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278 RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REFORMS
Nature. When he said: "Trust yourself," he meant that one should rely upon that Great Power which dominates the universe and every part of it, including oneself.
This reliance on the Idea he was willing to follow at the expense of consistency or conformity. If he had had a better idea of what the power that dominates the Universe really was he would be easier to read today, without being translated into post-Darwinian language. Even as it is, one can rarely read Emerson without finding something as fresh and as right as it ever was. He would be a great power today, for he would easily have picked up our vocabulary and brought within our comprehension the essential truth of his chief postulate.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, JOHN COLEMAN .- Hosea Ballou and the Gospel Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century (Boston, Universalist Publishing House, 1903).
ALLEN, JOSEPH HENRY .- "Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement since the Reformation" (J. H. ALLEN AND RICHARD EDDY, A History of the Unitarians and the Universalists in the United States, N. Y., Christian Literature Co., 1894)-See pp. 1-249.
ALLEN, JOSEPH HENRY .- Our Liberal movement in Theology; chiefly as Shown in Recollections of the History of Unitarianism in New Eng- land (Boston, Am. Unitarian Association, 1882).
BEECHER, LYMAN .- Autobiography and Correspondence (2 vols., N. Y., Harper, 1864-1865)-Edited by Charles Beecher.
BUCKLEY, JAMES MONROE .- A History of Methodists in the United States (N. Y., Christian Literature Co., 1896).
CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY .- A Discourse on Some of the Distinguish- ing Opinions of Unitarians (Boston, American Unitarian Association, 1919)-Delivered in the First Independent Church of Baltimore, May 5, 1819. The so-called Baltimore Sermon, often reprinted.
CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY .- A Letter to the Rev. Samuel C. Thacher on the Aspersions Contained in a Late Number of the Panoplist, on the Ministers of Boston and the Vicinity (Boston, Wells and Lilly, 1815)-Bears on the Belsham controversy.
CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY .- Works. To Which is Added, "The Per- fect Life" (Boston, American Unitarian Association, 1886).
COOKE, GEORGE WILLIS .- Unitarianism in America (Boston, Am. Unitarian Association, 1902).
The Dial; a Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion (4 vols., Boston, July, 1840-April, 1844)-No more published. Edited by Margaret Fuller, R. W. Emerson, George Ripley.
ELIOT, SAMUEL ATKINS, editor .- Heralds of the Liberal Faith (3 vols., Am. Unitarian Association, 1910)-Biographical sketches of Unitarian Ministers.
ELLIS, GEORGE EDWARD .- A Half-Century of the Unitarian Controversy (Boston, Crosby, Nichols, 1857).
279
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO .- Essays (Boston, Munroe, 1841)-Now com- monly called First Series.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO .- Complete Works (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904)-Edited by E. W. Emerson. See especially Vol. I, pp. 79-115, for "The American Scholar," and Vol. I, pp. 117-151, for "An address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 15th July, 1838"; also separately published.
FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS .- Transcendentalism in New England (N. Y., Putnam's, 1876).
GODDARD, HAROLD CLARKE .- Studies in New England Transcendentalism (N. Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1908).
GRAHAM, SYLVESTER .- A Treatise on Bread, and Breadmaking (Boston, Light & Stearns, 1837).
HALE, GEORGE SILSBEE .- "The Charities of Boston" (JUSTIN WINSOR, editor, The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Osgood, 1882-1886) -See Vol. IV, chap. XIII.
KING'S CHAPEL (Boston, Mass.) .- The Book of Common Prayer, Accord- ing to the Use of King's Chapel (Boston, 1850-1918)-Gives the preface to the first edition, 1785.
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL .- My Study Windows (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1871)-Includes "Emerson, the Lecturer," pp. 375-384; and "Thoreau," pp. 193-209.
MORSE, JEDIDIAH .- The True Reasons on Which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard College Was Opposed at the Board of Overseers (Charlestown, 1805).
MUMFORD, LEWIS .- The Golden Day; A Study in American Experience and Culture (N. Y., Boni and Liveright, 1926).
NEWMAN, ALBERT HENRY .- A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (N. Y., Christian Literature Co., 1894).
PARKER, THEODORE .- Collected Works (London, 1876)-Edited by F. P. Cobble.
PARKER, THEODORE .- A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity; Preached in the Hawes Place Church in Boston, May 19, 1841 (Privately printed, Boston, 1841)-This appears in his Col- lected Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 1-30.
PEABODY, ANDREW .- "Unitarianism in Boston" (JUSTIN WINSOR, editor, The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1882- 1886)-See Vol. III, chap. XI.
RIPLEY, GEORGE, and BRADFORD, GEORGE P .- "Philosophic Thought in Bos- ton" (JUSTIN WINSOR, editor, The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1882-1886)-See Vol. III, chap. III. Mr. Ripley planned this article shortly before his death; it was written chiefly by Mr. Bradford.
SPRAGUE, WILLIAM BUELL .- Annals of the American Pulpit (N. Y., 9 vols, Carter, 1857-1869)-Vol. VIII is on the Unitarian Clergy.
SWIFT, LINDSAY .- Brook Farm; its Members, Scholars and Visitors (N. Y., Macmillan, 1900).
TARBOX, INCREASE NILES .- "The Congregational Churches of Boston since 1780" (JUSTIN WINSOR, editor, The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1882-1886)-See Vol. III, chap. VII.
THOMPSON, ROBERT ELLIS .- A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States (N. Y., Christian Literature Co., 1895).
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID .- Writings (20 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1895-1895)-See Vol. II for "Walden; or, Life in the Woods," also published separately.
280
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REFORMS
WYSE, THOMAS .- "On the Lyceum System in America, with a Considera- tion of its Applicability to Mechanics' Institutions in this Country" (Central Society of Education, Publications, Vol. II, pp. 203-228, Lon- don, Taylor and Walton, 1838)-A portion has been reprinted in Old South Leaflet No. 129, Boston, 1902, pp. 14-19.
The reader will find additional information in the biographies and letters or journals of distinguished men of the times. Those of the fol- lowing are of especial interest: Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, James F. Clarke, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker.
CHAPTER X
MASSACHUSETTS IN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (1820-1861)
BY JOHN F. SLY Lecturer on Government in Harvard University
NEW CONDITIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS (1820-1860)
The year 1820 in Massachusetts history marks roughly a completion and a departure. It stands as the rear guard of two centuries of social development that is characterized by predominantly agricultural and commercial interests, a slow, steady and uniform increase in population, and a political indi- vidualism that expressed great faith in the possibilities of the average citizen and extreme militance in the presence of outside interference.
It was, however, the vanguard of another epoch in which the colonial heritage was to move within a new environment. From the days of the embargo, the Commonwealth had gradually forsaken rural activities and commenced a steady concentration in the manufacturing centers of the East. Lowell did not exist in 1825; in 1840 it had more than twenty thousand people. Within the same period, Fall River in- creased 328 per cent; Chelsea, 272; New Bedford, 206; Springfield, 180; Cambridge, 155; Worcester, 153; and Mill- bury, 134 per cent. In 1810, four cotton factories were re- ported in Middlesex County ; 17 in Worcester; 13 in Bristol; 10 in Norfolk; and none in Berkshire-a total, including a few others, of 34 in the State. But 27 years later, 34 cotton mills were cited in the county of Middlesex ; 74 in Worcester ; 57 in Bristol; 20 in Hampden; 32 in Norfolk; and 31 in Berkshire-a total increase exceeding five fold.
Nor was this all. "Massachusetts," wrote Baron Charles Dupin to Napoleon III, "makes by millions the boots and shoes necessary for the new population which is developed with so
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much rapidity in the immense basin of the Mississippi." He called attention to the total value of the annual products of the State for 1837-close to $91,000,000. Thirteen years later it was well over $161,000,000-about $150 for each in- habitant. In fisheries and shipbuilding, in the manufacture of soap, candles, shovels, spades, ploughs, and iron castings, statistical sheets indicated marked industrial activity and growth within the Commonwealth.
It had taken Massachusetts a century and a half to approach (exclusive of Maine) 400,000 inhabitants, and it was 1820 before the half million mark was passed. But the years between 1850 and 1860 witnessed the arrival of some two and a half million immigrants to the United States, and over the same period the foreign-born population of the Com- monwealth increased from 164,000 to 260,000, and the tide was destined to sweep up in decennial bounds, until the clos- ing of the century found close to 850,000 inhabitants of foreign birth within her borders.
Such conditions required adjustments, and the repercus- sions were to be felt throughout the Nation. The extreme individualism of the early days had been possible largely because of the intense personal element that a stable and iso- lated town life engendered, but the new social and economic factors compelled a wider horizon. No longer were the vital, daily interests of the people to be bounded by the geographic area of their communities, and the Commonwealth was im- pelled to send its best men into national politics with a zest that had been unequalled since the trying days of the Revolu- tion. There, if at all, were to be found the economic protection and stability that its amazing enterprise demanded. In the Na- tion's capital was the new dispenser of free lands, the forum for international disputes, the source of commercial treaties, and the opportunity to realize an enlarged humanitarianism that generations of close community contracts had ingrained. There, in brief, was the political rostrum from which a prized colonial heritage might receive widened application, and from which her statesmen could create an environment suited to her needs and in accord with her ideals.
283
NATIONAL STATESMEN
NATIONAL STATESMEN OF THE PERIOD (1820-1860)
The men who undertook to speak the mind of the Com- monwealth in the national councils were numerous and able. Four times during the period of forty years (1820-1860) Massachusetts supplied a candidate in the presidential contest (John Quincy Adams in 1820, 1824, and 1828; Webster in 1836), and thrice for Vice-President (Henry Lee in 1832; Charles Francis Adams in 1848; Edward Everett in 1860). On four occasions (once by Adams, twice by Webster, and once by Edward Everett) her citizens served as Secretaries of State in the Cabinets of Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. Twice within the period (through David Henshaw and George Bancroft) the Commonwealth supplied Secretaries of the Navy in the Cabinets of Tyler and Polk; once the services of a distinguished Attorney General, Caleb Cushing, in the Cabinet of Pierce; and on three occasions able jurists to the federal courts-Joseph Story of Marblehead, and Benjamin R. Curtis of Boston, to the United States Supreme Court, and Edward G. Loring of Boston to the United States Court of Claims.
In many instances, moreover, her Congressmen took place in the first rank of the Nation's statesmen. Daniel Webster entered the United States Senate in 1827 (the Twentieth Congress) and served with only two interruptions (1841- 1845), due to Cabinet appointments, until 1850; Charles Sumner took his seat in the upper chamber in 1851 (the Thirty-second Congress) to commence close to thirty years of distinguished service; while lesser known but in some cases as able men-Nathaniel Silsbee of Salem, John Davis of Worcester, Isaac C. Bates of Northampton, Henry Wilson of Natick, and Harrison Gray Otis, James Lloyd, Rufus Choate, Robert C. Winthrop, and Edward Everett of Boston -sat in the interims or as their colleagues in the upper house, and held in addition many major appointments in both State and Nation.
Within the lower house likewise were men of first impor- tance. Many Massachusetts Senators of the period served varying apprenticeships as national representatives-as Web- ster, Everett, Davis, Bates, Choate, and Winthrop. Webster
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IN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
sat for two terms (1823-1827) ; Everett, from 1825 to 1835, later to become Governor of Massachusetts (1836-1840), minister to Great Britain (1841-1845), President of Harvard College (1846-1849), Secretary of State under Fillmore (1852-1853), and United States Senator (1853-1854). Rufus Choate was a member of the House from 1831 to 1834, only to be chosen to the Senate (1841-1845), and later a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. Robert C. Winthrop, among the most active public men of the Commonwealth, rose to be Speaker of the House during the Thirtieth and part of the Thirty-first Congress (1847-1850) ; while John Quincy Adams, after a term as President of the United States, was chosen a Representative from the Commonwealth in the Twenty-second Congress and was reelected eight successive times (1831- 1848).
There were others who graced the House of Representa- tives for short periods, but who were destined to be remem- bered for wider services. William Eustis of Boston com- pleted a long national career, including service as Secretary of War under Madison and minister to the Netherlands under Monroe, with membership in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Congresses (1820-1823). Charles Francis Adams (grandson of John Adams and son of John Quincy Adams) sat in the Thirty-sixth Congress (1859-1861), and was elected to the Thirty-seventh, but left the legislative chamber for what proved to be his far more important mission as minister to Great Britain during the trying years of the Civil War and reconstruction (1861-1868). Anson Burlingame served the lower House of Congress from 1855 to 1861, but was destined to reach a wider fulfillment on his epochal mission as minister to China; and even Horace Mann took time from an educa- tional reformation to sit as a national Representative for five years (1848-1853).
It was such men who spoke for the Commonwealth in na- tional councils during the fretful years preceding the Civil War, and questions upon which they voiced her opinions embraced every phase of the expanding social order that the State so well exemplified. The forty years in which most of them gave their maturer services were fairly well divided in
From the original by Huntington
Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society
ROBERT C. WINTHROP
285
THE TARIFF QUESTION
interests. The first half (to 1840) marked roughly the domin- ance of fiscal and economic questions, the tariff, the United States Bank, internal improvements, and surplus revenue- all of which found a feverish solution in national legislation. The second half (1840-1860) marked with equal generality the rise of sectional and territorial questions that, while per- haps at bottom economic, assumed a regional aspect around the slavery problem. Hence, although they often found basic expression in legislative action, they nevertheless depended to a large degree on executive policy for fulfillment. In such disturbing matters as the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the Oregon question, the nullification ordinance of South Carolina, and the pressing matters of public lands, the states- men of the time found their problems. Both periods con- tained questions of peculiar importance to Massachusetts, particularly international issues involving maritime trade, the Maine boundary, and Canadian reciprocity ; but on all matters the Commonwealth took sides, and her statesmen recorded her sentiments with emphasis and effect.
THE TARIFF QUESTION (1816-1842)
The peace that ended the War of 1812 had come with a suddenness that bewildered the Nation, and in its wake fol- lowed a relentless group of economic circumstances that called for national solution. In the first year, America was flooded with English goods in quantities more than twice the normal consumption. Excessively low prices prevailed, wide extra- vagance resulted, credit was dangerously strained, money was hoarded, banks were closed or curtailed their loans with ex- treme disregard of needs, and industry all but stopped to await adjustments that would make possible a safe and profitable resumption of activity.
The plight of the manufacturers resulted in petitions to Congress urging protection of the suffering industries, and as a result the Tariff of 1816 provided a duty of 25% on cotton goods for three years, together with other protective features. But the expedient was not entirely successful- indeed, it settled nothing, and gave very little protection of any kind. In 1820 a new tariff was defeated in the upper house.
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Daniel Webster voiced his opposition on constitutional grounds. Harrison Gray Otis (then in the Senate) con- sidered the commercial interests of Boston seriously jeopard- ized by the bill; and it was his contrary vote that killed the measure and won him the public thanks of his Boston constit- uents. In 1821 the North American Review could see no reason why commerce should be made to pay the losses of industry: "the design of the tariff," it said, was "to direct and control the occupations of one class of men, viz., of com- mercial men, by granting special privileges to those engaged in other pursuits, viz., in domestic or internal manufactures."
By 1824, however, there was a change discernible. The tariff of that year was more favorably received by New Eng- land. Webster began thereafter a modification of his views that were ultimately to reach the other extreme, and in 1828 he was advising Massachusetts against further resistance to what she was unable to prevent, and in the face of amazingly precocious industries and a declining commerce he was urg- ing adjustments to the new conditions. Not that the issue was settled. It was only slowly that capital moved "from ships to factories," and the demand for protection from foreign competition accordingly became acute. But, whatever may be the charges of inconsistency that were heaped upon statesmen of the Commonwealth during this controversy, there can be little doubt that, as Robert C. Winthrop said of Webster: "The course in relation to the Tariff, and I might as well say, in relation to almost every other question or national policy, has been the course of Massachusetts." The people were for many years opposed to the methods of pro- tection, and, in spite of later accusations that the Common- wealth had come repeatedly before each session of Congress for increased tariffs "like the daughter of the horseleech, crying always: 'Give! Give!'", the collective vote of her Representatives on the four important bills of 1816, 1824, 1828 and 1832 was 14 for and 34 against, and only once (in 1816) did she return a majority in favor of a tariff measure.
As has been indicated, however, Massachusetts (indeed, all New England) went through an economic revolution, and
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SECOND UNITED STATES BANK
the slow about-face that her leaders made on the tariff ques- tion was merely the response to the heavy, relentless pres- sures of these new currents. John Quincy Adams, as Presi- dent, did not mention the tariff in any message to Congress but, as chairman of the congressional Committee on Manu- factures, approved wholeheartedly the report of that commit- tee in 1832, which was a complete historical argument in favor of protection. In 1820 Webster had opposed both the consti- tutionality and economic wisdom of protection, but during the debates in 1828 he fully accepted the plan; and Otis (then mayor of Boston) took an active part in the congressional campaign of 1830 in favor of Nathan Appleton, the protection candidate, opposed by Henry Lee, merchant and free trader. Two years later he defended himself in a letter to Clay as Webster had done in 1828: "Tempora mutantur and I am among those who have been coerced by the policy of govern- ment mutari cum illis."
The Tariff of 1828 as well as the amendment of 1832, led, as is well known, to the Nullification Ordinance of South Carolina, effective in 1833, as well as the compromise tariff of Henry Clay in the same year. The sentiment of Massachu- setts was at first hostile to both tariff measures. Webster, as well as the complete congressional delegation, voted against them for reasons quite different from their former ones in opposition. Not only was the Commonwealth at this time opposed to a' serious reduction of rates, as well as to the prin- ciples of the Compromise Act, but it was out of sympathy with giving "alms to a beggar who wears a drawn sword in his hand and tell him if you please it is pour l'amour de Dieu." If it had been on the losing side during the opening period of the controversy, events of the next generation gave strong support to both of these views. From 1842 the tariff question occupied for some years a comparatively second place among the national issues, but Massachusetts leaders as a whole re- mained steadfast to the principles they espoused during the trying time of industrial adjustment.
SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES (1816-1836)
It was during the critical period of tariff legislation that
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another element entered the political arena which was to further harass economic interests. It was in 1832 that Jack- son began in earnest his long and bitter conflict with the United States Bank. It will be recalled that one of Hamilton's most distinctive policies was the concentration of financial control in the first Bank of the United States (1791-1811), and that, because its charter was allowed to lapse, numerous State banks were called into existence to meet the financial emergencies of the War of 1812. The result was a long succession of excessive note issues and unwise loans, which left a desperate situation at the conclusion of the Treaty of Ghent. After a great deal of opposition, a second United States Bank was established in 1816, similar in many ways to Hamilton's famous venture. This institution established a stable and uniform currency, compelled the State banks to validate their notes in specie, created many branches through- out the Union, and carried out a relentless policy of deflation. The program was coincident, however, with falling prices and mounting bankruptcies, and the "monster bank" was blamed for the ensuing hardships. As is well known, the reelection of Jackson in 1832 determined the fate of the bank and revo- lutionized, incidentally, the fiscal policy of the government.
Whatever may have been the feeling of a large part of the citizens of the country, Massachusetts was on the whole a firm supporter of the bank. There were "liberal" thinkers (and able men)-as Nathan Appleton, David Henshaw, Marcus Morton, and George Bancroft-who gave their support in varying degrees to the Jackson policy ; but it was the conserva- tive views of Webster and Everett that dominated the Com- monwealth. When the motion to modify and renew the charter was before the House of Representatives (July 3, 1832), the entire Massachusetts delegation supported it. When in December of the same year Jackson cast doubts on the bank's solvency, the House in substance declared by a large but unrecorded majority (J. Q. Adams taking a leading part against the administration) that its deposits were safe. When in the next year (September, 1833) the President caused the removal of the United States deposits, 40 failures occurred in New Bedford and 93 in Boston; and the censure
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SECOND UNITED STATES BANK
of the Senate (March 28, 1834), declaring the reasons as- signed by the Secretary of the Treasury for his action as "unsatisfactory and insufficient," was supported by both Webster and Silsbee.
By the fall of 1834 the worst throes of the panic were passed, but the years of Jackson's second administration de- veloped the wildest speculation that had taken place in the history of the country. To stem the tide of inflation that had followed the deposit of United States funds in "pet banks," Jackson issued his famous "Specie Circular" (July, 1836), directing the government agents to accept only gold, silver, or Virginia script in payment for public lands. A crash was quick to come. Banks everywhere suspended pay- ments, the most important mills in Lowell were practically closed, nearly half of the spindles of Massachusetts ceased operation, and scarcely a manufacturer in the boot and shoe industry escaped bankruptcy.
It may have been that the second United States Bank was at times imprudent: Adams appears to have thought so in 1831, but nevertheless, in his minority opinion as a member of the investigating committee of the following year, ridiculed beyond redemption the blundering report of the majority against it. Caleb Cushing supported Clay and Sargent in the election of 1832, and expressed himself bitterly against the administration that was "bad for business." Edward Everett was a staunch supporter of the bank, and Winthrop left his record of denunciation against the whole fiscal policy of the period and especially "that final and fatal catastrophe of the crisis, the suspension of specie payments." Webster told the Senate (1832) that he desired the question treated as a great public subject, as a statesman should consider it, but he advo- cated the expediency of renewing its charter. The veto of President Jackson opened a breach between the two men that never healed, for the doctrine of the message was diametrically opposed to all of Webster's views. His reply of July 11, 1832, was unmistakable and emphatic. It had been from con- victions of public duty that he carried the bill to recharter the bank through the Senate ; but it was his loyalty to the constitu- tion that prompted his resistance to the veto message. He
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