across the sea, that more light is yet to break forth from Thy book. May we realize that for us, greater achievements over self and the world are possible-that higher goals of duty may be reached, and richer trophies won for Christ. Therefore, forgetting the things behind, and reaching forth unto those before, may we press toward the mark of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus. May we seek to be enrobed in all the virtues and graces of the Spirit, so as to shed the purest light and exert the most benign influence upon the world. May we all love and serve Thee, remembering that we must soon stand before Thee, since we are strangers and sojourners here, as were all our fathers. We thank Thee, O Lord, for this bright and genial day, and for the interest and harmony attending these exercises. May they conduce to the highest good of all, and the glory of Thy name. And when one after another we are called away from earth, may we come at last to the general assem- bly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven. And to Thy great name, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, shall be all the praise and glory forever. Amen.
At the close of the prayer, the benediction was pronounced, and the delighted audience separated for their homes among the hills and valleys, never again to meet in this old church on a like mem- orable occasion.
We remark, in conclusion, that the results of a celebration such as we have recorded, cannot but be vastly beneficial to the Church whose history it celebrates, and the community in which it is located. It recalls to the attention of all how faithful in His promises to His chosen people is the Great Head of the
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Church. Few churches in the land can claim so remarable a fulfillment of these "promises" as this revered old church. A review of all these wonderful works for the long period of two hundred years, brings forcibly to the mind, that we are a " cove- nant people," and in the kind care of a " covenant-keeping God."
CHAPTER VI.
WOODBURY IN THE GREAT REBELLION OF 1861.
CAUSES OF THE WAR; EVENTS OF 1860; EVENTS OF 1861; EVENTS OF 1862; EVENTS OF 1863 ; EVENTS OF 1864 ; EVENTS OF 1865 ; THE RETURN OF PEACE; RECEPTION OF THE RETURNING BRAVES ; THEIR EAGER RETURN TO THE PURSUIT OF THE PEACEFUL OCCUPATIONS OF PRIVATE LIFE; DECORATION DAY : BEAUTIFUL CEREMONIES ; REFLECTIONS.
" Ah never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave- Gushed warm with hope and courage yet Upon the soil they fought to save;
On fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead."
MILINGLY arose the sun of 1860 over the ever increasing borders of this fair land. For two hundred and forty years from its first sad beginning amid the De- cember blasts of a drear and deadly win- ter, at Plymouth Rock, on the sterile HCC New England coasts, emerging soon to light and prosperity, it had seemed to be the favored of heaven- the hope of the world! From a feeble band of adventurers, nur- tured amid great vicissitudes, it had become a strong nation of about thirty millions of souls. From a few hardy colonists, strag- gling and scattered along a boundless ocean, it had become the equal of the prondest nations in the world, occupying a continent of limitless resources. Trade flourished, the busy hum of ma- chinery was every where heard, agriculture gave rich rewards to the toil of the husbandman, the arts and sciences had reached a high perfection, and yielded rich fruits to the explorations of the learned, while the proud sail of commerce whitened every sea,
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and gladdened every port in the most distant climes. We were at peace with all the world, and were honored and respected in all lands, At that date, this nation presented a spectacle, never before attained, in the lapse of all the ages, in the knowledge and intelligence of its people, the respect of the world for its power and achievments, and in all the elements that go to make up a prosperous and glorious national life.
But to this fair picture of peace and prosperity, there was a re- verse side. A foul blot stained our fair eseutcheon-a festering and deadly sore existed on the otherwise healthy surface of the body politic. A curse, a blight, unmitigated and cancerous, forced upon the feeble colonists by the guilty greed of the mother coun- try, while the new land was in its infancy, with ever increasing fatality and doom, was eating out the national life; and so dark- ening the face of high heaven, that scarcely the prayer of faith could pierce the ever deepening gloom, or the pure incense of con- trite devotion reach the veiled throne of the Great Disposer of all the affairs of men. The curse of Slavery had settled down upon the land, and obscured every rational hope of removal, while its insidious fangs reached out in the darkness, withering every noble hope, and every aspiration after the true, and the beautiful, in all our moral heavens. Society succumbed to its deadly blast, politi- cal parties bent the subservient, suppliant knee, and there was no healthy vitality in the churches, erected to the service of the Most High God, to prevent their rending asunder, before the all- consuming wrath of the slave-breeder, the slave-trader, and that most cruel fiend, who dared to consign his own flesh and blood to wicked, damnable bondage, more ghastly and deplorable than death itself. So thoroughly had this withering curse poisoned the life-blood of the nation, that the whole body politie stood, trem- bling in awe before a few thousand slave-holders, so far sunk in bestiality, that they could place the beautiful daughter of their wicked and unbridled passions, in disgraceful nudity, upon the auction block, to be sold into a slavery of soul and body, a thou- sand fold more hopeless and loathsome than the condition of the field hand, and this, too, almost in sight of her sisters, born in lawful wedlock. The good, the true, the beautiful, the wise, as well as the wicked and vile, yielded a forced submission to the be- hests of this remorseless demon. They yielded to a system con- demned by the early fathers of the republic-an institution, the contemplation of which had wrung from the slave-holding Jeffer-
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son the heart-felt exclamation ! "I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just !" Well might he, or any other thoughtful observer, tremble ; for the whole country since his day has trembled, and been shaken, from center to circumference.
What was this fell institution of slavery ? It was the "old, old story" of oppression and wrong,-of a privileged class, and a servile class. It was the old struggle between aristocrat privilege on the one side, and democratic freedom on the other. Our fa- thers had crossed an ocean three thousand miles wide, abandoning homes and possessions, exiling themselves to the wilderness of a new world, struggling with famine, savage foes, and hardships of every kind, to found a republic in which all men under the ægis of the law, should be free and equal. They resolved there should be no privileged class. Education was to be diffused among all alike. The poor and the rich were to be alike eligible to all offices of trust, honor and emolument.
"Our Constitution, in its spirit and legitimate utterance, is doubtless the noblest document which ever emanated from the mind of man. It contains not one word hostile to liberty. Even now, with the light of three-fourths of a century shed upon its practical workings, it requires not the change of a paragraph to make it true to humanity.
"But yet ingloriously, guiltily, under sore temptation, we con- sented to use one phrase susceptible of double meaning, " held to labor." These honest words, at the North mean a hired man, an apprentice. At the South they mean a slave, feudal bondage. So small, apparently so insignificant, were those seeds sown in our Constitution which have resulted in such a harvest of misery. A privileged class at the South assumed that by these words the Constitution recognized domestic slavery, and the right of prop- erty in man. With persistence never surpassed, the Slaveholders of the South endeavored to strengthen and extend their aristo- cratic institution, which was dooming ever increasing millions to life-long servitude and degradation. All wealth was rapidly be- ing accumulated in the hands of the privileged few, who owned their fellow men as property. The poor whites, destitute of em- ployment, unable to purchase negroes, and regarding labor, which was mostly performed by slaves, in their region, as degrading, were fast sinking into a state of almost bestail misery.
" The sparse population which Slavery allowed, excluded church- es, schools and villages. Immense plantations of many thousand
&
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acres, tilled sometimes by a thousand slaves, driven to their toil by a few overseers, consigned the whole land to apparent solitude. The log hut of the overseer was surrounded by the miserable cab- ins of the negroes, and in the workshops of the North all the rude implements of their toil were manufactured. The region of the Southern country generally presented an aspect of desolation which Christendom could no where else parallel. The Slavehold- ers, ever acting as one man, claimed the right of extending this institution over all the free territories of the United States. Free labor and Slave labor can not exist together. The New England farmer can not work with his sons in fields surrounded by negro bands, where labor is considered degrading, where his wife and daughters find no genial society, no education, none of the insti- tutions of religion, none of the appliances and resources of high civilization which freedom secures. The admission of slavery to the Territories effectually excluded freemen from them. The in- troduction to those vast realms of a privileged class, who were to live in luxury upon the unpaid labor of the masses, rendered it impossible that men cherishing the sentiment of republican equal- ity should settle there. Our whole theory of the emigration and settlement in this country was, that the humblest should be as free as the highest. That the poor man should be as much entitled to the just rewards of his daily toil, as the senator to draw his sal- ary for holding a seat in Congress, or the President to draw his pay for presiding over the destinies of the nation.
"How just this democratic principle, over arching, as with a sunny sky, all humanity ! This was the contemplated corner stone of our Republic. This was the democracy, sacred, heaven-born, which Jesus taught, and over which our national banner, of the Stars and Stripes, was intended to be unfurled. But Satan sent the serpent of aristocratic usurpation into our Eden, to wilt its flowers and poison its fruit. The execrable spirit, in the most malignant form it had ever developed, came over here, demanding that the rich should live in splendor at the expense of the poor. The rich man's boots were to be polished, as in old baronial Eu- rope, and the poor boy who blacked them was to have no pay. The rich man's coach was to roll luxuriously through the streets. and his linen to be washed, and his fields to be tilled, while the coachman, the laborer and the washerwoman, were to be defraud- ed of their wages.
" The daughter of the rich man, with cultured mind and pol
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ished address, was to move through saloons of magnificence, robed in fabrics of almost celestial texture, while the daughter of the poor man, dirty and ragged, and almost naked, with one single garment scarce covering her person, was to toil in the field from morning till night, and from youth till old age and death, that her aristocratic sister, very probably in blood relationship her half- sister, the child of the same father, might thus cultivate her mind and decorate her person.1
" This is a very attractive state of affairs to the aristocrat, tread- ing velvet carpets, beneath gilded ceilings, and drinking priceless wines. But it dooms such farmer's boys as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, to spend their lives in digging in the ditch, when God has endowed them with ener- gies to guide the destinies of nations. And they will not consent to this philosophy."
In discussing this question during the first year of the war, be- fore the abolition of slavery, an eloquent writer says :1
I was once walking through the magnificent saloons of Ver- sailles, the most gorgeous of all earthly palaces, with an American lady by my side. As we passed through the brilliant suite of apartments, three hundred in number, with fresco, and gilding, and gorgeous paintings ;- as we stepped out upon the parterre, and drove through the graveled walks of the park, originally spreading over thirty thousand acres, with groves, lawns, foun- tains, lakes, brooks, artificial crags, jets d'eaux, and a wilderness of statnary, my young lady friend said :
"Oh! I wish we had an aristocracy, and a king, and a court." "Silly girl! Had she lived in the days of Louis XV., when a nation was robbed to minister to the voluptuousness of the aris- tocracy, she would have been a poor peasant girl, barefooted and bareheaded, in linsey woolsey frock, toiling with the hoe in the field. Her father was a poor farmer's boy, who left the plow and went to the city, and there, through the influence of the law of equal rights for all, acquired that wealth and position, which enabled his daughter, refined in manners and cultivated in mind, to take the tour of Europe.
" This question of a privileged class has nothing to do with color. The slavery of the Bible, whatever its character, was not Negro slavery. The slaves were, almost without exception, white men. The slavery, which it is said our Saviour did not condemn
1 Abbott's History of the Civil War in America.
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in the New Testament, was not Negro slavery. The slaves of the Roman empire were almost universally whites, prisoners of war. If the New Testament sanctions this slavery, then would it be right to sell into bondage every Southern prisoner taken in this war. Many a Southern gentlemen might find himself scouring knives in a Northern kitchen, with some devout elergyman preach- ing to him affectionately the doctrine, "Slave, obey your master." This was Roman slavery. Julius Caesar himself was at one time a captive and a slave, and was compelled to purchase his freedom.
"The slavery of this country is not Negro slavery. A large number of the slaves, both men and women, can with difficulty be distinguished from white persons. The process of amalgamation has, for a long time, been going on so rapidly in the South, that, over large extents of country, the great majority of the slaves have more Caucasian than Ethiopic blood in their veins. Thou- sands of boys and girls, toiling in cotton-fields of the South, are the sons and daughters of Southern gentlemen of high position. Many a young lady has been the belle of the evening at Newport or Saratoga, whose half-sister, the daughter by the same father, has earned her laces and brocade, by toiling from dawn to eve in the Negro gang. Many of the most beautiful women at the South are these unfortunate daughters of aristocratie sires, in whose veins lingers but that slight trace of Ethiopie blood, which gives a golden richness to the hue. There is nothing but slavery which will so debauch the conscience, that a father will sell his own daughter, as a " fancy girl," to the highest bidder.
" The great question which has culminated in this desperate war, has been simply this: "Shall there be, in the United States, an aristocratic class, maintained by the Constitution, who are to enjoy exclusive privileges, living upon the proceeds of the toil of others, while there is a defranded class of laborers, excluded from education, and doomed to perpetual poverty ?"
This is, in a single sentence, a clear statement of the sole cause of the late unhappy and disastrous civil war. The volumes that have been written by clergy and laity, and the oceans of argu- ment that have been expended upon this subject, have never given a clearer idea of all this great woe-this unlimited amount of hu- man suffering and wanton waste of the late extended and bloody conflict. The people of the south hugged the monster evil in a loving embrace. Conscientious people at the north loathed the institution, but it was, as they thought, protected by the clause
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in the Constitution to which allusion has been made, and being lovers of that great charter of their liberties, they yielded to it a wilding obedience, even with this most distasteful and contradic- tory interpretation. There were none in the north to suggest in- terference with the hated institution where it existed, save a small band of abolitionists. But there was violent opposition, and in- superablo repugnance to extending slavery into the free territories of the Union. Occasional struggles on the subject of extension, and a trial of the power of the respective theories, had been car- ried on with great bitterness for many years. The slave propa- gandists had long been quietly feeling their way, laying all their plans with one intent, and waiting only opportunity and sufficient strength to burst forth with irresistible fury, and establish a great slave empire in the face, and to the astonishment of, the civilized world.
" This is what the slaveholders have demanded. They said that the Constitution favored freedom,-free speech, a free press, free labor, free soil, and free men, and demanded that the Constitution should be changed, to maintain the exclusive claims of an aristo- cratic class, and to strengthen their hold upon their slaves. The one incessant cry has been, ' Abjure your democratic constitution, which favors equal rights for all men, and give us, in its place, an aristocratic constitution, which will secure the rights of a priv- ileged class.' They insisted that the domestic slave trade should be nurtured, and the foreign slave trade opened; saying, in the coarse and vulgar language of one of the most earnest advocates of slavery, 'the North ean import jackasses from Malta; let the South then import Niggers from Africa.' They demanded the right to extend slavery over all the Territories of the United States, the right to hold their slaves in all States of the Union temporarily ; that speaking or writing against slavery in any State in the Union should be a penal offense; that the North should catch their fugitive slaves, and send them back to bondage; and that the Administration of the General Government should be placed in the hands of those only whom the South could trust, as the pledged enemies of republican equality, and the friends of slavery.'
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