USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 31
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The fight for the control of the national organization took place on May 12, 1840. Nearly four hundred and fifty dele- gates, four hundred from Massachusetts, journeyed to New York by special train and steamer; one hundred came from the Bay State by other routes. Both sides sought to control the convention, to which there were a thousand delegates. The Garrisonians won the first test by a majority of 110. The meeting went on record as opposing the formation of an abolition political party, or the nomination of abolition candi- dates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency.
Thereupon the minority seceded and formed "The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society," which established the Anti-Slavery Reporter as its propaganda organ. It was des- tined to live less than two years, its expenses and those of its journal being borne by Lewis Tappan. None the less the secession affected the original society considerably, its income of $47,000 dropping to $7,000, and not rising above $12,000 until 1856. Its membership, both of individuals and allied societies, was never again as large. Two years later Garrison was elected president of the society, and conducted it until its disbandment.
ABOLITION IN POLITICS (1840-1850)
The decade from 1840 to 1850 proved in some respects the bitterest and most trying for the antislavery forces of all complexions, for it witnessed the annexation of Texas, the indefensible Mexican War, and the resultant annexation from Mexico of Arizona, New Mexico, and California at the behest of the Slave Power. Yet the leaders of the move- ment remained calm and sanguine. With remarkable pre- vision they had accepted the annexation of Texas as inevitable
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long before the event. They rejoiced that it brought to their ranks recruits without number and that the State of Massa- chusetts officially protested both against the annexation of Texas and the war. Their sympathies were so deeply enlisted on the side of the Mexicans that, in the annual report of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society for the year 1845, it was declared that "the triumphs of the American armies are the triumphs of cruelty, of injustice, of oppression," won by "a piratical horde of banditti." Wendell Phillips was the author of a resolution, unanimously passed, denouncing Governor George N. Briggs "as perjured in his own principles, as a traitor by his own showing-as one before whose guilt the infamy of Arnold ... becomes respectability and decency." His offense was that he called on the Commonwealth to rally to a war to complete the annexation of Texas, "which he has himself so often declared 'a violation of the Constitution,' 'equivalent to Dissolution,'-a triumph of Slavery and Des- potism."
ORGANIZATION OF ANTISLAVERY PARTIES (1840-1848)
With feelings running as high as this, it is not surprising that more and more the radical wing emphasized their cry of "No Union with Slaveholders"-to the dissatisfaction of a group of men who were then being drawn into the move- ment in the firm belief that emancipation could only be se- cured by political means. Typical of these was Charles Sumner, who took his first plunge into politics in 1845, six years before he entered the United States Senate from Mas- sachusetts. Dr. Bowditch and many others turned first to the Liberty Party and then to the Free-soil Party in their impatience for results. The dissolution of the Union and the abrogation of the Constitution, "which bind the Slave and the Free in one inevitable chain," was voted by the American Anti-Slavery Society on May 7, 1844. By a vote of 250 to 24, the annual New England Convention on May 28, 1844, also voted for the motto "No Union with Slaveholders." Garrison called the Constitution a "covenant with death and an agreement with hell-involving both parties in atrocious
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criminality." Said Wendell Phillips: "Love it as we may, and cherish it as we do, equally with the loudest of our op- posers, we say: Perish the Union when its cement must be the blood of the slave!" In that year there were held one hundred antislavery conventions in Massachusetts, and in all of them the disunion doctrine made itself felt. Gradually the leaders became convinced that if there was any hope of head- ing off the annexation of Texas it could only be by stressing the threat of disunion if the South insisted. But the revolt of public sentiment in the North was not yet strong enough ; Massachusetts politicians were still too much afraid of the dominant South.
The founding of the Free-soil Party in 1848 merely in- creased the Garrisonian attacks upon all antislavery men who wished to turn to the political weapon, particularly as it opened its doors to recruits who were not antislavery men and, like the Liberty Party, did not stand for immediate eman- cipation. Naturally when, in 1848, the same antislavery men who in 1840 had nominated James G. Birney against Martin Van Buren (polling less than 7,000 votes) turned around as Free-soilers and nominated the same Van Buren, the Liberator had a welcome opportunity to challenge the common sense and judgment of the political wing.
DENUNCIATION OF THE CHURCHES (1835-1856)
Only in their steady fire upon the church did the abolition- ists surpass their criticisms of the antislavery politicians. Upon the proslavery ministers their attacks never ceased. As far back as 1839 the Massachusetts society resolved "that no man who apologizes for slavery, or refuses to hear an open and faithful testimony against it, ... can have the least claim to be regarded as a minister of Him who came to preach de- liverance to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." In almost every issue of the Liberator, in every report of the leading societies, the proslavery or silent clergy are scolded savagely, with unending reiteration.
As a lesser issue, both wings of the party continued to demand the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the
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District of Columbia, as well as to support John Quincy Adams. Inconsistent the radicals thought him; yet their gratitude they never withheld from John Quincy Adams, the "Old Man Eloquent," especially when it was given to him to move the abrogation of Rule 25 of the House of Represen- tatives, under which the gag had been so successfully applied for years in the matter of antislavery petitions. By a vote of 108 to 80 the rule was abolished. The South stood beaten. "Thus after ten years of hard fighting," reported the Massa- chusetts Anti-Slavery Society, "the people of the Free States have indicated their right of praying their own servants to do what justice and the plainest dictates of enlightened self- interest demand." Adams himself, in 1848, declared that the Constitution was become but a shadow and that the vital and animating principle of the Government had been only the "preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of slavery."
ANTISLAVERY LEGISLATION (1840-1854)
There remained plenty of domestic issues for the Massa- chusetts agitators. The law forbidding racial intermarriage was repealed in 1844. After some years of protest the Jim- Crowing of negroes on two railroad lines was ended by a threat of legislation. The battle against the color line in Boston schools was not so easily won, but was steadfastly waged into the 'fifties. Warmly the abolitionists for years sought to uphold the hands of their State when it demanded from South Carolina and Louisiana that colored sailors on northern ships should not be held in jail, as if criminals, during the sojourn of their ships in the ports of those States. The Massachusetts Legislature acted vigorously, and in 1843 pro- vided for the appointment of commissioners to deal with those States. Both agents, one of them the distinguished Samuel Hoar, were driven out-Mr. Hoar, under threats of personal violence. As a result the State in 1845 entered an "earnest and solemn Protest against the hostile acts of South Carolina" -with no result.
The case of a fugitive slave, George Latimer, who would have been returned to the South had his freedom not been
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purchased for $400, resulted in the legislature's passing a law in 1843 in accordance with antislavery demands, making it a penal offense for "any magistrate or State officer to assist in the arrest or delivery of any persons claimed as a fugitive slave and forbidding the use of all State jails for the slave's detention"-an act which put the duty of being official slave catchers upon the Federal officials. Latimer's was the first of the celebrated fugitive slave cases to stir the cities of the North. Gradually these began to pile up, arousing greater and greater anger and indignation, until finally the rendition of Burns in 1854 stirred such deep passions that it became impossible, even with the aid of United States Marines, to return any more fugitives.
STATUS OF ANTISLAVERY (1850)
Thus, as the second decade of the intense and uncom- promising moral agitation drew to a close, the fires of the conflict rose higher and higher. If with each year the aboli- tionists were more and more certain of the triumph of the cause, they could not, of course, foresee the approach of the Kansas-Missouri conflict; nor had the name of John Brown appeared above the horizon. Nevertheless they were so con- vinced that their cause involved human liberty everywhere and every sort of righteous living, that they felt that time fought with them, however many the triumphs of the slave power. They were wise and farsighted in their understand- ing that their greatest allies were the aggressiveness and the excesses of the slaveholders themselves, each of which roused multitudes to opposition. The abolitionists understood clearly, too, that economically the slave system nurtured within itself the seeds of death, that its unquenchable thirst for fresh lands to exhaust was certain to go unsatisfied. They were primarily concerned, therefore, in keeping Massachusetts in the forefront of the agitation, a position occupied by the Bay State from the founding of its first antislavery society.
None believed that the end was so near; that in 1850 the disunion some preached was but eleven years away; that the Great Emancipator was quietly practicing law in Illinois, and
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
that by his pen the southern slaves would be freed within thirteen years. Steadily both antislavery wings came nearer together; steadily the old State led the Nation towards free- dom; more and more its officials and legislature responded to that public sentiment which was now awake to the fact that no republic could be half slave and half free and still endure.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, HERBERT BAXTER .- The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1893).
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY .- Memoirs, Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848 (12 vols., Phila., Lippincott, 1874-1877).
AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY .- Annual Reports (N. Y., 1834-1870).
ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF AMERICAN WOMEN, BOSTON, 1837 .- An
Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (Boston, Knapp, 1838).
BALDWIN, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS .- Diary of Christopher Columbus Bald- win (Worcester, Mass., Am. Antiquarian Society, 1901).
BARTLETT, DAVID VANDEWATER GOLDEN .-- Modern Agitators; or, Pen Portraits of Live American Reformers (N. Y., Miller, Orton & Mulli- gan, 1855).
BIRNEY, CATHERINE H .- The Grimké Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké (Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1885).
BIRNEY, WILLIAM .- James G. Birney and His Times (N. Y., Appleton, 1890).
BOURNE, GEORGE .- Man Stealing and Slavery Denounced by the Presby- terian and Methodist Churches (Boston, Garrison & Knapp, 1834).
BOWDITCH, VINCENT YARDLEY .- Life and Correspondence of Henry Inger- soll Bowditch (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1902).
CHADWICK, JOHN WHITE .- William Ellery Channing, Minister of Religion (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1903).
CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY .- Works (Boston, Am. Unitarian Associa- tion, 1891).
CHANNING, WILLIAM HENRY .- Memoir of William Ellery Channing (3 vols., Boston, Crosby and Nichols, 1854).
CHAPMAN, JOHN JAY .- William Lloyd Garrison (N. Y., Moffat, Yard, 1913).
CHAPMAN, MARIA WESTON .- Right and Wrong in Boston (Boston, Dow & Jackson, 1836).
CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN .- Anti-Slavery Days (N. Y., Worthington, 1884). COOKE, GEORGE WILLIS .- Unitarianism in America, A History of Its Origin and Development (Boston, Am. Unitarian Association, 1902).
CROSBY, ERNEST HOWARD .- Garrison, the Non-Resistant (Chicago, Public Publishing Co., 1905).
DARLING, ARTHUR BURR .- Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824-1848 (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1925).
DEANE, CHARLES .- "Letters and Documents Relating to Slavery in Massa- chusetts" (Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Fifth Series, Vol. III, pp. 373-442, Boston, 1877)-Also published separately.
342
ANTISLAVERY CRISIS
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO .- Journals (10 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1909-1914)-Edited by E. E. Emerson and W. E. Forbes.
FORBES, JOHN MURRAY .- Letters and Recollections (2 vols., Boston, Hough- ton Mifflin, 1889)-Edited by S. F. Hughes.
Fox, EARLY LEE .- The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840 (Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series XXXVII, no. 3, Balto., Johns Hopkins Press, 1919).
FREEMAN, FREDERICK .- The History of Cape Cod (Privately printed, 2 vols., Boston, 1860-1862).
FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS .- Gerrit Smith: A Biography (N. Y., Putnam's, 1879).
FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS .- Theodore Parker: A Biography (Boston, Osgood, 1874).
GARRISON, WENDELL PHILLIPS, AND GARRISON, FRANCIS JACKSON .- William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; The Story of His Life Told by His Children (4 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1894).
GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD .- Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, Wallcut, 1852).
GIDDINGS, JOSHUA REED .- Speeches in Congress (Boston, Jewett, 1853)- Delivered 1841-1852.
GODDARD, HAROLD CLARKE .- Studies in New England Transcendentalism (Columbia, Studies in English, Second Series, Vol. II, no. 3, N. Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1908).
GOODELL, WILLIAM .- Slavery and Anti-Slavery; a History of Great Strug- gles in Both Hemispheres (N. Y., Goodell, 1853).
GREELEY, HORACE .- The American Conflict; a History of the Great Rebel- lion in the United States of America: its Causes, Incidents, and Results (2 vols., Hartford, Case, 1864-1867).
GRIMKÉ, ARCHIBALD HENRY .- William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist (N. Y., Funk and Wagnalls, 1891).
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL .- American History Told by Contemporaries (5 vols., N. Y., Macmillan, 1898-1929).
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL .- Slavery and Abolition, 1831-1841 (N. Y., Harper, 1906).
HAYNES, GEORGE HENRY .- Charles Sumner (Phila., Jacobs, 1909).
HERBERT, HILARY ABNER .- The Abolition Crusade and its Consequences (N. Y., Scribner's, 1912).
HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH .- Travellers and Outlaws; Episodes in American History (Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1889).
HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH .- Wendell Phillips (Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1884).
HOPKINS, JOHN HENRY .- A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery, from the Days of Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century (N. Y., Pooley, 1864).
HOWE, MARK ANTONY DE WOLFE .- Boston, the Place and the People (N. Y., Macmillan, 1924).
HUME, JOHN FERGUSON .- The Abolitionists, 1830-1864 (N. Y., Putnam's, 1905).
JAY, WILLIAM .- Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery (Boston, Jewett, 1853). JOHNSON, OLIVER .- William Lloyd Garrison and His Times (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1885).
JULIAN, GEORGE WASHINGTON .- The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago, McClurg, 1892).
Liberty Bell (Boston, 1839-1860) .- Edited by Maria Weston Chapman. Annual publication of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Bazaar.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
LOCKE, MARY STOUGHTON .- Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduc- tion of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade, 1619- 1808 (Boston, Ginn, 1901).
LONGFELLOW, SAMUEL .- Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Ex- tracts from his Journals and Letters (3 vols., Houghton Mifflin, 1891). LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL .- The Anti-Slavery Papers of James Russell Lowell (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1902).
LUNDY, BENJAMIN .- The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (Phila., Parrish, 1847).
LYMAN, THEODORE .- Papers Relating to the Garrison Mob (Cambridge, Welch, Bigelow, 1870).
MACY, JESSE .- The Anti-Slavery Crusade (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1921).
MARTINEAU, HARRIET .- The Martyr Age of The United States (Boston, Weeks, Jordan, 1839).
MARTINEAU, HARRIET .- Society in America (2 vols., N. Y., Saunders and Otley, 1837).
MASSACHUSETTS ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY .- Annual Reports, 1833-1853 (21 vols., Boston, 1833-1853).
MASSACHUSETTS COLONIZATION SOCIETY .- American Colonization Society, and the Colony at Liberia (Boston, 1832).
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY .- Proceedings (Boston, 1879 and later). Began in 1791.
MAY, SAMUEL JOSEPH .- Some Recollections of the Antislavery Conflict (Boston, Fields, Osgood, 1869).
MOORE, GEORGE H .- Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (N. Y., Appleton, 1866).
MORISON, SAMUEL ELIOT .- Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Fed- eralist, 1765-1843 (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1913).
MUMFORD, THOMAS JAMES .- Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston, Roberts, 1873).
PALFREY, JOHN GORHAM .- Papers on the Slave Power (Boston, Merrill, Cobb, 1846).
PEARSON, HENRY GREENLEAF .- The Life of John A. Andrew (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1904).
PHILLIPS, WENDELL .- Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston, Redpath, 1863).
PIERCE, EDWARD LILLIE .- Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (4 vols., Boston, Roberts, 1877-1893).
PILLSBURY, PARKER .- Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (Boston, Cup- ples, Upham, 1884).
RUSSELL, CHARLES EDWARD .- The Story of Wendell Phillips: Soldier of the Common Good (Chicago, Kerr, 1914).
SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY .- The Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams (Phila., Porter & Coates, 1886).
SUMNER, CHARLES .- Works (20 vols., Boston, Lee & Shepard, 1900). SWIFT, LINDSAY .- William Lloyd Garrison (Phila., Jacobs, 1911).
TAPPAN, LEWIS .- The Life of Arthur Tappan (N. Y., Hurd & Houghton, 1870).
Tributes to William Lloyd Garrison, at the Funeral Services, May 28, 1879 (Boston, Houghton, Osgood, 1879).
WEISS, JOHN .- Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (2 vols., Boston, Roberts, 1873).
WILLIAMS, GEORGE WASHINGTON .- History of the Negro Race in Amer- ica from 1619 to 1880 (2 vols., N. Y., Putnam's, 1883).
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ANTISLAVERY CRISIS
ANTISLAVERY ORGANS IN THE EAST
The Abolitionist (later, The Free American).
The Anti-Slavery Reporter.
The Cradle of Liberty.
The Emancipator.
The Genius of Universal Emancipation.
The Herald of Freedom.
The Liberator.
The National Anti-Slavery Standard.
The National Enquirer.
The Pennsylvania Freeman.
CHAPTER XII
WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS (1789-1861) BY HARLAN H. BALLARD Librarian of the Berkshire Atheneum
GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL SETTING
The only group of States in the Union known for centuries by a common name is New England. During the voyage of Francisco de Ulloa in 1539, the name California was applied to the peninsula discovered by Jimenez in 1533. In time it came to be used for the entire coast which still retains it. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake, believing himself to be its dis- coverer, named the same coast Nova Albion, or New England. The new name was rejected in favor of the older, however, and thus released, was chosen by Captain John Smith in 1615 for his own new-found shore. "New England," he wrote, "is that part of America opposite to Nova Albion in the South Sea. In regard thereto, being in the same latitude, I called it New England, and at my humble suit our most gracious King Charles was pleased to confirm it by that title."
The oneness of New England has a deeper source than the accident of a comprehensive name; during part of its history before the Revolution it was actually a political unit. After the possession and government of the land had been granted by conflicting charters to several companies, all rights and powers became vested in the Massachusetts Bay Company, which for a time included within its jurisdiction all the terri- tory which was afterward divided into the six States of modern New England. In common with all the other English colonies, Massachusetts acted as a vice-regency of the King; but from the beginning a spirit of self-sufficiency was mani-
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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
fested here, which grew until in 1776 it yielded as its natural fruit the Declaration of Independence.
Divergent views of religious and civic polity led to the establishment of self-governing colonies centered in Provi- dence, Hartford, New Haven, and elsewhere, but these were soon forced by the pressure of Indian and Dutch aggression to form the Confederation of New England, described in Volume I of this work. A certain bond of unity was found in their common English ancestry and in their longing for religious and political freedom from English persecution. It was hard for them to live peaceably together, but fear of foreign domination provided an antidote to internal dissension. Hence the history of Massachusetts, or any part of it, cannot be understood without some knowledge of all New England. This is particularly true of western Massachusetts; for the settlers of this region came not only from the older towns on the coast but also from Connecticut and Rhode Island. It is difficult to write the territorial history of Massachusetts on account of the frequent changes in its size and character. The permanent eastern boundary of the State is the Atlantic Ocean, but the northern, southern, and western lines were determined by compromise after years of dispute. The historian of western Massachusetts is perplexed by the uncertainty of the boundary lines; for while the boundaries of this section have been fixed, as long as the Commonwealth has existed, on the north, south, and west, the eastern division from the main colony has never been determined by legislation. Josiah Gil- bert Holland included in his Western Massachusetts the four counties Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire, and also definite portions of Worcester County. Nevertheless there is one natural eastern line of this region; viz., the Con- necticut River. The counties on the left bank of this river are linked into a common history with the counties to the eastward, which is very different from that of the seaboard and adjacent sections of the State.
The most practicable solution of this geographical problem is to confine the story to the four western counties as they now stand. These form a region which is neither a natural nor a political unit, but rather the disassociated fragments of old
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NATURAL FEATURES
Hampshire county ; from which Berkshire was set off in 1761; Franklin, in 1811; and Hampden, in 1812. These four coun- ties have been treated in the discussion of the judiciary divi- sions of the State. Nevertheless, before the division of Hamp- shire the courts of that county sat in alternate years in Springfield and Northampton. Here must be sought the earl- ier records of nearly all towns of western Massachusetts-in the probate records in Northampton, and in the records of deeds in Springfield.
NATURAL FEATURES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
What are the characteristics of western Massachusetts as it has been fashioned by the craftsmanship of nature and freed from all dividing lines of human origin? The picture has been drawn by Holland in the Introduction to his History of Western Massachusetts: "Among the hills of northern New Hampshire and the mountains on the southern border of Canada, the Quonektakut river has its source, form- ing for a long distance the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire. It sweeps across the western portion of Massachusetts and, passing through the State to which it has given its name, discharges its waters into the sea. Another natural feature, the Green Mountain Range, originates in the same northern latitude and, giving its name to Vermont, traverses that State and, rolling across Massachusetts still farther west, passes into Connecticut and loses itself upon its seaward looking plains.
"In their passage through Massachusetts the river and the mountain range have imparted the grandeur and beauty that characterize its surface. Fertile and beautiful meadows spread out on either hand until they meet the eastern and western slopes that gather tribute for the sea-bound stream. This river, these meadows, these inward looking slopes, and these tributary streams have determined the character of the in- dustry which has appropriated them to the uses of human life. There is hardly a farm or a work-shop, a dwelling or a church, a road or a mill but is connected in some way with the Connec- ticut river. Thus also has the Green Mountain range given its
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