History of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 34

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & co.
Number of Pages: 1706

USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 34

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Among those associated with Plymouth in the ear- liest stages of the Revolutionary struggle there were two whose names must not be overlooked. In 1769, Alexander Scammell graduated at Harvard, and went to Plymouth in the same year to teach a public school. His predecessor in the school, John Barrows, of At- tleboro', was displaced by the school committee, much to the annoyance of his friends, who endeavored to re- instate him. Mr. Scammell was unwilling to release the cominittee and remained. He was a native of Meriden, and after teaching two years removed to Portsmouth, where he carried on the business of sur- veyor. At the breaking out of the war he was ap- pointed brigade-major of the State of New Hamp- shire, and soon after colonel of the Third New Hamp- shire Regiment. He afterwards rose to the rank of adjutant-general of the American army, and at the siege of Yorktown, on the 30th of September, 1781, was wounded and made prisoner, and died in the fol- lowing month. The building in which he taught school stood, until recently taken down, on the lot north of the Unitarian Church, now included within the limits of Burial Hill.

Peleg Wadsworth, a native of Duxbury, was a class- mate of Scammell at Harvard, and while the latter was teaching a public school in Plymouth was successfully

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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH COUNTY.

conducting a private school in the building which for- merly stood on the lot in Market Strect now occupied by the widow of Zaben Olney. In May, 1775, then a resident in Kingston, he raised a company for service in and about Boston, and was placed in command. At a later day, after his removal to Maine, he was in com- mand of a detachment of State troops, and, like Scam- mell, made prisoner of war. He married in Plymouth, in 1772, Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Bartlett, and had a large family, one of whom, Zilpah, married Stephen Longfellow, the father of the poet. Both Scammell and Wadsworth were early members of the Old Colony Club, and joined in the first observance of the anniversary of the landing in Old Colony Hall, Dee. 22, 1769.

The finances of the town at the close of the war were in such a precarious condition that it was thought desirable to dispose of such town lands as remained unsold. The building yard, as it was called, in the rear of the house of the late David Turner, in Leyden Street, a portion of Training Green, the sheep- pasture, and sundry lots at the base of Burial Hill, were soon sold to the highest bidders. The sheep- pasture consisted of a tract of land about three miles square in the neighborhood of the Plympton guide- board, on the Carver road, extending northeasterly from a point a little northerly of the South Meadow road into what are now the towns of Plympton, Car- ver, and Kingston, granted in 1702 to certain indi- viduals for the keeping of sheep. The experiment finally proved a failure, and on the surrender of the land to the town it was sold, the final sale of about eight hundred aeres occurring in 1798. But the business of the town was in a flourishing condition, and in a few years its wealth far exceeded that of any previous period in its history. New opportunities for business enterprises were offering, which a new class of men, full of vigor and sagacity, were not slow to recognize and seize. Immediately before the war the navigation of the town consisted of about seventy fishermen of from thirty to thirty-five tons each, making several trips in the season, and about twenty merchant vessels engaged in trade with Jamaica, Spain, Martinique, Guadaloupe, and other places. At the close of the war few of these remained, but soon new and larger fishing vessels were built, foreign trade revived, and the embargo in 1808 saw Plymouth the owner of seventeen ships, sixteen brigs, and about forty schooners. Wharves and warehouses were re- built on a larger seale, and were constantly laden with sugar, molasses, salt, iron, and other imports, sharing with those of Boston, Salem, Newburyport, and Ports- mouth the foreign traffic of New England. Manu-

factures were also developed on a more liberal plan, and an atmosphere of comfort and wealth began to pervade a community which had long felt serious burdens, and had never before enjoyed the superflui- ties of luxurious living. Schools were improved, a library was formed, and in 1785 The Plymouth Journal, a weekly newspaper, was established, edited, and printed by Nathaniel Coverly. A market-house was constructed, and, as a crowning glory of enter- prise, an aqueduct was built to supply the inhabitants of the town with water. This aqueduct is believed to have been the first constructed in the United States. On the 15th of February, 1797, Joshua Thomas, William Davis, James Thaeher, William Goodwin, and Nathaniel Russell, and their associates, were in- corporated as the proprietors of the Plymouth Aque- duct. Persons in other towns in the commonwealth obtained acts of incorporation of prior date, but no aqueduct was so early constructed as that in Plym- outh. Luther Eames and others, of Boston, were incorporated Feb. 27, 1795; Lemuel Stewart and others, of Williamstown, Feb. 26, 1796; Theodore Sedgwick and others, of Stockbridge, June 15, 1796; John Bacon and others, of Richmond, Nov. 24, 1796 ; Calvin Whiting and others, of Dedham, June 15, 1796 ; Chandler Robbins and others, of the South Parish of Hallowell, Feb. 9, 1797 ; and Eli Stearns and others, of Lancaster, Feb. 14, 1797; but in all these towns the work of construction was more or less delayed.

The season of prosperity, however, which had so auspiciously opened, was destined to be of short du- ration. Foreign complications again arose, and the embargo of 1807 fell like a shock of paralysis on every seaport in the land. The prospects of trade had been so flattering that men of enterprise, like Thomas Jackson, James Warren, William Davis, Benjamin Barnes, Barnabas Hedge, George Watson, and Samuel and Joseph Bartlett, had invested in navigation to the extent of their means, and perhaps borrowed in anticipation of future earnings. Vessels of every class, with their topmasts housed and wear- ing what in the last days of the embargo were called Madison night-caps, lay useless and rotting at the wharves, crippling more or less every owner and in- volving some in bankruptcy, and producing a stagna- tion which was felt in every warehouse and factory and household. Exports ceased, the numerous fisli- houses along the shore were packed with fish decay- ing for want of a market, sailors were idle, and the wheels of industry no longer vexed the streams in their passage to the sca. After a protracted season of endurance, when forbearance had ccased to be a

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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.

virtue, the citizens of the town felt themselves called upon to add their influence to efforts initiated in Bos- ton to effect the removal of the terrible incubus rest- ing on every community on the seaboard. At a meeting of the town, held on the 25th of August, 180S. and called at the request of one hundred and sixty-three of its inhabitants, it was voted, on motion of William Davis, to choose a committee, consisting of Joshua Thomas, Abner Bartlett, William Davis, Zaccheus Bartlett, Barnabas Hedge, Jr., Thomas Jackson, Jr., and John Bishop, to draw up an ad- dress to the President, requesting an entire or partial suspension of the embargo, or, if such a suspension were beyond his power, a special session of Congress to act in the premises. The committee reported at the same meeting the following address, which was unanimously adopted by the town :

" To the President of the United States :

" The inhabitants of the town of Plymouth, in the Common- wealth of Massachusetts, in legal town meeting assembled, re- spectfully represent, that inheriting the principles of ancestors who combined the generous love of freedom with a due submis- sion to the laws and institutions of legitimate government, they bare acquiesced without remonstrance in all the measures of your administration, whatever opinion they may have enter- tained of their character and however distressing may have been their operation. But the long-protracted laws laying an embargo on the extensive navigation of the United States, and the unprecedented restrictive provisions contained in them, are so novel an experiment in the history of commerce, and is fraught with so numerous a train of political and moral evils, that they would hetray not merely a destitution of patriotism, but a want of proper regard for the constituted authorities of their country, did they not remonstrate against the further con- tinuance of the anti-commercial system, and express their ideas of its various tendencies in manly and decent language.

"The Inhabitants of this town deriving their subsistence altogether from commerce, and especially that laborious branch of it, the cod-fishery, proseented in Massachusetts from its earliest settlement with an enterprise and hardy industry lumi- nously displayed in your Excellency's report on the subject of the fisheries, from the entire inhibition of their exportation are involved in unexpected and unexampled embarrassments; with large quantities of fish perishing in their stores, without any stimulating inducement to industrious exertion, and having no resources hut those resulting from commercial employment, the prospect before them is melancholy in the extreme. That they can provide for themselves the comforte and conveniences of life without recurrence to distant conntries is abundantly refuted by the well-tried experience of their ancestors, who, guided by the hand of heaven to these shores, came as mere cultivators of the soil, but were impelled by injurious circumstances, in Epite of their usages and habite, to abandon their agricultural pursuits, and resort to the treasures of the ocean and the export of those treasures to distant countries for the means of support.

" While the dangers of traversing the Atlantic are diminished, and some of the accustomed avenues of trade are opened, as well by the convulsive struggles of the Spanish nation for the righta of self-government against the most wanton usurpation the world has ever witnessed, as by the relaxation of the order of the British Council in favor of that oppressed people, they candidly confess that their own sympathies are deeply excited

by their magnanimous struggles, and it will, in their opinion, tarnish the splendor of our own glorious revolution should the United States refuse to reciprocate those beneficial aids received in the progress of it from that gallant nation.

" Prohibiting laws that subject citizens to grievous privations and sufferings, the policy of which is at least questionable, and the temptation to the violation of which, from the nature of man, are almost irresistible, will gradually undermine the morals of society, and introduce a laxity of principle and contempt of the laws more to be deplored than even the useless waste of property. From these and other weighty considerations your memorialists pray the President wholly or partially to suspend the embargo laws, if his powers are competent to that object, and if not, to convene Congress at an early period, that an immediate repeal of them may be effected."

To this address the following reply from President Jefferson was promptly received, the original of which, written by his own hand, is preserved in Pilgrim Hall :

" To the inhabitants of the town of Plymouth in legal town meet- ing assembled :

" Your representation and request were received on the 8th inst., and have been considered with the attention due to every expression of the sentiments and feelings of so respectable a body of my fellow-citizens. No person has seen with more concern than myself the inconveniences brought on our country in general by the circumstances of the times in which we hap- pen to live,-times to which the bistory of nations presents no parallel. For years we have been looking as spectators on our brethren of Europe afflicted by all those evils which necessarily follow an abandonment of the moral rules which bind men and nations together. Connected with them in friendship and com- merce, we have happily so far kept aloof from their calamitous conflicts by a steady observance of justice towards all, by much forbearance and multiplied sacrifices. At length, however, all regard to the rights of others having been thrown aside, the belligerent powers have beset the highway of commercial in- tercourse with edicts which, taken together, expose our com- merce and marines, under almost every destination, a prey to their fleets and armies. Each party, indeed, would admit our commerce with themselves with the view of associating us in their war against the other; but we have wished war with neither. Under these circumstances were passed the laws of which you complain by those delegated to exercise the powers of legislation for you, with every sympathy of a common in- terest in exercising them faithfully. In reviewing these meas- ures, therefore, we should advert to the difficulties out of which a choice was of necessity to be made. To have submitted our rightful commerce to prohibitions and tributary exactions from others, would have been to surrender our independence ; to re- sist them by arms was war. Without consulting the state of things or the choice of the nation, the alternative preferred by tbe legislature of suspending a commerce placed under such un- exampled difficulties, besides saving to our citizens their prop- erty and our mariners to their country, has the peculiar advan- tage of giving time to the belligerent nations to reverse a conduct as contrary to their interests as it is to our rights.

" In the event of such peace or suspension of hostilities be- tween the helligerent powers of Europe, or of such change in their measures affecting natural commerce as may render that of the United States sufficiently safe in the judgment of the President, he is authorized to suspend the embargo. But no peace or suspension of hostilities, no change of measures af- fecting neutral commerce is known to have taken place. The

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orders of England and the decrees of France and Spain ox- isting at the date of these laws are still unrepealed as far as we know. In Spain, indeed, a contest for the government appears to have arisen, but of its course or prospects we have no in- formation on which prudence would undertake a hasty change in our policy, even were the authority of the Executive com- petent to such a decision.

" You desire that in this defect of power Congress may be specially convened. It is unnecessary to examine the evidence or the character of the facts which are supposed to dictate such a call, because you will be sensible on an attention to dates that the legal period of their meeting is as early as in this extensive country they could be fully convened by a special call.

"I should with great willingness have executed the wishes of the inhabitants of Plymouth had peace or a repeal of the obnoxious edicts or other changes produced the case in which alone the laws have given me that authority, and so many mo- tives of justice and interest lead to such changes that we ought continually to expect them. But while these edicts remain the legislature alone can prescribe the course to be pursued.

" THO. JEFFERSON.

"Sept. 10, 1808."

The sentiments of the above memorial to the President betray in the writer statesmanlike qualities, which the Legislature of later times sadly needs. Nothing is more true than that laws which do not represent the general sentiment of the community provoke violations, to which men from their very nature are irresistibly tempted, and gradually lead to a popular contempt for the law-making power, which is more dangerous than the evil sought to be reme- died. The embargo laws furnished no exception. The feeling against them was so strong that, like the revenue laws of to-day, which a large part of the community think it no sin to evade, their violation was only re- strained by force, and when successfully committed was universally applauded. In Plymouth there were some striking instances. One vessel loaded with fish for a foreign market at the time the laws went into operation, being under suspieion, was stripped of her rigging by government officers, and thus made, as it was thought, seeure against any breach of the enaet- ment. But the owners were more shrewd than the officers thought, and found ready hands to aid them in getting their vessel to sea. Capt. Samuel Doten, a man of peculiar courage and energy, selecting a dark and stormy night for his operations, after the town was quiet, with an active gang of men, stripped a vessel at the same wharf belonging to the same owners, fitted her sails and rigging to the dismantled schooner, and before daylight had made an offing in the bay. The same captain on another occasion, after night had set in, with a boat's crew sailed across the bay to Provincetown, and boarding a Plymouth vessel lying at anchor without officers or men, safe, as it was thought, under the eye of a gunboat commanded by Capt. Thomas Nicholson, of Plymouth, put quietly

out to sea, without being missed from her anchorage until outside of Wood-end, when a long parting shot was the only protest which could be made against the bold undertaking.

Affairs continued to grow worse, the embargo be- came more aggravated, and at a meeting of the town held Jan. 26, 1809, Joshua Thomas offered the fol- lowing resolve :

" At a meeting of the town of Plymouth, legally assembled the 26th of January, 1809, after mature deliberation, resolved that the inhabitants of this town for the last eight years have witnessed a disastrous and anti-commercial system of policy in the administration of national affairs, which, by necessary gra- dation has reached so awful a crisis that, without some imme- diate radical change in this system, the United States will pre- sent the melancholy spectacle of a government without energy and a community without morals, and, as is always incident to so marked a state of the body politic, recourse must be had to military topics, which, instead of operating as restrictions, will precipitate its dissolution.

"That, early after the commencement of the present inaus- picious administration, open hostilities were proclaimed against the enlightened principles and measures that, with a rapidity unknown in the annals of republics, had raised the United States to an unrivalled height of prosperity and happiness, and a relentless persecution was waged against its citizens and pa- triots who had expended their blood and treasure in the estab- lishment of our independence, because they support the prin- ciples and measures thus sanctioned by experience.

"That, as well to depress foreign commerce as to answer certain favorite political purposes, the whole internal revenue, embracing chicfly articles of luxury, was improvidently abol- ished, and as a substituto additional duties were imposed upon articles of importation that, in large commercial cities and towns, among the more indigeut class of citizens, constitute the necessarics of life.

"That, when our extensive navigation was deriving security from our infant navy, which, rising rapidly to respectability, promised forther protection from insult and depredation, this navy was suddenly consigned to destruction, on the miserable pretext of economical reform and upon the visionary idea that the empire of reason would be established among pirates and freebooters, whilo millions have been lavished in tho purchase of a wild and useless wasto of territory from an overgrown power, whose title to it was founded in violence and usurpation. That, by the partial and invidious management of our extornal relations, by a sorvilo compliance with the views of oue bellig- erent, whose restloss ambition is grasping at the subjugation of the civilized world, and by the unnecessary provocations offered to another magnanimously contending for its existonce and the emancipation of the oppressed, our national peace is endangered and our national dignity and good faith sacrificed on the altar of duplicity. That by tho intentional suppression of material parts of the diplomatic correspondence with the belligerent powers in Europe, against whom we havo grounds of complaint, the real disposition of these powers towards the United States has been withheld from the people, in consequence of which their passions and resentments have been unjustifiably influ- enced against the only belligerent possessing any formidable means of annoyance. And though in n just enuse wo will not shrink from war with the most powerful nation, we hesitate not to say that it would bo-madness wantonly to provoke hostilitios with the British.

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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.

many and too painful to enumerate, the chilling hand of death has at length been laid on all our foreign and on almost all our domestic commerce, and the hardy and industrious men inhab- iting an extensive sea-coast are called upon to endure with pa- tience the miseries of starvation in the futile hope of starving one of the belligerents into nnimportant conecssious. That. to carry into complete effect the multiplied muisnamed embargo laws, acknowledged arbitrary provisions are introduced into the laws that outrage the most sacred rights and immunities secured to us hy the constitution, hy which provisions the innocent are implicated with the guilty. Unreasonable and excessive bonds are required and excessive fines imposed. The President of the United States is vested with the power of legislation, with a stan ling army under his control and under the control also of officers of his ereation, who are authorized, on pretended sus- picions, without warrant from the civil magistrate. to violate and search our dwellings, and in the strong and emphatic lan- guage of the late celebratel Mr. Otis, in his argument against write of assistance, a much less pernicious engine of oppression, they can go from house to house exercising their petty tyranny, till the sound of the last trump shall excite in their breasts dif- ferent emotions. That hy a hase surrender of their invaluable blessings and rights, among which are the indefeasible rights of acquiring and alienating property, and using and possessing it conformahly to onr inclinations and wishes and for the special security of which the sacred compact was formed, we shall prore onrselves nnworthy of the great and glorious ancestors from whom we boast onr descent, and who, to avoid less aggra- rated evils than are inflicted upon us, abandoned their native land, and, encountering innumerable evils, began a settlement in this place.

"That we feel a high sense of gratitude for the nohle stand and manly display of eloquence exhibited by the lion. Messrs. Pickering and Lloyd in the Senate of the United States, and by the Hon. Mr. Quincy and his colleagues of the minority in the Honse of Representatives, and from all those of the minority in both houses of Congress who have lifted their voices and their hande against the nnconstitutional invasion of our rights ; and as their patriotic efforts have heen unavailing, we will, as the last resort, petition onr State Legislature to rescue us from im- pending ruin.

" And as we have the fullest confidence in their virtues, for- titude, and wisdom, we pledge ourselves to support the measures derised to attain this object to the utmost of our power."

The selectmen were appointed a committee to draft a petition to the Legislature, and the following re- solve was also adopted :

" Rezolred, That since the annihilation of our commerce, and the consegnent failure of onr revenne, the unnecessary employ- ment, at exorbitant wages, of a horde of spies, patrols, and in- formere to watch our empty dismantled ships, is a waste of public money and mnet increase the necessity of resorting to the bard-earned savings of the laborers, hu-bandmen, me- ebanier, and sailors."

On the same day the selectmen, consisting of Wil- liam Davis, John Bishop, Joseph Bartlett, and John Paty, reported the following petition, which was adopted :

"To the Honorable the Senate and the Honorable the House. of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts :

never considered it as containing more ample powers than were necessary to provide for the common defense and other import- ant objects for which it was framed, neither have they, like other zealous citizens, received it in the light of a foreign gov- ernment, hostile to the interests of the undivided States, but though they have endeavored to entertain correct ideas of the Constitution and the powers vested in it, they never consented to give the general government power, the exercise of which would contravene a single article in the Declaration of Rights that makes a part of the Constitution of this Commonwealth, because the power to infringe these essential rights wonld render the general government a very different thing from what it was designed to be, viz., a government of men and not of laws. They contemplate, however, that the Legislatures of the several States would keep a vigilant eye on the measures of the general government, and would interfere whenever unwarrant- able measures were taken, or ambitious encroachments muade on the rights of the citizens.

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History of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 34

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & co. Number of Pages: 1706

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & co.
Number of Pages: 1706