USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Conway > Celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Conway, Massachusetts : at Conway, June 19th, 1867 : including a historical address by Rev. Charles B. Rice poem by Harvey Rice oration by William Howland and the other exercises of the occasion > Part 9
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You will remember an anecdote, published at the time, and it is one of many, illustrative of this peculiarity in our armies. In the course of one of the memorable marches, our forces took possession of a line of railway, the rolling stock of which had been injured and broken, as the enemy supposed, beyond possi- bility of repair. A question arises whether one of the locomotives can not be repaired and " reconstructed," and, as usual, vol- unteers were called for. Among the skilled mechanics who responded to the call, one man claimed the privilege of direct- ing the work, the ground of his claim being that the engine was one he had originally built.
Another incident, which will illustrate the same fact, as also another phase in the character of many of the soldiers in the ranks of our armies, is related by an officer as having occurred in Virginia, early in the war, and of which he chanced to be an eye and ear witness. A clergyman, in the greatest trepidation rushes, almost breathless, into the presence . of a colonel, whose regiment of - northern "vandals and invaders " had just taken for their quarters the church where he ministered. He finds the soldiers busy in taking up and removing the carpets of the church, for some reason, which he cannot explain to himself, except as he imagines this to be the first act of a general spoliation. As soon as he recovers his breatlı, he begs, as a special favor, that he may be allowed to remove to a place of safety, the pulpit bible, lamps and furniture. Turning his head at the moment, he sees, to his horror, a crowd of rough, swarthy, unshorn and belted men, who had found their way into the gallery, and were then in the very act of opening the organ, and laying their coarse
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hands on the books of sacred music. Almost in an agony, he begs the officer not to allow his men to destroy the valua- ble musical instrument. The next moment the organ, whose safety is the object of such anxious apprehension, sounds out the notes of a skillfully executed prelude, and then a hundred deep, rich manly voices take up the strain, till the whole church is filled with one grand flood of choral harmony, in & sacred hymn, sung with all the fervor and more than the skill, with which the hardy Ironsides of Cromwell joined in chanting their martial airs on the fields of Naseby and Mars- ton Moor. The agonized look of the good pastor is changed to one of astonishment, and that in turn gradually settles down into one of devotional calmness. He involuntarily un- covers his head, and as the last notes die upon the ear silently . leaves the place with no further fears of vandal desecration.
Such were the soldiers which a northern training sent into our armies ; not that all were like them, but they were such as our institutions tend to rear. Such men need no grand central power, no symbols of royalty to force them to act. They were men of sufficient intelligence to comprehend an idea ; men of moral strength and courage enough to be loyal to that idea; men woh were obedient to orders, not because those orders proceeded from any controlling, awe inspiring power, but because they were engaged in a work, which their hearts approved, and that approval made duty a pleasure.
. Our people have taught too, not only during, but since the war, another lesson to the world, bearing on the subject of the strength and loyalty of a nation of intelligent and educated freemen. The unparalleled expenditure of four years of war have created a national debt, such as no nation ever before incurred in a like period of time, and the necessary taxation to preserve the credit of the government, by providing for that debt, has been without a precedent in modern times. The readiness and cheerfulness, with which the people have met that expenditure, and that taxation, furnish the most con- vincing proof, that the people regard themselves a part of the government, and that its credit is dear to them as their own ; that they have the intelligence to perceive, and the loyalty to
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meet the demands of their country's treasury, and that the safety and strength of a state, in a financial as well as a mili- tary sense, is not in a centralized government, in kingly au- thority, in standing armies and navies, so much as in the edu- cation, intelligence and virtue of a free people.
Again, with such a people as New England institutions tend to rear, with intelligence to think and judge for themselves, and interpenetrated with a belief in human equality and a love of freedom, the wiles of the demagogue and the arts of the politician will be comparatively harmless. Men are nothing, principles everything. Those who are, for the time being, their rulers, are only men like themselves, and are well nigh powerless, except as they are sustained by the hearts of their constituents, and represent the people from whom their author- ity and right to govern proceeds. A magistrate, who is the embodiment of their enlightened conscience, and who truly represents their ideas of justice, truth and right, will ever command their respect, their homage, and loyal service; but when he ceases to represent those ideas of justice, truth and right, he ceases to be a governor, and fortunate for him will it be, if he is not himself sometimes severely governed. With a New Englander, who is indoctrinated with the princi- ples and ideas, which to him are hereditary, which area part of himself, his birthright and possession, wealth, or political sta- tion, or eminence of whatever kind, are only the pedestal, which makes the goodness and the greatness, the mental and moral power, on the one hand, and the smallness, the selfish- ness and the meanness, on the other, but the more conspicuous. Even in the presidential chair, the simple utterances of an honest and pure heart, and a noble, good and loyal purpose, coming from a plain, awkward man, carry with them a thous- and times more weight, than any word that can be spoken by one, who, though he may have been a life-long statesman, an honored minister in foreign courts, or a cabinet minister at home, of dignified and courtly manners, and of commanding presence, but who has ceased to be trusted by such a people, as truly their representative, is looked upon by them only as an "old public functionary," comparatively unhonored and
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unrespected ; more too than any series of speeches or argu- ments, coming from any one, however high his position, whom they believe not to represent their ideas and principles, even though surrounded by those, whom the nation delights to hon- or, and holding a position which is honored in itself, but not by its incumbent, he "swings around the entire circle," and leaves the constitution and flag of his country in a hundred towns and cities.
To show still further how such a people regard principles more than men, I could point you to one, who, through still in the full vigor of his robust manhood, has, for almost a gener- ation by his eloquent words in the pulpit and on the platform, charmed the ears, and gained a hold upon the hearts of thous- ands ; who has drawn after him crowds of eager listeners, delighted to drink in the words of his golden mouthed elo- quence ; who has long been looked upon as the champion of freedom and equal rights, the ideas of the New England which gave him birth ; who, during the gloomiest period in the history of our late national struggle, did more than per- haps any other American to place before the minds of our English cousins, what New England believed to be the true issues in the great contest, then convulsing the nation. Yet all this prestige of eloquent utterance, wide felt influence, and personal admiration, could not, when an unfortunate published letter furnished his former admirers with reason to believe, for the time, whether justly or unjustly, that their champion had deserted his post, and taken sides against them, retain them as his followers. They at once threw off their allegiance to him, and even such an one, like a Sampson, shorn of his locks, became "like any other man."
Such men, although not infallible, judge men with more correctness and discrimination than others. Because a man has excelled in one department, he is not with them necessari- ly estimated above his true value in another. He may have been a good civil governor and a poor general, a first rate law- yer and a fourth rate statesman, a soft hearted philanthropist and a soft headed politician or statesman.
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' But still further. A people like the people of New Eng- land, who have been bred in a practical faith in the doctrine of human equality, and have enjoyed the benefit of institu- tions founded in that faith, who have shared the advantages of a general education, and have reaped the fruits of intelli- gent labor in the acquisition of a material competency, are the people least prone to vice and crime. Who are the people who fill our prisons, jails, houses of correction, and reforma- tion ? Is it those who have been educated ? Is it those who have acquired skill in the industrial arts? Is it those who are surrounded with the comforts of a home, such as the true Yankee makes for himself, or is it the poor, the ignorant, the untrained and the homeless ? Let me quote from the last report of the Secretary of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts :
" It is notorious," he says, " that the great mass of criminals is made up of the poor, the ill-taught, the ill-conditioned, and in a double sense unfortunate."
. " The proportion, in this Commonwealth, of those who can- not read and write, among persons capable of crime, is be- tween six and seven per cent, while the proportion of crimi- nals who cannot read and write, for the last ten years, has been between thirty and forty per cent, or more than five times as great."
"Out of the 11,260 prisoners, only 429, or less than one in twenty-five, are reported as ever having owned the value of $1000."
And of these criminals, all, who have had the opportuni- ties to observe, know how large a proportion were either born on a foreign soil, or are the children of foreign born parents. I have sometimes thought, that, but for the presence, in our community, of a foreign clement, made up of the poor, the unskilled, the ignorant and degraded, who have not been trained and educated under our New England institutions, our criminal courts would be almost without occupation, and our prisons, and correctional and reformatory institutions almost tenantless.
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In speaking of this foreign element, which has come to our shores, poor, unfortunate, and ill-conditioned, let me not be misunderstood. Their unfortunate mental, moral and social position is less their fault than the fault of the institutions, by which they have been surrounded, institutions based upon inequality, tending to the elevation of the few, the depression of the many, the influences of which they have either lacked the opportunity or the strength to overcome or control. Rather let us honor those who have broken away from those institutions, if they have done it, as many have, with the de- sire and purpose to avail themselves of the advantages which are here opened to them, where they can acquire a compe- tency for themselves, and a better education and training, and a fuller enjoyment of the rights of manhood for their child- ren. It is not in accordance with the genius of our institu- tions that any of them should be neglected, but that we should provide for them the same advantages that we enjoy. Our country is wide enough for all, our industries can provide labor for all, we have the means and institutions to educate all, and under these they will speedily become assimilated, and an integral, component part of our population, and the future of our country will see no worthier sons and daughters than the descendants of those whom we now characterize as our foreign population. I repeat that the true New England idea of human equality demands, and the genius of our insti- tutions founded upon that idea provides, that equal advanta- ges to learn and labor be extended to them ; and that they shall fully share the same civil and political rights, that we, the foreigners a few generations farther removed, ourselves enjoy.
But to show the full effect of this central principle, under- lying the Yankee character and New England institutions, and the mode in which it is working towards a fuller and higher development of the true greatness of our country, it is necessary to glance briefly at the changes in the condition of our country during the present decade, without doing which this view would be wholly incomplete.
I have said that New England has been devoted to the idea of human equality. Would that this had been equally true
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of the whole country ! Then would the bloody records of the last few years never have been entered upon the pages of our country's history. Then would the precious lives, lost in that greatest of modern wars, still have been with us to gladden our firesides and our homes. But there was a portion of our country, which, only in a limited sense, entertained and cher- ished this idea. The holding of a large class disfranchised for no fault of theirs, kept in ignorance by local laws, and against their will, was an anomaly in a government founded upon this principle, which I have attempted to state, an in- consistency, to which an intelligent people could not always be blind. It might be excused on the plea of necessity, the blame.might be shifted to the shoulders of the early settlers of Virginia ; it might be argued that it was a matter within the province of local law, with which we of New England and the North had nothing to do, that it was within the verge of State rights, with which the other States could not interfere, that it was a part of an institution, recognized by the consti- tution, to which we were all subject, and to discuss which even was revolutionary and incendiary. But these pleas, cx- cuses and arguments, while they might sometimes convince the reason, could not quiet the conscience. The whole heart conscience and hereditary instincts rebelled, and would not be quieted by reason and argument. We might attempt to stiffe the conscience, or in the political phrase, " conquer our prejudices," but from the lowest depths of our moral sense, our most earnest convictions and inherited political faith, went up a mighty protest, which drowned the voice of the arguments of statesmen and politicians. We were like the great astronomer, who when compelled to abjure his belief in the earth's motion, to make solemn recantation of his opin- ions, and kneeling on the earth to swear upon the Holy Evangelists never more to teach such heresies, on rising from the ground, was forced by his convictions to exclaim, "Still it does move." So were we forced by a higher than human law still to cherish the prejudices we had so many times con- quered. The world has moved, and again revolves around the central sun of human rights and human equality.
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This war was a war of ideas, in that it was a conflict be- tween the principle of human equality and a system of ine- quality. The institutions of the Southern and late Slave States were founded upon a different basis, from that upon which were founded those of the Northern and New England States. While in both sections the dogma that " all men are created free and equal " was recognized as an abstract propo- sition, in the Slave States it was practically repudiated, or at best regarded but as a "glittering generality," not applicable to a large proportion of their population. Classes existed, founded on the accidents of color, birth, and property, acci- dents above which the man was not allowed to rise superior. These distinctions, growing naturally out of the slave system, a system of inequality, permeated to a greater or less extent the whole social fabric, and the difference between the social and political status of the owner of a plantation, and that of the poor white, was as distinctly marked as the difference be- tween the white and the negro. In some, in most of those States, the elective franchise, the privileges of education were restricted, and the lower tiers of even the white population had little inducement and less opportunity to rise to a higher level. They were, not in name indeed, but in effect, the subjects of those above them, influenced and governed by them, as truly as is the vassal by the lord. The discussion of the doctrine of human equality threatened in its effects to sap , the foundations of their patriarchal and oligarchic institutions.
. The two sections were at variance on these social and political questions, which underlay their respective institutions. The northern elements were gaining in power, and the only means to check the aggression of free ideas was isolation, was seces- sion. Hence the war, and the result of that war, in the abol- ishing of slavery, and the breaking down of this remnant of feudalism, with the other results which will follow hard after it, in the infusion of a northern population, the spread of New England ideas and enterprise, the more equal distribu- tion of wealth, and a better and more general education of the masses, will prove the first great step towards a homoge- neousness of population, and an equality in social and politi- cal relations, which will make this, in a higher and better
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sense than ever before, a truly great people. Such is to be the final result of that war, the crowning achievement of New England ideas, New England education, and New England training. In this way we are truly founding a State, a great Commonwealth. Lord Bacon says : "To found a State is the highest service man can render." The great statesman of ancient Greece taught that to make a small state a great one was the highest success in philosophy and in government. We are working out both results. Where we had an aggregation of States, at variance in their ideas and institutions, with a real antagonism under a superficial and precarious union, we shall soon be one United State, founded upon the New Eng- land idea of a true equality. Where we had a country, wide in its domain, of resources unparalleled, and of capabilities immeasurable, but dwarfed by the presence of social and po- litical elements, at variance with the principles upon which the nation was founded, we shall soon rise to the magnitude of a State, with resources and capabilities developed as largely as its domain is wide extended. To this end is the nation fast being reconstructed. The manner of its political reconstruc- tion is to be the work of its statesmen, but a greater reconstruc- tion has been and now is going on, a moral and social recon- struction, which will make the whole country what the North has been, the home of intelligence, the home of enterprize, the home of industry, the home of the oppressed everywhere, the home of a great, a happy and truly free people, living under a government, based upon the New England idea of equality, which knows no distinctions of birth, nation, color, or condition, a government from the people, by the people, and for the people, under which the American Republic, long before another century shall have unrolled before the eyes of our descendants its grand panorama, pictured all over with the great events and varied vicissitudes of a nation's life and history, having attained a power which no man can now measure, and achieved a future which no imagination has yet conceived, will, as we believe, take and hold the first rank among the great nations of the earth.
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The regular exercises being completed before the dinner hour had arrived, the intervening time was occupied in listening to remarks from Rev. David Pease of Ashfield, now about 80 years old, and formerly Pastor of the Baptist Church in Conway, and from Rev. Edward W. Root of Westerly R. I. and Hon. Caleb Rice of Springfield, Mass., both natives of Conway.
Rev. Mr. PEASE remarked in substance, as follows :
Though not a native of Conway, yet, having spent nearly 10 years of my ministerial life here, and this being a native town of a part of my family, I am happy to be recognized by, and asso- ciated with the sons of the good old town of Conway. My first acquaintance with this place was in the year 1818. Very few of those then in active life are now living to witness. this happy gathering. Since that time great changes indeed have taken place. Then we were, as a nation, under the curse and disgrace of a slavery-sustaining government. But now the flag under which we are gathered, waves over a free land. Many of our sons, who went forth to sustain the principles of freedom against a daring and wicked rebellion, have fallen in battle. But the object for which they bled and died, is accomplished, and their names shall be held in grateful remembrance. Great has been the change too in public sentiment on the subject of religious liberty. If we go back 100 years the change is still greater. Then it was no uncommon thing, in this and other states, for the property of dissenters to be taken for taxes to support the church established by law. In a town adjoining this, 400 acres of land, which had been thus taken, were afterwards restored by order of the king of England. I do not doubt the sincerity of our fathers, who thus infringed upon the rights of conscience. They verily thought they were doing God service; but they " knew not what manner of spirit they were of." Happily all this has passed away ; and all are now allowed, without molestation, to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Mr. Pease then related the following anecdote illustrating the ideas of religious liberty which existed a century or more ago. A citizen of Rhode Island, having occasion to pass through a town in Connecticut, not far from the line dividing those two states, noticed a gathering of people, and rode up to inquire the cause. He learned that they were whipping a man, and on en- quiry ascertained that the man's offense was a matter of conscience. Upon this, raising himself, he exclaimed, " Why, you serve God here as if the Devil was in you!" Then, putting spurs to his horse, he rode as if for his life until he crossed the State line. Mr. P. closed by expressing the hope and the belief that people had a better spirit in them now, a spirit more in accordance with the principles of the gospel.
REV. E. W. ROOT'S REMARKS.
Your President is quite arbitrary but we must submit. You will not, however, expect much of a speech from me, called upon,
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as I am, without a moment's preparation to "talk against time." Still no citizen of Conway can have listened to the exercises of the day without having some thoughts suggested.
The name of one of the first settlers of Conway, Alexander Oliver, mentioned by our historian, called up an incident which occurred at Oxford, Ohio, about 10 years ago. His daughter, Mrs. Symmes, then between 80 and 90 years old, was staying at the house of her brother, several years younger, born in Ohio. Mrs. S. was a native of Conway. She was telling me that she had attended a school taught by my grandfather. She described the place where she lived in Conway, and I asked if it was " Hard Scrabble." She thought it was. Doct. Oliver, her brother, who had listened to the conversation, began to laugh, and said, " I always thought there was a difference in the family, but never could account for it till now. I was not born in Hard Scrabble." Both the Doctor and his sister were persons of great physical and intellectual vigor, and I thought, if such were the original settlers and their immediate descendants, we had reason to be proud of our ancestry.
There are some still with us who have done so much for this town, that we shall gladly honor them to-day. We all think with gratitude, of that select school so ably taught for many years by one of our citizens. Under him, I remember the Orator of the day read eleven books ofthe ÆEneid in eleven weeks. Such les- . sons were too long to be heard in school hours, and many hours out ofschool were given to them. I was with him and tried to keep up ; but I assure you it was hard work. I remember well the time that I attended that school. The teacher asked me if I wished to study Latin. I had not thought of it before. But after consultation with my father, I began it. That sent me to college. If there is any one man to whom Conway owes a debt of gratitude, that man is Dea. John Clary.
No citizen of Conway can forget the influence of the gospel ministry. I can just remember that pioneer pastor and venerable man, John Emerson. He died after he had been preaching the word of life and laying the foundations of future prosperity for more than 56 years. I can just remember the large concourse at his funeral and that my father lifted me up and let me look into the coffin. Rev. Edward Hitchcock was colleague with him for four or five years, who afterwards became Professor of Geology and President of Amherst College, and there gained a world-wide reputation. Rev. Daniel Crosby followed him, an earnest, elo- quent and successful preacher of the gospel. All these have passed away, having done their work, and done it well.
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