USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 14
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These settlers of the western country, coming from Massa- chusetts, were mostly families of religious faith, of sound common sense, of fearlessness, of a faculty for, and a facility in, civil combinations and conciliations. They were also men of laboriousness, of economy, of strongest determination to be not unworthy of the past of their fathers; they were filled with visions of a better future world. They were material- ists, as well as idealists. They recognized that perhaps the only way, and certainly the most promising, for securing the advantages which the general government had held out for them, was to occupy lands in the West. Indeed, for such land (under impulses both material and ideal) they petitioned; and their petition was granted.
MASSACHUSETTS IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY (1787-1800)
The first of these western migrations, and perhaps the most significant settlement formed by Massachusetts men outside of New England, was that of 1787. The so-called Ohio Com- pany of Associates was organized in Boston, March 12, 1786, at the "Bunch of Grapes" tavern; hence it is sometimes re- ferred to by this name. One of its agents, a soldier and
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engineer, was General Rufus Putnam (cousin of Israel), born in Sutton, Massachusetts, in 1738. A millwright, he was also a scholar in mathematics, and his mathematics he applied to surveying and navigation. He fought in the French Wars, from 1757 to 1760. He was employed as chief surveyor in the Revolution. He took part in suppressing Shays' Rebel- lion of 1786. Coming to the Northwest Territory, he was made a judge of its Supreme Court. He also served as United States Commissioner to treat with the Indians in 1792-1793. For ten years, 1793-1803, he was United States Surveyor General. In 1802 the first Constitutional Convention of Ohio was held, and of it he was a member. A devout and devoted Christian, he formed the first Bible association or society west of the Alleghenies. He died in Marietta in 1824. This Mas- sachusetts man has been called "the Father of Ohio."
Other settlements in this Territory were made from other states. On Lake Erie Connecticut established her Western Reserve. Virginia sent her citizens to the Scioto valley. New Jersey founded villages near Cincinnati. Frenchmen, Ger- mans, and even Hollanders came and established settlements. Nevertheless, the Massachusetts colony of Rufus Putnam was the earliest established in the northwest, and it was directed by a Massachusetts man, whom Washington described as "dis- creet" and possessing "a strong mind."
MASSACHUSETTS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE WEST
(1789-1850)
The diverse forms of the individual and commercial of- ferings prepare the way for the consideration of yet another type of the comprehensive contribution. This type is religious ; for the West has been, and is, a religious commonwealth. Its religion is the Christian faith. This faith expresses itself in the institution of the church. The church manifests itself in various denominational constitutions and relations. The chief denominations of the Northwest in early times were the Congregational and the Presbyterian, who long bound themselves by a kind of compact to forbear duplicating their
MASSACHUSETTS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 139
home mission work. With them in religious belief, principles and practice were presently associated the Methodist, the Baptist, the Episcopal, the Disciples and other churches. Mas- sachusetts has been, and still is, the chief center of the Congre- gational churches. However, the appeal which the West made in the earlier time for the institutions of the Christian religion was based, not on denominational grounds, but on grounds broadly religious, intensely human and even divine. Massa- chusetts heard the appeal, both broad and intense, and an- swered.
The first material need, in point of time, of a new common- wealth is the tilling of fields, the raising of crops, the building of roads and bridges to promote transportation, and of houses for shelter, the raising of horses, cows, oxen, to give sustain- ing and working forces. Following the filling of these needs, or some would say before the satisfying of these physical wants, is the establishment of local civil government. At once emerges the recognition of the religious conditions of the new community. The settlers of the Western States were mostly men of religious faith. Their demands for a proper founda- tion and equipment of the church, and for the other institu- tions of religion were early recognized. The religious poverty of all the denominations in the first years of the settlement of the whole West was heard, seen, felt. In the year 1828, a missionary, working in the state of Illinois, wrote to a student in the Theological Seminary at Andover: "Much . . . has been said of the wants of this growing empire West of the Alleghany. But the half has not been told you; nor can it be. Even the most ample survey that could be made by an occular, personal examination of our waste places could not embrace the full extent of our necessities; for a nation is springing up, whose destiny is to be governed, in a great measure, by the character of the present generation. Could I write this last sentence with a sun-beam in the sight of all the churches, I should most certainly do it. . . It will not do to trifle in this affair ;- this is the seed time, 'the present generation,' and the enemy is sowing tares whether we sleep or not: and if we are accountable for the good we might do, as well as for the evil actually done,-up, be vigilant, and let
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us work with our might, and not be tasting a sugar-plumb, when we might be redeeming a world."
SPREAD OF MASSACHUSETTS THEOLOGY (1787-1850)
Calls such as that just quoted were answered by the send- ing of Christian ministers from Massachusetts, and from other commonwealths. In the choice of ministers, the ablest theological teachers cooperated. In 1851 Professor Edwards A. Park, of Andover, when the Western emigration was coming into its full power, preached a sermon on the in- debtedness of the State to the clergy. It was a great sermon, great in its fullness of interpretation, and moving in its emo- tional appeal. Park's thesis was that the clergy promotes the comfort of the people, also exerts its influence in educating the people. The clergy also arouses the political virtues. Among these great virtues is that of a love of country. The clergy encourages Christian benevolence. "Such benevo- lence," Park declared, "is something more and higher than the religious sentiment and the natural virtues. It quickens, regulates, beautifies, hallows them. It involves a holy love of self, relatives, friends, strangers, enemies, of one's coun- try, one's race, the world, of all in fit proportion to each other, of God more than all, of all because of God, and duly subordinated to Him."
In the year 1842, on Andover Hill, was organized, under Park's influence, the so-called "Iowa Band," an association of graduates of the Theological Seminary, pledged to enter Iowa as ministers. Their number was twelve, and their names were Daniel Lane, Harvey Adams, Erastus Ripley, Horace Hutchinson, Alden B. Robbins, William Salter, Edwin B. Turner, Benjamin A. Spaulding, William Hammond, James J. Hill, Ebenezer Alden, Jr., and Ephraim Adams. Entering this new land, they devoted their lives to religious teaching and service. A few of them remained for a half century. They founded churches, they established schools and colleges, the chief of which was known as Iowa College at Grinnell. They fostered other allied institutions of the Christian faith. These men of Massachusetts education bore the teachings of the classrooms of Andover to the prairies of Iowa.
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THE BEECHERS
WORK OF THE BEECHERS (1832-1860)
Massachusetts has also participated in the evangelization of the West, through teachers of theology who educated western men for the Christian ministry. The most famous of them was Lyman Beecher. Though the Beecher family is in its origin chiefly associated with Connecticut and New Hamp- shire, yet from Boston Lyman Beecher went to Cincinnati, in the year 1832, to accept the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary. Impressed with the importance of holding the West to the Christian faith, he became head of the new semi- nary of theology at what was, in the first decades of the cen- tury, the most important city of the whole western territory. For a score of years, he continued as president, a period fraught with all manner of controversies, political and eccle- siastical.
His work was not confined to the classroom, or directly limited to the West. He went forth into Massachusetts and other States, seeking to secure ministers and teachers for the new land. In an address called "A Plea for the West," he says: "The thing required for the civil and religious pros- perity of the West, is universal education, and moral culture, by institutions commensurate to that result-the all-prevading influence of schools, and colleges, and seminaries, and pastors, and churches." Ministers, teachers, books, formed the essence of his appeal. He says: "We must educate! We must edu- cate! or we must perish by our own prosperity. If we do not, short from the cradle to the grave will be our race. If in our haste to be rich and mighty, we outrun our literary and reli- gious institutions, they will never overtake us; or only come up after the battle of liberty is fought and lost. And let no man at the East quiet himself, and dream of liberty, what- ever may become of the West. Our alliance of blood, and political institutions, and common interests, is such, that we cannot stand aloof in the hour of her calamity, should it ever come. Her destiny is our destiny; and the day that her gal- lant ship goes down, our little boat sinks in the vortex!"
It was through such appeals that Massachusetts was moved to make great contributions of men and of means for the evangelization and the education of the West. In this service,
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Beecher was accompanied and succeeded by his son-in-law, Calvin E. Stowe, husband of his daughter Harriet. While resident in Cincinnati, Mrs. Stowe gathered the material for her Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it is true that southern Ohio gave, through its neighbor Kentucky, the material which Mrs. Stowe wrought into a book which had a share in hasten- ing the nation's crisis. Here is one of the moral bands of iron uniting Massachusetts doctrinal philosophy with the pioneer plains of the Northwest, the New England abolition- ists working in the actual field of slavery.
OTHER RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES (1830-1850)
Another Massachusetts citizen, Joseph Badger, stood for a type of contribution which was also historic and formative. He was born in Wilbraham in 1757, and was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Graduated at Yale in 1785, two years later he became a minister in Blandford, Massachusetts. In 1800, at the call of the Connecticut Missionary Society, he ac- cepted service on the Western Reserve. Thereafter, for thirty- five years, he labored as an itinerant minister among the few families and feeble churches of northern Ohio, and also among its Indian tribes. He aided, too, in founding academies and schools, and the first college. His service in the Revolution was repeated in the War of 1812. "Priest Badger," as he was sometimes called, deserves to be numbered with the founders of States, civil and educational, as well as religious.
By the side of the response to the passionate appeals of the West for its evangelization, Massachusetts in this period gave recognition to the importance of a liberal religion based less on the emotional, and more on the intellectual, nature of man, a movement known as Unitarianism, which is elsewhere de- scribed in this volume. Its influence in the West is seen in the organization of churches in the great cities and at univer- sity centers. One of its ministers, William Greenleaf Eliot, was the founder of Washington University, St. Louis. In Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Cleveland are found its more outstanding churches. As in Boston, it has made a special appeal to the intellectual part of the com- munity.
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EDUCATIONAL TRADITIONS
Other denominations, first strongly developed in Massa- chusetts, have found a footing in the West. Among them are the Universalists, the Disciples or Campbellites, and the Mormons, whose first temple was erected at Kirtland, Ohio, founded by Joseph Smith, a Vermonter, and his followers.
EDUCATIONAL TRADITIONS (1689-1789)
In the early period of American history, the union of church and school, of religion and of education was signif- icant. In the days of the feebleness of both, neither seemed able to exist alone. One does not forget the founding of Harvard College or of William and Mary-the two' first colleges-as a means and method for the training of minis- ters. But, as the people came to possess ample resources, religion through the church, and education through the school and the college, each took on its own distinct phase and exer- cised its own individual function.
The westward religious movement, therefore, which Mas- sachusetts represents, has close association with the westward educational movement, which is characteristic of the Common- wealth and is manifest both in the higher education and in the lower education. The influence of the secondary educa- tion of Massachusetts over the West had its origin in two sources : the general power of the community, and the aggres- sive policies and writings of Horace Mann, the great Massa- chusetts educational reformer.
The Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts, from its beginning, set up regulations respecting education through the common, or the Latin, school. The most important of the laws of the first half of its history is found in the act of 1689, which made important regulations for the education of the whole community. It provided for schools in every dis- trict of fifty or more families. The children were to be taught to read and write, as well as "arithmetic, orthography and decent behaviour," six months in each year. This act had an influence of inexpressible worth in helping forward legis- lation touching education in all the Western States. Its prin- ciples were carried westward, and the resultant public schools
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in the end paralleled, and in some instances excelled, the in- fluence of the Commonwealth.
INFLUENCES OF HORACE MANN (1830-1853)
A second force contributing to the influence of Massachu- setts in education is found in the character, work and writings of Horace Mann. Though born in Rhode Island, Horace Mann belongs essentially to Massachusetts. In and through this Commonwealth, he did his great work for American education. For education in Massachusetts and in the United States he wrought till his election to Congress in 1848, suc- ceeding John Quincy Adams. In the year 1853, he became President of the new Antioch College in central Ohio. After a stormy period of service, he died in 1859. Yet, in this diversity of service, the twelve Reports which he wrote, as the head of the common schools of Massachusetts, represent the essence and the form of his chief influence.
These reports have for their subjects the great and diverse elements of public education. They relate to things material, and to things of the mind. They touch schoolhouses and play- grounds, as well as the imperfect methods and incompetency of teachers. Perhaps the most important topics are found in the fifth and seventh Reports which deal with "the effect of education upon the worldly fortunes of men," and with "the evils of a partial system of education." It is in the seventh (that for 1843) that he considers the schools of Prussia and of Saxony. No publications regarding education have had an influence, both so immediate and so enduring, over the west- ern States, in their educational policies, as have these writings of the great Massachusetts educator. A competent judge, Professor B. A. Hinsdale says: "Mr. Mann's influence was neither slight nor transient . . it has continued strong to the present time, and promises to be one of the permanent spiritual powers of the country."
The teachings of Mann carried to the West moral and religious inspiration. In his inaugural address, as president of Antioch College, Mann said: "Man, as a moral being, receives the anointing of virtue and religion. No longer does he call his fellow-man Jew or gentile, Greek or barbarian,
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INFLUENCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
bond or free. Children of a common Father,-brethren are they all. ... His eye streams at the sight of woe. His heart makes others' sufferings his own. . . . The regener- ated race will do better than to found schools for the orphan, or hospitals for the insane, or redemption houses for the vi- cious; for by following the eternal laws of health, truth, and duty,-that is, by knowing and obeying the laws of God,- they will forestall and prevent the calamities of orphanage, insanity and crime."
INFLUENCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE WEST (1800-1930)
The influence of Massachusetts in the West, over and in and through higher education, takes on two forms. First, the influence of individuals and, second, the influence of in- stitutions. The influence of individuals concerns the teacher of and in the college. The professors or presidents of the colleges of Massachusetts have, both in their relation to students, and as examples and forces of good teaching, exer- cised a great power over the colleges and schools of the West. Of this type, Hopkins, of Williams, and Mary Lyon, of Mount Holyoke, are significant and moving examples. Scores of other teachers, at Harvard, at Amherst, at Williams, have also exercised a like influence over thousands of students. Through teaching and through the far-flung fame of their methods and of their personalities, they have contributed to the standards of higher education in all the States of the West.
Not as a teacher, but as an educational administrator, the influence of Charles William Eliot, forty years President of Harvard College, was as formative as was the influence of Hopkins of Williams in the field of teaching. More than any other, Eliot helped to nationalize education. The national- izing of education stands for two things: for securing the effect of the higher education on the nation, and indeed on the nations; and for the contribution of the nation itself to higher education. In each of these two most important and reciprocal relations, Eliot's influence was fundamental, forma- tive, and enduring. Through him higher education came to
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have a new hold over and among the people of the East, West, Middle States, South, and Far West.
Horace Mann's influence over public school education in Massachusetts and in America was paralleled by Eliot's univer- sity methods. Both helped to raise the people of the na- tion to a higher plane of intelligence, conduct, and happiness. Eliot, standing for and embodying the education of and through the college, standing also for the people, helped to make the higher education a common gift, a common force, a common achievement of the nation. He held college educa- tion to be the right and the privilege of every class of the community, of the political state, and of the social common- wealth. He himself has said: "The institutions of higher education in any nation are always a faithful mirror in which are sharply reflected the national history and character."
YALE AND HARVARD
The influence of Massachusetts on the West through uni- versity institutions, has not been so pronounced as the influ- ence of individuals. The influence of Yale as "the mother of colleges" was for near a century stronger in the West than that of Harvard. Western Reserve College was founded at Hudson in 1826 as a western Yale. The influence of the higher education of Massachusetts in the West has been most effective through Harvard graduates who have had a strong and permanent influence on the western education and litera- ture as organizers, teachers, and supporters of higher educa- tion.
Yale in the nineteenth century was a Congregational college. Its presidents were Congregational clergymen. The ecclesiastical relations of its professors were usually Congre- gational. Orthodoxy, as embodied in Congregationalism, was and is aggressive. The Congregational School of Theology at New Haven sent its graduates, throughout this formative period, into the West as ministers. Not a few of them were natives of the West, particularly in later years. Numerous graduates of Yale College who were also graduates of Yale Theological Seminary entered the West. Graduates of Yale College who were graduates of other theological semi-
Rodgers
From a drawing
Courtesy of the Author
VIEW OF WESTERN RESERVE COLLEGE (1826)
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REFORM MOVEMENTS
naries entered the West as missionaries and ministers. The so-called "Yale Band," composed of graduates of Yale Semi- nary, went into the State of Washington. A few years before, a "Dakota Band" went from New Haven into that Territory. Illinois College at Jacksonville was founded by the members of a "Yale Band."
In this same period Harvard was not Orthodox. It was Unitarian. Until Quincy was elected in 1820, it always called clergymen to its chief executive office. Harvard was in close affiliation with the best forces of Boston and of Massachusetts. But the motives in the college were not mis- sionary : they were as little missionary as those dominating the Unitarian Church. Unitarianism represents a qualitative prop- agandism, but it is not usually a quantitative. It may have enriched other faiths, but has not spread its own faith widely. Its movement has been intensive and not extensive.
REFORM MOVEMENTS (1830-1860)
Almost three-quarters of a century after the first settle- ment in Ohio had been made at Marietta by a group directed by Massachusetts men, came another critical period of Amer- ican history in which Massachusetts exercised a special in- fluence in another Territory of the West. Partly religious and partly social was the relation of Massachusetts to the social reforms of the period from 1830 to 1860. Chief among these was the slavery controversy. Both Massachusetts Col- ony and the Northwest Territory began their political ex- istence free from that incubus; though Indian and Negro slavery soon sprang up in Massachusetts. The Constitution of 1780, however, was second only to that of Vermont in deny- ing the legal possibility of chattel slavery. Hence there was a legal and social foundation, both in Massachusetts and in the Northwest Territory, for the organization of the formidable antislavery movement from 1830 to 1860.
It is a well-established tradition that Theodore Weld of Massachusetts converted to the antislavery cause Benjamin Lundy, who converted William Lloyd Garrison of Massa- chusetts. Certainly Weld converted James G. Birney, the Alabama slaveholder who moved north of the Ohio and was
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twice the candidate of the extreme antislavery men for the presidency. Weld also labored in the West for the cause. Some funds were raised in New England for the antislavery Oberlin College, though its earliest monied patrons were the Tappans of New York.
The Western abolitionists never took over the extreme doc- trines of Garrison, but they were fortified by the literature and public speakers who came from Massachusetts. Both communities participated in legal controversies arising out of fugitive slaves in free communities. The famous Shadrach case in Massachusetts was paralleled by the Oberlin Rescue case in Ohio.
MASSACHUSETTS IN KANSAS (1854-1860)
A still closer relation was established between Massachu- setts and the growing West when aid and comfort was freely given from the East to the Free State men in Kansas. The New England Emigrant Aid Society was organized by Eli Thayer of Worcester, and received encouragement and money from Amos Lawrence and other wealthy and interested men. From Massachusetts came a stream of assisted emigrants flowing across the West and gathering accretions all the way along. The town of Lawrence was named for Amos Law- rence, who seems also to have been responsible for the mys- terious purchase of three thousand Sharps rifles (the new weapon of precision) intended for service on what was then the extreme western frontier. John Brown received aid and comfort and needed funds for mysterious operations in the field of a civil war, and in 1858 started from Massachusetts to Harper's Ferry. Among those who gave money to John Brown at one time or another were Stearns of Medford, John A. Andrew, afterwards war governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Theodore Parker, Uni- tarian clergymen, besides such public figures as Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Dr. Howe, Franklin B. Sanborn, A. Bronson Alcott, Thoreau and Emerson.
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