USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 16
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John Goddard, son of the Wagon-Master General, gradu- ated from Harvard in 1777, studied medicine, but determined on the apothecary's trade rather than the practice of his pro- fession. Since it was impossible at the time for him to purchase his stock in England, he determined to go to Spain for that pur- pose. He took passage as surgeon on an armed ship, which was captured by the British, and he with the ship's officers was sent to a prison ship in the West Indies.
Conditions were incredibly bad. Food was so inadequate that, Goddard said, he had seen men fighting over a rat. He suffered severely from fever, and grew so emaciated that, when he had partially recovered, he escaped through a porthole and swam to a ship bound for his home-land. Close to its destina- tion, this vessel was captured, and Goddard was returned to the prison from which he had just escaped. He again suf-
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fered from fever, again escaped, and finally made his way back to Brookline.
It is probable that his work as apothecary would have been of considerable value to the Continentals, and though he was not in military service, it is fair to regard him as engaged in a patriotic cause. However, he had put in a lot of time in a most unpleasant way - and he had not got the stock of drugs for which he set out.
THE RANK AND FILE
The nineteenth of April had brought about a spontaneous rush to arms in which the entire male population of Brookline took part. Their homes were endangered, and defense was their first duty.
After the enemy had been driven into Boston, however, and the threat was a little less immediate, most of the husbandmen returned to their farming. Captain White's Brookline company of militia remained on active duty for three weeks, and there were doubtless many voluntary enlistments in the Continental forces during the early months of the war. This is apparent, both from the fact that means of raising soldiers are not dis- cussed in the town meeting until the last day of January, 1776, and from the resolution of December 12, 1775, which excused all Brookline soldiers from the payment of poll taxes.
On January 31 an inducement of forty shillings was offered to every man who would enlist to reinforce the Continental Army for two months. Payment was to be made 'upon his producting a Certifycate that he has Joined the army and passed muster, and also, that he is provided with a Good fire arm, Blanket, Bayonet and Cartridge Box.' A committee, comprising Colonel Aspinwall, Captain Timothy Corey, and Samuel Craft, was appointed to endeavor to get ten enlist- ments on these terms, and if that many inhabitants of Brookline were unwilling to seize the opportunity, the committee was authorized 'to agree with any other persons on the Easiest Terms they Can, not to Exceed the allowance of forty Shillings Each man.'
On May 20, 1776, the Brookline town meeting anticipated by some six weeks the action that was to be taken in Phila- delphia on July 4. It was
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Voted to advise the Person, Chosen to Represent this Town in the next General Court, that if the Hon. Congress Should, for the Safety of the American Colonies, Declare them Inde- pendent of the Kingdom of Great Briton, that we Sd Inhab- itants will Solemnly Engage with our Lives and fortune to Support them in the measure.
Congress having taken that step, the inhabitants of Brook- line on July 9 offered to add £6-6-8 to the bounty of seven pounds granted by the General Court, to every able-bodied man who would enlist for Canadian service. A committee was appointed to see what men could be raised, and appar- ently met with little encouragement, for at the adjournment of the meeting on July 11 it was voted to add enough to the sum first offered, to make it up to fifty dollars for each man.
Enthusiasm for service in Canada remained low. It was an enterprise too far removed from the immediate interests of the farmers of Brookline to appeal to them. Consequently a further adjournment of the meeting just mentioned, on July 18, voted an additional five pounds bounty per man, and also provided 'that the Men Called for from this Town be Draughted with Liberty to take the Bounty or pay the Fine.'
A committee was appointed on August 19 to help raise three men by any method which their discretion might suggest. On September 23 the town meeting voted to raise money to hire the quota of men Brookline had been directed to provide, and decided to offer four pounds a month in addition to the Conti- nental pay. When the next quota was demanded, the town offered, on November 26, three pounds per month of extra pay, and provided that if this did not induce sufficient voluntary enlistments, the men should be drafted.
MOUNTING BOUNTIES
Brookline was still suffering from what might be called quota trouble when a meeting held February 18, 1777, offered twenty- four pounds legal money as a bounty for enlistments, for three years or the duration of the war. On May 26 it was voted to reimburse Captain Thomas White in the sum of £15-15-o for bounty payments advanced by him to three men, 'namely James Woods, Samuel Marian, and Gershon Hide, who enlisted
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for this Town's Quota of Militia, and lately marched to the Aid of Rhode Island State.' Efforts to collect for services vol- untarily rendered met with less success, however, for 'Upon the Question, whether this Town will allow and pay a Gratu- ity to John Spear, Caleb Gardner, Silas Winchester & William Davis, who enlisted without Bounty and continued in the Army untill the disbanding thereof in December last, voted in the negative.'
The twenty-four pound bounty authorized on February 18 resulted in the enlistment of sixteen men by Colonel James Wesson, who received from the town treasurer the sum of £384 for Jeremiah Clark, George Dunlap, Elijah Mills, Charles Winchester, Lambert Smith, Ezekiel Crane, Henry Tucker, Christopher Higby, Hugh McKoron, Oliver Yan, John Burton, John Sinclair, John Hambleton, Nathaniel Rose, John Butler, and Stephen Eldridge.
There was a call for eight men to reinforce the Northern Army until the end of November, 1777, and to raise these a committee was appointed, August 15, with authority to make whatever bounty promises they thought reasonable and proper. Three days later the committee reported that they had enlisted John McIlvaine, William Davis, John Spear, Benjamin Win- chester, John White, Joseph Caswall, William McIlvaine, and Joseph Brown. If Joseph Brown could not go, Silas Win- chester was willing. And the committee had promised them thirty pounds bounty apiece. The meeting was apparently well pleased, for they voted an extra fifteen pounds to pro- vide the men with canteens and pay their subsistence of two pence a mile for traveling to the army.
On February 12, 1778, three more men were required for three months' duty in Boston, and Lieutenant Caleb Craft, Lieutenant Abram Jackson, and Stephen Sharp were appointed a committee to hire them. At the same time this was made a standing committee to attend to all such matters in the future, and to be paid for the work. Something, however, must have happened to it very shortly, because the meeting of March 2 named Dr. William Aspinwall, Joshua Boylston, Eleazer Baker, Robert Sharp, and Joshua Winship for the same pur- pose. The two military men on the original committee may
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have been called on other duties, or they may have exposed themselves to some criticism, especially Lieutenant Craft, on account of repeated claims presented to the town for 'extra military Service.'
Not until June 30, 1779, did the town meeting find it neces- sary to discuss again the matter of raising men. Then a new committee was appointed, and the selectmen directed to raise whatever money the committee should find necessary to hire the quota then demanded. On October 11 still another com- mittee was named to enlist 'the number of men the Town is now Call'd upon to Raise to Reinforce the Continental Army for three months.'
By July 13, 1780, it was found necessary to resort again to the threat of a draft. The town
Voted that Capt. White be desired to Issue his Warrant to warn the Training Band and alarm list to meet to Morrow afternoon at five a Clock in this place in order to raise the Remainder of the Town's Quota of Men by draft if they cannot be Raised any other way be fore that time and that Notice be given that such persons as shall not attend the meeting be the first Drafted.
The following day at the adjourned meeting steps were taken to borrow money for hiring men, and it was
Voted that the Town will not give more than fifteen Hun- dred pounds pr. Man for the Militia which are Call'd for three months provided the Town holds the State pay, and thirteen hundred Pounds if the Soldiers holds the States Pay. and that the Committee do not give that sum after next tuesday, and that Mr. Gulliver Winchester, Deac'n Gardner, and Doct'r Aspinwall be a Committee to hire Sd men in room of the former Committee for that purpose who Decline to Serve in that office.
STANDING OF 'HARD MONEY'
The purchasing power of the fifteen hundred pounds was probably no more- and possibly less - than that of the fifty- dollar bounty which had been offered some four years earlier. An uncontrolled paper currency had by this time nearly wrecked the economic system of Massachusetts and the nation;
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and the same town meeting that offered a bounty of fifteen hundred pounds extended formal thanks to Miss Mary Boylston for three silver dollars which she gave to encourage enlistments.
A meeting on December 26, 1780, voted to raise seven hun- dred and fifty pounds in silver money, or its paper equivalent, to be used in engaging soldiers or for other purposes which might be approved. On the following fourth of January every inhabitant was promised four dollars for each soldier he might be able to hire to enlist as part of Brookline's quota, for three years or the duration of the war. Such soldiers were to receive enough from the town to make their total pay amount to six pounds per month, and were to be given sixty dollars in ad- vance. This offer was reconsidered on March 14, and the com- mittee were directed to dicker with each man and make as good terms as they could.
During the months that followed, there were frequent ap- propriations for the purchase of the town's quota of beef for the Continental Army. At one time it was twenty-five thousand pounds; again it was 'Six Hundred Hard Dollars.'
On July 17, 1781, eight more men were needed for service in Rhode Island and at West Point. For this purpose the town was divided into eight classes, and each class was required to procure one man and pay him. Assessments were to be made within the several classes to raise the necessary money; no class was permitted to hire a man out of another class before a fixed date, unless the other class had already hired its man; and the highest price given for any of the men was to be the max- imum penalty for failure to provide a man, if the class in ques- tion had exercised due diligence in trying to fulfill their obliga- tion. This method of classifying the inhabitants seems to have been formulated in an order of the General Court, for reference is made on July 8, 1782, to a resolution of that sort passed by the General Court on March I, requiring five additional three- year men from Brookline.
Five men were needed for service at Nantasket in the fall of that year, and a committee was appointed to hire them 'on the most reasonable terms they can,' with a promise that the town would relieve them in six weeks if they desired it. At the same time the selectmen were promised indemnification from
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any charges to which they might have exposed themselves by failing to draft the men under the terms of the militia law.
This concludes the account of the vexatious problem of pro- viding man-power from an agricultural community where nearly every man feels a duty to be active on the land, for the prosecution of a war at a distance. After the British left Bos- ton, Brookline men were for the most part anxious to get back to their farming. That the town accomplished so much, and bore the heavy burden of taxation so courageously, is evidence of devotion to the cause. And a costly cause it was, in more ways than one.
PROBLEMS OF FINANCE
Had the country been on a sound fiscal basis, the exigencies of war would nevertheless have boosted living costs. As things were, prices seemed to know no limits. Beef that had cost 4d. a pound in 1777 went to 8s. 9d. in 1780, or more than forty times as much. Corn rose from 4s. to £8 a bushel, and wool from 3s. to £3 a pound. The ratio between paper and hard money showed a growing disparity. One Brookline town meeting estimated $75 of currency as the equivalent of one dollar in silver, and as late as 1790 old Continental dollars were sold at 2s. 9d. a hundred.
Repeated unsuccessful efforts were made to fix prices and prevent the practice of selling for less in silver and gold than in paper money. An act of January 25, 1777, set prices for more than fifty staples: 'Good well fatted grass-fed beef at 3d. a lb. and stall-fed beef at 4d. a lb. and beef of inferior quality in equal proportion'; 'good merchantable imported salt, at Iosh. a bushel, salt manufactured from sea water within the state at 12sh. a bushel.' In 1779 a convention at Concord en- deavored to regulate inn-keepers' charges, and allowances were fixed for an 'extra good dinner, £1; common, 12sh .; best supper and breakfast, 15sh .; common, 12sh .; West India flip, 15sh. per mug.'
In Brookline there were three highly visible indicators of the inflation. One was the rising scale of bounty payments to soldiers, which has been described above. There were also the increasing levies for the operation of the town government,
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and annual special provisions for the minister who, as almost the only member of the salaried class, was exposed to excep- tional hardship by the mounting prices of commodities.
Thus, on November 10, 1777, the town voted to 'make an Allowance to the rev'd Joseph Jackson their Minister, for the Current year in consideration of the very high prices of the necessarys of Life,' and a committee appointed to figure out what the allowance ought to be, recommended payment of £206-13-4 to make Mr. Jackson's salary up to £300. The next year enough was voted, 'in addition to his settled Sallary,' to bring the total to £600; and in 1779 the amount was £1500.
The meeting of June 5, 1780, found that the salary business had got entirely out of hand. A committee reported their recommendation that the minister
be paid his Salary, in money equal to Produce at the Prices hereafter mentioned, that is, Indian Corn at four Shillings pr. Bushel, English Hay at four Shillings pr. Hundred Wt., good Beef and mutton at four pence pr. pound, and Butter at ten pence pr. pound.
And that a Committee be Chosen to Examine into the prices of the above mentioned articles and report to the Town Treasurer once a month what Sum ought to be paid to make it equal to the aforementioned prices; and that the Treasurer be Desired to make payment of such sums as Mr. Jackson has not Rec'd by way of the Box Each month During the year - and that Mr. Jackson be repaid Such sums as he has been obliged to Expend out of his own Estate in the time pas'd.
Appropriations 'to Defray the Charges of the Town the cur- rent year' amounted to £200 in 1773, and £150 in 1775. But the sum mounted to £550 in 1776, £700 in 1777, £2500 in 1778, and £4635 in 1779. In 1780 money was scarcely more than so much paper, and tax levies were in large sums. Thus, the meeting of June 5 voted a levy of £18,529 to be collected by the first of September; the meeting of July 3 voted another levy of £18,373 to be collected by the fifteenth of the same month; and on September 29 a third levy, amounting to £18,841, was ordered 'for the Purpose of Purchasing Supplys for the Army.' The precise use to which the two earlier levies
SOUTH HUNTINGTON AVENUES IN 1855
BROOKLINE FROM THE CORNER OF THE PRESENT HUNTINGTON AND
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were to be applied does not appear, but they presumably had some connection with the prosecution of the war. However, the cost of town government had increased twenty to thirty times above normal, unless account is taken of the currency inflation.
FRAMING A GOVERNMENT
Before, during and after the war, the inhabitants of Brook- line were alert to their responsibilities as citizens of Massachu- setts and of the nation. They participated in repeated confer- ences and congresses, and the town meeting frequently labored with explicit instructions to the delegates.
Captain Benjamin White had attended the assembly at Salem in 1774, which became a Provincial Congress, and he was chosen the town's representative to the Provincial Con- gress at Watertown on May 31, 1775. John Goddard was elected to the General Assembly in 1776, and Elhanan Win- chester in 1777. At the meeting of May 26 that year there was discussion of the recommendation of the Assembly that the towns instruct their representatives to join with the Council to draw up a new constitution. The inhabitants of Brookline felt that this was not a proper function for such a body, and accordingly 'Voted that they do not give their Assent that the Representatives and Councill should form a Constitution but Recommend that a Convention should be appointed by the People for that express Purpose, and that only, as soon as practicable.'
The General Court managed, however, to get the consent of a majority of the towns, resolved itself into a constitutional convention on June 17, 1777, and appointed a committee to draft a constitution. The report of this committee was re- ceived in December, discussed by the House and Council in convention during January and February, and finally ap- proved on February 28, 1778. It was then submitted to the people, with the provision that a two-thirds majority must favor the document to give it effect.
This was the first American state constitution to be formally offered for popular approval, and it encountered a great deal of opposition. The Brookline town meeting appointed a com-
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mittee, comprising Major William Thompson, Nehemiah Davis, and Isaac Child to meet with similar committees from other towns at Dedham on April 28, 1778, and confer as to the suitability of 'the Form of Government lately offered to the People of this State for their approbation or disapprobation.'
Their report seems to have been insufficient to satisfy the inhabitants, however, for the proposed constitution was read and discussed in the town meeting of May 21, 1778, which
Voted that the same is not calculated and adapted, to pro- mote and secure in the best manner attainable, the True and lasting Happiness and Freedom of the People of this State; that it is essential to a Constitution designed for that most important and desirable End, that a full and express declaration of the Rights of the People, be made a part thereof, and that the Powers of Rulers Should be accurately defined and properly Limited; that as the Form Proposed is almost totally deficient in those respects and imperfect and intricate in many parts, it ought therefore to be rejected, and this Meeting consisting of forty five voters do unani- mously and absolutely reject the same.
In phraseology this resolution of rejection is curiously simi- lar to the 'Essex Result,' a pamphlet written by Theophilus Parsons, then an able young lawyer of Newburyport, and later Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Parsons enumerated eighteen specific objections to the constitution, among them the omission of a bill of rights, to which the Brookline resolution called attention. His pamphlet had been adopted by a convention of Essex County towns which met during the first fortnight of May, 1778, in Ipswich, and the ar- guments contained in it gained wide circulation throughout the state.
The constitution was rejected by a total vote of 9972 to 2083, as much a consequence of the feeling that such an instrument ought to be drawn up by a convention specifically chosen for the purpose, as of the actual defects of the document sub- mitted. The General Court therefore took steps the following spring to assemble a constitutional convention, and 312 repre- sentatives from the towns met September 1, 1779. The task of drafting a constitution was delegated to Samuel and John
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Adams and James Bowdoin. With John Adams doing most of the work, the draft was submitted to the convention on October 28, 1779, and on March 2, 1780, the convention had it ready, in printed form, for submission to the people.
In Brookline this new 'form of Government' was discussed at a meeting on May 15 and 16. The constitution was first read through, and then minutely dissected. As a whole it proved acceptable, though there were a few reservations. The religious complexion of the town was emphasized by the recommendation of 'Dealing [i.e., deleting] the word Christian and putting in Protestant.' An amendment was proposed which would avoid fixing permanent salaries during the period of inflation, since they would have to be very high, and there was no provision for their later reduction. And a minor change was sought in the matter of military obligations.
Altogether Brookline approved. So did the rest of the towns. Although, out of 363,000 inhabitants of the state, only 16,000 voted on the matter, the requisite majority of those voting was found, and the Constitution was duly ratified in the form in which it had been submitted. Brookline's cautious suggestions found no place in it.
But the town had played its full, honorable part in the war, and had discharged, with the help of able and conscientious representatives, its obligation to co-operate in setting up a new government. When the fighting came to an end, the men of Brookline returned to the farms which most of them had been so reluctant to leave, and the town meeting settled down to the relatively routine business of local administration.
RETAINING THE GAINS
However, one more resort to arms was necessary when, in the War of 1812, those liberties were threatened which the Revolution had won. The circumstances of that war bring it properly under the heading of this chapter, for it was in truth a part of the struggle for independence which, achieved in 1781, had to be reasserted some three decades later.
The War of 1812 was not popular in Massachusetts, where its threat was not greatly felt, and where interest in operations along the Canadian border to the westward was slight. Inter-
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ference with commerce was deeply resented, and a minimum of encouragement was offered to the successful prosecution of the war, which was of primary concern to frontiersmen in the west, some of whom had illusions of appropriating vast Cana- dian territories.
The legislature expressed a strong disapproval of any mili- tary operations not immediately connected with home de- fense, and Governor Strong, on June 26, 1812, proclaimed a public fast in acknowledgment of the declaration of war. Some town meetings were emphatic in stating that they were interested only in the matter of their own defense. Massachu- setts repudiated the Republican congressmen who had voted for the war, and turned more strongly Federalist than ever before.
The state was for peace and prosperity, and the merchant class was quite incapable of getting worked up over a doubtful issue of national honor when disruption of business must be part of the price. Yet Henry Adams says: 'That the war was as just and necessary as any war ever waged seemed so evident to Americans of another generation that only with an effort could modern readers grasp the reasons for the bitter opposition of large and respectable communities which left the govern- ment bankrupt and nearly severed the Union.'
Benjamin Goddard, a son of John Goddard of Revolution- ary fame, was engaged with his brother Nathaniel in com- merce. His diary through the years of war reflects the Fed- eralist attitude. An entry of January 11, 1812, severely criti- cizes Governor Gerry for an anti-British speech, and on Jan- uary 21 he discusses a newspaper reply to it.
The answer to the speech is in some degree an echo to it, representing the atrocious conduct of the British in captur- ing the American Property and retaining her sailors, etc., to the most exaggerated extreme and far beyond the truth, not even mentioning the conduct of the French although they know their depredations exceed the former without proportion. All this evidently for the purpose of raising and continuing a prejudice against the British nation, not because this na- tion is more unfriendly than France, but for the purpose of continuing the prejudices of the People against England.
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