USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 23
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The visit of Jackson's political foe, Daniel Webster, to An- dover on November 9, 1843, is fortunately more fully docu-
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mented. Webster, who had retired as Secretary of State under President Tyler on May 3, 1843, was still at odds with the Whig Party, which had resented his remaining in the Cabinet after President Harrison's death. One of Webster's most whole- hearted admirers was Moses Stuart, who, since 1810, had been professor of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Semi- nary. Two years older than Webster, he was a tall, emaciated scholar, a victim of harassing physical ailments who drove him- self on by sheer nervous energy. His solemnity of manner and dignity of bearing made him appear like one of the prophets. Different though he was from Webster in physique and tempera- ment, he was, like him, a conservative, with a distrust of change which determined his judgment on governmental problems. On October 5, 1843, as chairman of a committee, he wrote urging Webster to speak at a convention of Essex County Whigs to be held on Thursday, November 9, at Andover. Webster's first in- clination was to refuse. But the pertinacious Stuart would not take "no" for an answer, and Webster finally wrote from Marsh- field agreeing to be present.
Because everyone understood that the occasion would mark the formal return of "Black Dan" to the Whigs' ranks in Massa- chusetts, elaborate preparations were made to ensure its success. The carefully arranged program was well advertised in advance in the Whig newspapers. Webster arrived on the day before the convention as the guest of Professor Stuart. He had been out in a heavy snowstorm and contracted one of the heavy catarrhal colds which often prostrated him completely. To friends who dined with him at the Mansion House on Wednesday evening he seemed seriously ill. But he awoke on Thursday much better in body and spirit, quite able to do himself justice during the exercises.
Although November 9 was cold almost to the freezing point, the sun shone brightly until the late afternoon. Two special trains left Boston for Andover that morning, one at 7:30 and the other at 9:30, the fare each way being 371/2 cents. The parade
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had been scheduled to start at 10:30 from Andover Square, but the second train was very late, and the Chief Marshal, John Mar- land, manager of the Ballardvale Mills, had to wait patiently in the headquarters at the Eagle Hotel. When the disabled loco- motive limped in about noon, the guests of the day fell into line, marching in a column of sixes, with the New England Guards as a military escort. Behind them came members of commit- tees, followed by a little group of Revolutionary veterans, ex- governors of the Commonwealth and Whig Congressmen (in- cluding Amos Abbott, the South Parish's first Congressional Representative), members of the clergy, officers and students of Andover Theological Seminary and Phillips Academy, and in the rear delegations of Whigs from each ward of Boston and from various towns of Essex County, each carrying a banner and several preceded by brass bands and drum corps. Webster very wisely, considering his illness, waited at Professor Stuart's house until the procession drew near and then joined it, riding in a carriage with the eminent theologian.
This parade, comprising from four thousand to six thou- sand men-the newspaper estimates varied greatly-marched through the streets to a spot near Pomp's Pond, described by Professor Stuart as follows:
One must imagine a plot of ground, shaped like an immense bowl, the bottom of which is a large flat, and the sides of which rise very gradually and with a gentle slope to the height of some 50 or 60 feet. This area would contain within itself at least fourteen or fifteen thousand persons, each of whom could be brought perfectly within the sound of a well-toned voice ... The position of the stage was peculiar. It was placed about one-third of the way up the ascent of the amphitheatre, on the northwest side of it; and back of it was a thick forest of evergreens on the ascending ground, which contrib- uted greatly to the quiet of the place, and formed a rampart against the north wind and the cold.
The stage was large, providing space for the many reporters
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who had come, some of them from New York City, to get a first- hand account of the proceedings. Whatever Dan'l Webster said or did was good "copy." The gathering was called to order by the Honorable Stephen C. Phillips, of Salem, who had served three terms in Congress and had recently retired as mayor of his city. He introduced the presiding officer, Judge William Stevens, of North Andover. Dr. Stuart was then implored to address the Throne of Grace, and did so with the loquacity so typical of his generation. Mr. Phillips next harangued the multitude, empha- sizing Webster's services to the Whig Party with a fervor which was received with an outburst of cheering from the shivering crowd. After these preliminaries, the statesman was presented; and the familiar figure, removing the wide-brimmed stovepipe hat which he was wearing and throwing off his surtout with a dramatic gesture, stood up to receive the plaudits of his fellow Americans.
At this date Webster was in his sixty-second year, and irrev- erent youngsters were beginning to refer to him as "Old Dan." Good living had added to his weight and made his figure round and corpulent. Dressed with his usual scrupulous care in a blue coat with large brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and a thick white stock around his neck, he carried himself with conspicuous dig- nity. Beside the cadaverous Professor Stuart, he looked like a 'somber mastiff contrasted with a greyhound. He was still "god- like," even though he did speak most of the time with his hands in his pockets, as one of the Phillips boys wrote home to his fami- ly. Probably he was chilled, for the fingers of the reporters were numb; and after he had talked for a few minutes, he put on his tall hat, with a word of apology.
Those who had watched Webster for many years were aware that his manner was becoming more deliberate, that he frequent- ly paused too long in his utterances, and that he was even some- times ponderous. But when he was aroused, the old lion shook himself and showed all his former spirit. On this occasion he
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opened, as was his custom, in a moderate tone, gradually warm- ing up as he went on, until his clarion voice thrilled even the most remote listener.
It was a campaign speech which Webster had been asked to deliver, and during the first part of his address he confined him- self to themes on which his views were well known. Discussing the tariff-then as now an important matter in Essex County --- he urged that protective duties were beneficial not only to that industrialized section but also to the nation as a whole. To illus- trate the prosperity which they created, he pointed out that a male workman, in Essex County, after paying his board, could clear twelve dollars a month! "We cannot see this in any other county!" he added, after the cheers had subsided. Then, taking Andover as a typical product of the protective system, he went on to describe it in complimentary words which are not unpleas- ing when read today:
Here is a township of about nine miles square, occupied by an in- telligent, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed population; there are about ten or twelve neat and commodious places of worship; twenty of those gems of New England, free schools, where the sons of the rich and the poor meet on an even footing, and receive the same use- ful instruction. Here, too, is a classical seminary, which has long been distinguished for its ripe and elegant scholars; and, of more recent establishment, a theological institution, the piety, talents, and learn- ing of whose professors have made it honorably known, not only in the United States but in Europe.
Doubtless Webster, with characteristic tact, had been aug- menting his knowledge of Andover by a judicious catechism of Professor Stuart, as Lafayette had done with Josiah Quincy. Nevertheless Phillips Academy graduates cannot help being delighted at this graceful tribute from the most eminent gradu- ate of the Phillips Exeter Academy. Exeter men have said many courteous things of Andover, but never more effectively than at this meeting in 1843.
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As the unromantic discussion of political and economic mat- ters drew to a close, Webster could not refrain from making a personal statement. It was for this that his hearers had been pa- tiently waiting, and the silence in the dell was almost oppressive as he changed his tone and began, "I am not a candidate for any office in the gift of the government, or in the gift of the people." He told the Whigs of Essex County that he had not formed his opinions on public questions without some meditation, and that these views were the summation of a consistent political theory. Touching briefly on his motives for remaining in Tyler's Cabi- net after his associates had resigned, he justified himself by say- ing that he had wished to complete the treaty with England. He ended:
I hope that I have not extended these remarks beyond the purpose which I proposed; and I close them by repeating the declaration made by me in another place last year, that I am a Whig, a Massa- chusetts Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig, and none shall have the power, now or hereafter, to deprive me of the position in which that char- acter places me.
The long speech was over, and the audience burst out in wild cheers. The Old Master, like the Prodigal Son, had rehabilitated himself with his family, the members of which gladly forgave him his past errors as they stood overwhelmed in his imperial presence. After talking for two hours, he was tired, but he could still thank the friends who gathered around him to wring his hand.
The procession now re-formed and marched to a great "Pavil- ion" which had been erected "near the South Meeting House." Plates had been laid for three thousand, but not more than half that number sat down, for the day was too chilly for a picnic luncheon. The Courier reporter declared that he had never seen "tables better arranged or more plentifully supplied." Most of the guests paid 50 cents, but the young gentlemen of Phillips Academy, possibly as a reward for their marching endurance,
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were admitted without cost, and were probably even more pleased with the repast than they had been with the oration.
Webster, pleading fatigue, did not remain for this luncheon, but withdrew to the Mansion House for a badly needed rest. His absence, while it was regretted, did not prevent the elated Whigs from continuing their love-feast and listening to the long succes- sion of toasts without which no political gathering of that pe- riod would have been complete. Aside from minor infections, due to exposure, there was only one casualty. George Gay, a Boston lawyer, exhausted by the cold, retired for warmth to a railroad car and there died, presumably from apoplexy. The Academy and Seminary students were back in their rooms for evening study hours, during which at least two wrote to their families to describe the thrilling event. As for Webster, he soon recovered and was receiving congratulations on the following day in Boston, at the home of his brother-in-law, James W. Paige, on Summer Street.
Thus ended one of Andover's notable celebrations, during which, to Professor Stuart's immense satisfaction, the whole en- tertainment was conducted "on strictly temperance principles." Whether this phase of the proceedings was agreeable to Webster is not recorded. Doubtless he had his own devices for meeting his needs!
Although the town could have observed in 1846 its two- hundredth anniversary, apparently no effort was made to do so. It was not a propitious moment, for the country was in the midst of the War with Mexico, with which the townspeople were not in sympathy, believing it to be a move towards slavery expansion. At any rate, the citizens passed up a fine opportunity for exul- tation over the progress of two centuries.
Andover was the scene of tragedies as well as of festivals. In 1850, John Aiken, a Lowell manufacturer, moved to a large house on Central Street. He had married Mary Appleton, el- der sister of Mrs. Franklin Pierce; and the two distinguished brothers-in-law, Aiken and Pierce, used to attract much atten-
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tion as they strolled around the town. After Pierce's election to the Presidency in the autumn of 1852, while he was much occu- pied in Boston with political conferences, his wife and eleven- year-old son, Benjamin-known in the family as "Bennie" -- came to the Aiken home in Andover for the holiday season. On January 6, 1853, they planned to return to Concord, New Hamp- shire, with Mr. Pierce, to get ready to move to Washington.
On the appointed day the three Pierces boarded the morning train at the nearby Andover station. They had proceeded hardly a mile, however, before there was a sudden jar, and the coach in which they were seated toppled off the embankment and rolled into the field below. Most of the passengers, including the President-elect and his wife, were uninjured, but "Bennie" was somehow caught in the wreckage and instantly killed. A younger brother had died of typhoid in 1843, and "Bennie" was the idol of his parents. Mrs. Pierce was prostrated with grief. The body of the boy was carried back to the Aiken home, which he had left in high spirits only a few moments before; and two days later the funeral service was held there, with twelve of his school friends as pallbearers.
This tragic incident evoked the sympathy of the entire town, whose residents could talk of little else for several days. It pro- foundly affected Pierce's career, for Mrs. Pierce, unhappily dis- traught, came to believe that his "high honor had been pur- chased at the price of their son's sacrifice." On March 4, in his Inaugural Address, the President began as follows:
My countrymen! It is a relief that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desirable for myself.
According to his biographer, Roy F. Nichols, "Much of the difficulty which Pierce experienced in administration during the next four years may be attributed to this terrible tragedy and its long-continued after effects."
An event of a less gloomy nature was the celebration on August
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4 and 5, 1858, of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of An- dover Theological Seminary. The semicentennial of Phillips Academy had passed in 1828 without any formal observance. In 1858, however, a huge tent was raised on the familiar training field across the road from the Mansion House; and there, on the second day, a dinner was held, after which came innumerable speeches which were interrupted, perhaps providentially, by a dramatic incident. In the midst of a flood of oratory, when Presi- dent Francis Wayland, of Brown, was delivering a eulogy of Pro- fessor Stuart, the news came unexpectedly of the successful lay- ing of the Atlantic cable and was whispered excitedly from table to table. Wayland was allowed to finish, but as soon as his last word was spoken, the great throng rose to their feet and dignified clergymen cheered, clapped, stamped their shoes, and waved their hats. Indeed the uproar for several minutes resembled that of a political convention. Man after man rushed to the dais, to utter his words of prayer and thanksgiving, until there were nearly as many speakers as auditors. And then the vast assem- blage joined spontaneously in the doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."
An unforeseen and completely unromantic climax followed. After Queen Victoria, on August 16, had sent a congratulatory message to President Buchanan, the cable suddenly stopped functioning. All through the Civil War, when it was so badly needed, it remained useless. Not until 1866 did Cyrus W. Field succeed in laying a new cable. Communication by telegraph be- tween America and Europe was then resumed and has been con- tinued ever since.
In the year 1831 a divinity student at Andover Theological Seminary named Samuel Francis Smith was living in a boarding- house on Main Street then conducted by Mrs. Arthur Allen. In a music book brought from Germany and given him by the com- poser, Lowell Mason, Smith came across a tune which pleased him; and impelled to write a patriotic hymn of his own to the rather simple music, he took a piece of scrap paper and in hardly
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more than half an hour scribbled off the verses of "America" substantially as they are used today. Mr. Mason incorporated the lines in a program for an Independence Day celebration at the Park Street Church in Boston, and they were first published in the same year in Mason's The Choir. The chair in which Smith, on his own testimony, sat when he wrote the five original stan- zas was handed down in the family and in 1926, quite appropri- ately, was bought by the trustees of Phillips Academy and placed in the headmaster's office. Many years later Smith's room was occupied by Henry L. Stimson when he was an Academy under- graduate. The so-called America House, now marked with a plaque, has been owned by Phillips Academy since 1908.
These were the more dramatic events of this period. Mean- while, however, the daily routine for ordinary citizens went on as usual. Young men and women fell in love, were married, and raised families. Elderly people grew feeble and garrulous, talked nostalgically of the "Good Old Days," and were borne to their rest in the ancient burying grounds. Farmers still drove in to the stores on Saturday afternoons and gathered at church on Sunday for prayer, hymn-singing, and gossip. Now and then a business failed or a new one was started. This was the morning- after-morning life which the historian finds difficult to portray.
Take, for example, Sunday as it was observed "on the Hill." Mrs. Robbins, in her Old Andover Days, has described perfectly the mood of the Puritan Sabbath of her girlhood:
On Saturday night, except in case of illness, not a light burned in any of our dwellings after nine; for Saturday night was the prepara- tion for a day of rest. On Sunday morning one bell might have sum- moned us all to our early breakfast. At nearly the same moment there went up from our family altar the prolonged prayers; and in precise- ly the same way the solemn stillness which followed the "Amen" settled down upon us all. Then came a Sunday hush upon every child's voice, a softening of the step, a smile for a laugh, a pent scared feeling, as if Satan in bodily shape was waiting near to gobble up any poor unlucky sinner who should venture ever so little way from the
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strait and narrow path. I doubt whether there dawned upon us a glimmering of the great and beautiful truths the day was intended to shadow forth.
This was, of course, the impression left upon a little girl be- longing to the Seminary group. In other parts of the town Sun- day could not have been quite so dreary. Moreover significant changes were taking place among the local church organizations. In the early nineteenth century Andover was almost entirely Congregational in its religious affiliations, and every taxpayer, whether a communicant or not, had to contribute to the support of that organization. As in the England of that period, the of- ficial church was supported by the state. The two separate An- dover units were the North Parish, under the Reverend Bailey Loring (1810-1850), and the South Parish, under the Reverend Justin Edwards (1812-1827) and the Reverend Milton Badger (1828-1835). In 1826, however, a group of residents in the west- ern section of the town, feeling that the meeting house in the South Parish was too remote from their farmhouses, peacefully seceded, formed what was known as the "West Parish," and erected their own church edifice. Constructed of granite, this was called the "Stone Meeting House," and, having weathered many a storm "on the westerly side of the Shawsheen River," it is still standing, with some slight alterations, to this day. Its first regular pastor, Samuel C. Jackson, a graduate of Middlebury College and Andover Theological Seminary, was installed when he was only twenty-five years old and remained until 1850, when he retired because of increasing infirmities. He continued to live in Andover, where he was for thirty years a trustee of Phillips Academy and Andover Theological Seminary and for fifty years a trustee of Abbot Academy. At the time of his death in 1878 he was assistant secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and state librarian. He was a tall man, with an aquiline nose, keen eyes, and a pointed beard, who suffered intermittent peri- ods of ill health. But like Squire Farrar and others already men-
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tioned, he was a pillar of society and helped to mold and direct both opinion and behavior in the old New England town.
In 1827 a legal division was made between the South Parish and the new West Parish, giving the latter six school districts with eight hundred and seventy inhabitants. It has been de- scribed as "probably the very last purely ecclesiastical parish in the Commonwealth," and a fascinating book, Historical Sketches of the West Parish Church, published in 1906, brings together significant events in its Records. I cannot resist calling attention to Ebenezer Lovejoy, the last of the original church deacons, who died in 1841, at the age of ninety-eight. He left one hun- dred and forty-four living descendants, of whom seventy-three were of the fourth generation and fourteen of the fifth. This was indeed a patriarch!
Not until 1833 was the third article in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights amended so that the inhabitants of towns like Andover were no longer taxed for the support of their local Congrega- tional church. Considerably before that, however, traditional New England conservatism had relaxed sufficiently to tolerate manifestations of a modern free religious spirit. Even in the neighborhood of the somewhat rigid Seminary Andover citizens claimed the right to worship God as they pleased. A Methodist Episcopal church was organized in 1829, a Baptist church in 1832, an Evangelical church of North Andover in 1834, and a Protestant Episcopal church in the South District in 1835, main- ly through the initiative, piety, and continuing financial support of Abraham Marland.
According to the romantic legend, the youthful Marland, emigrating from Liverpool to the United States in 1801, had said, "I solemnly vow to my God and Saviour that I shall plant my mother's church somewhere in America, if I prosper." Later, when he had founded the Marland Manufacturing Company and accumulated a fortune, he renewed his pledge, "There shall be an Episcopal Church in this village even if the total cost is borne by myself alone." A later rector paid a deserved tribute
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when he declared, "Abraham Marland was indeed the father of the parish." For two years, until their church edifice could be built, the "Episcopal Society of Andover" enjoyed the hospi- tality of the nearby South Church; and at Christmas in 1835 the South Church officers allowed Bishop Griswold to preach and conduct the service for his own people among Christmas lights and decorations according to the Episcopal ritual.
The first rector of Christ Church was the Reverend Samuel Fuller, bearing a distinguished Mayflower name. When he was "instituted" on November 1, 1837, most of the professors in the Seminary and all of the clergymen in the village were there to extend a greeting. Except for an interval of six years, from 1843 to 1849, Mr. Fuller remained as rector until 1859. Mr. Marland and his son, John, gave the first Christ Church parson- age lot, the rectory, and the burying ground; and Mr. Marland's son-in-law, the philanthropic Benjamin H. Punchard, made lib- eral donations and a large testamentary bequest to his beloved church.
The "Free Christian Church," established in 1846 in protest against the toleration of Negro slavery, was a unique institution composed largely of people of Scotch descent identified with the three mill villages, Abbott, Marland, and Frye. Feeling ran strong in those days on the slavery question and often flamed in- to violent fanaticism. In the West Parish in 1845, when the church defeated a vote refusing to slaveholders admission to the communion table, four members would no longer take the sacra- ment. The majority of the members had already passed resolu- tions condemning slavery, the slave trade, and all apologists for slavery. Furthermore, there were then no slave owners in the community. Nevertheless the ardent minority called their fel- low members cowards and time-servers; and finally the church committee of discipline allowed them to withdraw from the fellowship. On April 9, 1846, sixteen members, headed by John Smith and his partner, John Dove, requested dismission so that they might organize a "Free Christian Church." They were sin-
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