USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Greenfield > History of Greenfield : shire town of Franklin county, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 37
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It is a far cry from the English peer to the American car- penter but both could see the realities below the surface and
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Whitman, poet and prophet, felt in his soul the poetry of the great democracy. He saw it in the crowds of New York, in the common affairs of life, in the great movement over the continent, in the pioneers who led the advance and in strange forms he gave it to the world first to wonder at and then dimly to understand. Emerson, a greater man than either of these, read the meaning of this great new world and gave it forth in a message which dwells forever in the hearts of all who have paused to listen to his teachings. Hawthorne and Holmes, Whittier and Lowell and Longfellow all in their de- gree heard the voices of the land and of its people and touched their highest notes when inspired by them.
They are all there, the epic and the drama and the lyric. They are all there in the great movement with its wide sweep passing on relentless like the forces of nature. You will find every one of them if you come nearer, in the small commu- nity, in the family, in the individual man instinct with all the passions, all the aspirations, all the fears of the human heart, new with the freshness of eternal youth and ancient as the first coming of man upon earth. And if the scenery and the trappings, the clothes, the titles, and the contrasts of condition are lacking, there is this compensation that this story is all alive. It leads us to the very portals of the present and the imagination looking thence can dispense with an outworn past when it can range over the future which belongs in ever in- creasing measure to the new world.
To this hour, then, we have come. We have travelled far in thought and we have been gazing backward over the road by which we have passed. Let us turn our eyes for a mo- ment upon the present which is our own, which lies all about us and peer thence into the future which stretches before us limitless and unknown. We have toiled hard in our three hundred years. What have the generations accomplished ? Very great results no one can doubt. By such work as has been done here in this valley we have made a great nation, no
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greater now extant as it seems to me, and yet we are only be- ginning to run our course. We are still young and un- breathed, with mighty strength and muscles trained and unexhausted. We have amassed riches beyond the dreams of avarice and our resources are neither wasted nor decayed. We have shared in the revolution of steam and electricity and harnessed them to our purposes as no other people have done. We have also in these and other ways quickened life and living to an enormous degree. Our vast industrial and economic machinery is pushing forward with an accelerating speed at a rate which should inspire us with caution as it al- ready inspires other nations with alarm. All the instrumen- talities of learning, of art, of pleasure are growing with an un- exampled rapidity. We have contributed to literature, we have done great work in science, we have excelled in inven- tion, we have bettered vastly the condition of life to all men. There is to-day no more portentous fact in this world of ours than the United States. A great country, a great people ; courage, energy, ability, force, all abundant, inexhaustible ; power, riches, success; glory to spare both in war and peace ; patriotism at home ; respect abroad. Such is the pres- ent. Such are the results of the century and a half we com- memorate here to-day.
But this is not all. We should be undeserving of our past, reckless of our future if we did not fully realize that we are human, that we have our perils and our trials, and that success can be kept only as it has been earned by courage, wisdom and a truthful mind, which looks facts in the face and scorns all shams and delusions. We have met and solved great problems. We have other problems ever rising with the re- current years, which like those that have gone before will not settle themselves but must in their turn be met and brought to a solution. Our problems are our own. They grow out of the conditions of the time as those of our fathers did in the earlier days. From without there is nothing we need fear.
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" Come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them." Nor does cause for serious anxiety arise from the ordinary questions of domestic management. Tariffs and currencies, the development of the country, the opening of waterways, the organization of defense and of administration
can all be dealt with successfully. The government of our great cities, the problem of the negro, the question of regulat- ing and assimilating our enormous immigration are in the high- est degree grave issues of great pith and moment which have a large bearing upon our future weal or woe. But I think they can all be met, that they all will be met with patient ef- fort and with a due measure of success. None of them touches the foundations of society or the sources of national life unless they should be neglected or mishandled to a degree inconceiv- able with a people so intelligent and so energetic as our own.
But there are certain questions looming up, the outgrowth of conditions common to the whole world of western civiliza- tion and arising from the vast expansion and phenomenal ac- celeration of the industrial and economic forces of the age. They touch us particularly because we are expanding and quickening our economic movement more largely and more rapidly than any other people. We have, in other words, a higher energy of organization and production than any other nation. For this reason we are driving less highly organized and less energetic peoples to the wall. Whether the opposition thus aroused can be stilled or whether it will become desperate and manifest itself in a political or military manner no one can say. It behooves us, however, to watch carefully and be al- ways on our guard both in our conduct and in our readiness. Yet there are other conditions which modern forces produce even graver than this. The dangers threaten from sources widely different, even absolutely opposed and yet reacting upon each other. The new conditions, while they have raised greatly the well-being of the community and of the average man, have also caused an accumulation of fortunes and a con-
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centration of capital the like of which has never been seen be- fore. Here lies one peril-that of irresponsible wealth. Wealth which recognizes its duties and obligations is in its wise and generous uses a source of great good to the com- munity. But wealth, which, if inactive, neglects the duty it owes to the community, is deaf to the cry of suffering, seeks not to remedy ignorance and turns its back upon charity or which, if actively employed, aims to disregard the law, to prevent its enforcement or by purchase to control legislation, is irre- sponsible and therefore dangerous to itself and to others. The tyranny of mere money in society, in politics, in business or in any of the manifold forms of human activity is the coarsest and most vulgar tyranny, as worship of mere money is the most degraded worship that mankind has ever known. Over against this danger lies the peril of the demagogue, of the men who would seek to create classes and then set one class against another, the deadliest enemies to our liberty and our de- mocracy that the wit of man could imagine. Under the guise of helping to better the common lot they preach a gospel of envy and hatred. They ask men to embark on changes which may possibly relieve them from the pain of seeing anyone more fortunate and successful than themselves but which will not improve but will probably lower and injure their own con- dition. They proclaim panaceas, social and political, which are as old as man's oldest attempts at government and which have an ancient record of dismal failure. They ask us to come to a beautiful country of hills and woods and meadows, rich and fertile, with river and brook sparkling in the sun- light. They point to the promised land lying far away and dimly discerned upon the horizon. If you follow them the vision fades. It was but a mirage and you find yourself in- deed upon a level plain but the plain is a desert, arid and desolate, where hope and ambition lie dead and the bones of those who have gone before bleach upon the sands.
ยท I am no pessimist. I am an optimist and I have a bound-
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less faith in my country and her people. But he would be a poor sailor who did not watch out for the reef on one side and the shoal upon the other because his ship was leaping forward with every sail straining before the favoring breeze. So it is our duty that we all, each in his due proportion, seek to carry this great nation forward upon the voyage of life. We have weathered many storms and we fear them not. But let us not forget that however conditions change, the great under- lying qualities which make and save men and nations do not alter.
I look back upon the event which we commemorate to- day. In the great book of the world's history it is but a line. Yet I find there the principles which alone I believe will enable us to strive and conquer as in the olden times. First I see a great solidarity of interest. Those men were foes to anarchy, most hateful of all things in human history. They fought shoulder to shoulder, united in purpose and de- termined that where they dwelt order should reign and not chaos. They met here one hundred and fifty years ago and did three very memorable things. They organized a town ; they established a church; they opened a school. The simple, everyday, instinctive acts of an American community, you say. Yes truly, but it is because these have been hitherto the simple everyday acts of the American people that America is what she is to-day. These men of Greenfield a century and a half ago recognized three great facts, religion, education, ordered government. They recognized that they stood here upon the "bank and shoal of time" for one brief moment between two eternities. They declared in their simple fash- ion that the man or nation who did not recognize that there was something spiritual in them higher than all earthly and material things would surely pass down into ruin and darkness and that here pretenses were worse than nothing and could never serve. They recognized ignorance as an enemy and us- ing to the utmost such modest means as they had they pro-
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posed that so far as in them lay it should not be endured among them. Lastly they recognized the vital need of order and gov- ernment and they set up the town meeting, the purest democ- racy this modern world has seen or can yet see in actual opera- tion among men. In that town government they embodied as the great central principle, the largest individual liberty compat- ible with the rights of all. They built their town on the doc- trine that all men must work and bear each one his share of the common burden, that the fullest scope must then be given to each man and that each man thus endowed with opportunity must make his own fight and win his own way and that no one else could or ought to do it for him. It was the stern doctrine of a strong race, but on that doctrine the United States have risen to be what they are to-day. The rights and the good order of the community are in the charge of the government and the government must guard and protect them. But beyond that each man's fortune rests in his own hands and he must make it good. It will be a sorry day for this republic when the vital principle of the town meeting which has been thus far the vital principle of the American people is disregarded or set aside.
As we look back into the past it is well to bear these lessons in mind, for otherwise we are false to its teachings. In the problems and difficulties which gather around us, in the future which stretches before us-a great and splendid future as I believe-we cannot go far wrong if we cling to the faith of the men who founded this town a century and a half ago. They built it on religion, on free government and on the largest liberty possible to the individual man. They sought no ready- made schemes to solve in a moment all difficulties and cure all evils. Slowly and painfully they had fastened themselves and their homes in this valley and they knew that only slowly, by much hard work and never by idleness and short cuts could they make the condition of the community and of all its members steadily and permanently better. They sought
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always to level up, never to level down. They looked facts in the face and did the duty nearest to their hands with all their strength. They were diligent in business and prospered as they deserved. But they did not forget that intelligence and character were of more value than wealth in the long process of the years. They felt, dimly perhaps, but none the less earnestly, that what they were, not what they had would count most when the final reckoning came. On the founda- tions they laid, the great structure of the United States has been reared. In the splendor of accomplishment let us not forget the beliefs and the principles of those who placed the corner stone.
At the close of Mr. Lodge's address the children chanted the Lord's Prayer, and the following letters from Ex-Justice Charles Allen and Hon. John E. Russell were read by Judge Thompson.
CHAPTER LXXIII
LETTER FROM
HON. CHARLES ALLEN
E VERYBODY agrees that in most respects Greenfield is now nearly an ideal New England town. This comes not merely from the beauty of its situation and the enterprise and taste of its present inhabitants, but also as I think in some degree from its history, and the character of its people in the past. A good reputation is a valuable asset for a town, as well as for an individual. Is it not natural to seek to equal and to surpass the good works of those who have gone before ? Looking back to the period from 1847 to 1862, I recall sev- eral noteworthy features of the life and society of Greenfield. In the first place, take three clergymen, Titus Strong, Ama- riah Chandler and John F. Moors. Each one of these fur- nished an example of true Christian service, faithful indeed to his own doctrinal beliefs, but not bound by the narrow lines of his own parish or denomination, and taking for his neighbor every one whom he could serve, and leaving a lasting influ- ence in favor of a broad human sympathy, and a general fel- lowship in good works. That is the kind of minister that the times demand to-day.
Take also the leading physicians, Alpheus F. Stone and James Deane, the latter of whom was noted not only in his
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profession, but also for his studies and labors in connection with the sandstone footprints of the Connecticut River. He was succeeded by his nephew Adams C. Deane, now lately deceased. Do not the present members of the noble medical profession, whose services for humanity we all so much honor, whose services to ourselves we all so much rely upon, who come closer to us in times of sickness than a brother, still derive an appreciable benefit from the zeal and the fine tone which all of these leaders exhibited in their practice ?
Take the bar : My memory goes back to the time when Daniel Wells was its leader, and George Grinnell and David Aiken were partners. Soon afterwards leading practitioners were George T. Davis, Charles Devens and Wendell T. Davis, who were partners, and Whiting Griswold and Daniel W. Alvord, with whom was associated for a few years his bril- liant and accomplished cousin, George D. Wells, who fell at Cedar Creek. If I may speak of the law office in which I myself was student and afterwards junior partner, that of which George T. Davis was the admired and much loved head, I can say without reservation that its ethical tone was of the highest, and that both by precept and example we young- sters who were in it were taught, while showing all due fidel- ity and zeal in behalf of clients, not to indulge our feelings so far as to disregard the just rights of those upon the other side. I have always fondly believed, perhaps with excusable partiality, that in those times a better tone prevailed in the practice of law in Franklin County than in some of the other counties of the state; and I rejoice to think that this tradi- tional tone is still cherished and maintained by my friends, the older practitioners of to-day. Not of course that everything was rosy and perfect then, any more than it is now, but the bar, like other professions and occupations, asks to be judged according to the standards set and acted on by its best mem- bers.
Gladly would I dwell awhile upon the characters of some
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of the business men of that period, now deceased ; of Franklin Ripley, of John Russell, of Theodore Leonard, of Henry B. Clapp, in whose unfortunate and untimely death Greenfield met with a rare loss ; and, a little later, of William B. Wash- burn. Nor in any recollections of Greenfield would I omit Henry W. Clapp, Alfred R. Field, Lucius Nims, kindest of neighbors, and James S. Grinnell, afterwards noted for his general hospitality. And amongst those women who formerly lent distinction to Greenfield society, it will not, I hope, after this lapse of time, be deemed invidious to mention the names of Mrs. George T. Davis, of her sister Mrs. Wendell T. Davis, and of Mrs. Henry Chapman.
But time would fail me fitly to tell of these and of many others who crowd into my memory as I lovingly recall the period of my living in Greenfield.
If, as I believe, some good influence from them still sur- vives, my hope is that all which was well done by them may be but an example and stimulus of what shall be even better in the future, so that Greenfield may indeed stand now and always in the very front rank of the towns of Massachusetts.
CHARLES ALLEN.
BOSTON, May 25, 1903.
CHAPTER LXXIV
LETTER FROM
HON. JOHN E. RUSSELL
I T is difficult to write a letter for this anniversary without some reference to the history of the region, though I will try not to entrench upon ground that belongs to the orator of the day. My grandfather Russell was born in Deerfield and his Sheldon forebears had been participants in all the life of the old town in whose records are the stirring and romantic events of local history.
Greenfield makes little show on historic pages, though its territory forms part of the shadowy frontier for which so much blood was shed in King Philip's war, and in the wars between the English and French.
Turner, Holyoke, Moseley and other leaders were half for- gotten names, " the black and fatal day " when the blood of " the flower of Essex" incarnadined the brook, was a dim memory, and the generation that survived the awful winter night of 1704 was in the grave, when Greenfield was "set off"; an event much easier of accomplishment, I imagine, than the separation of Cheapside from the mother town nearly a century and a half later.
There is little of romance in what is near, authentic and practical. Happy is the man, the family and the town, that
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has had an uneventful history. There is no scope for imagi- nation and tradition in prosperous annals.
When Greenfield began the Indian had appealed his claim to a higher court, the heavy work of settlement had been ac- complished and the people of the colonies, under the salutary neglect of a distant government, were enjoying freedom from feudal forms and restraints with the unbounded resources of a continent unwasted by hungry generations.
It was an auspicious hour, and from then until now, with but little check, except during the years of the Revolution, Greenfield has been a thriving community, the center of an agricultural population, its steady source of business, never highly elated nor unduly depressed.
Climate and soil have much to do with the character of every community, and while our meadows and hills had no profusion of crops, and no mines of valuable minerals, they sustained a frugal and industrious people in comfort.
The town had its share of the advantages that drew the ear- liest settlers of the valley from the seacoast to the permanent meadows made by " the great river," in its annual overflow, when it " set back " in the spring floods.
There was no primeval forest to be removed from those fertile banks, they were ready for the plough and rewarded the husbandmen with joyful harvests. The river, and its af- fluents, were alive with salmon and shad in their season ; they came like the birds, companions of the spring ; the fertile soil of the hills was covered with a strong growth of oak, sugar maple, beech and chestnut. It was a bountiful and beautiful region. He who has stood on rocky mountain, looking to the East and beheld the "June rise" come down from the melting snows of the North with
" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood All dressed in living green,"
will confess, not only the loveliness, but the majesty of the scene.
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Travelling in distant parts of the world, in " storied realms of morning land," or on rivers famous in history, my thoughts have fondly returned to the scenes of early life and I have felt that those renowned shores had not the beauty of my na- tive valley and that, as her enthusiastic poet sang,
" No watery glades through richer valleys shine, Nor drinks the sea a lovelier wave than thine."
The great river had a value to our ancestors that we cannot estimate, in the fact that it was a waterway to the sea, the path by which the world was open to their enterprise. I have seen vessels moored at Cheapside of greater tonnage than those in which the star-gazing Genoese sailed from Spain to the discovery of the New World. I have watched the slow unloading of clanging bars of iron, of bundles of cutler's steel, water-borne from Liverpool to the head of navigation on the Deerfield,-vast piles of salt and odorous puncheons of rum, molasses and sugar, telling of tropical islands, waving fronded palms in Southern seas.
In the incorporation of Greenfield the new town was en- titled to the North bank of the Deerfield river, but the old town jealously kept possession of both banks, a source of con- tention and heart burning for many years. In my boyhood the port was under the grim wardenship of Ira Abercrombie : he was Surveyor and Lord High Admiral of the fleet. His yellow warehouse was the receptacle for the riches of the seas. This allusion to river navigation may seem facetious to those accustomed all their lives to the convenience and domination of railways. It would seem impossible to do business on streams that, as John Randolph said of the Ohio, are frozen half the year and dry the other half ; but for the greater part of a century our fathers found water enough, and the valley towns were supplied with goods, and marketed much of their produce by the river. After the Montague canal was con- structed, with capital borrowed in Amsterdam, boats ascended
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as far as Bellows Falls, when there was what was called "a good pitch of water."
With inexpensive engineering at difficult parts of the river, between Hartford and the mouth of the Deerfield, and stern- wheel steamboats to tow the barges on the "reaches," quite rapid work was done. The boats used wind as much as pos- sible,-having a large main and top sail, very effective when the wind was in the South on the upward trip, or in the North on the way down ; but when the winds were adverse the nu- merous crew worked up stream with " set poles; " this was called "a white ash breeze," and was severe and exhausting labor.
Allen, Root & Co. in later years, controlled the freighting of all this part of the river. They had a steamboat that ran from the head of the South Hadley canal to Montague, tow- ing the loaded boats ; the boat for Greenfield left the tow line at Deerfield river and made Cheapside with the white ash breeze.
Those who hear this story of the past will readily believe that our rivers had a deeper and more equal flow of water in those days. When the Green River Works were built, nearly seventy years ago, the stream was larger than it is now, with a steady water power all summer. The rainfall has not less- ened, but the heavy forests have been destroyed ; these held the precipitation, and long delayed the melting snows, which now run from the denuded hillsides, washing the soil into the valley and making sudden freshets; the unshaded springs dry early, and the river beds show narrow channels and reaches of sand.
It is to be deplored that our grandfathers did not borrow more Dutch money, or tax themselves and bond posterity, to deepen the channel of the Connecticut and make canals about its falls, at a time when there was no powerful influence to prevent such improvements.
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