USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Springfield, 1636-1886 : history of town and city, including an account of the quarter-millennial celebration at Springfield, Mass., May 25 and 26, 1886 > Part 39
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55
The rumor that Royal B. Hinman, of Hartford, was to succeed Major Ingersoll as paymaster and military storekeeper produced loud protests, not only as an injustice to the major, but because it was too evidently a move for the spoils. A loco foco meeting was held at
455
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
Union Hall to choose delegates for the State convention, and the Tyler men carried the day. Chester W. Chapin presided, and Mr. Munn, the leader of the administration faction, had little trouble in subduing the Van Burenites.
James Cristy, the Cabotville postmaster, was at this time removed without cause, to make a place for A. W. Stockwell. a loco foco law- yer and the editor of the Cabotville " Chronicle." Stockwell was de- fendant in a libel suit brought by T. D. Bonner, editor of a temperance paper at Stockbridge. Even the democrats were displeased at the removal of Cristy, and remonstrances went to Washington from both parties. The following week the axe fell at the Centre, Colonel War- riner, the postmaster, being superseded by Col. Harvey Chapin. The former had held the position seventeen months, greatly to the satis- faction of the public. These changes, ordered by an " accident Presi- dent," by which the men who had elected him were turned into the streets, and loco foco men put in, greatly embittered the politics of that day. Locally, the "Post " had become a Van Buren organ, and the "Democrat" had weekly bouts with the " Post" over the issues inside the party lines. The attempt of the postmaster- general to compel all newspapers to be delivered by mail, and not by express or private messenger, did not mitigate the austerities of politics.
Mr. Calhoun was nominated for State senator by the whigs, but he declined, and George Bliss was substituted. The election was a draw, and was thrown into the Legislature, and Joseph M. Forward declared elected over Bliss.
On New Year's day, 1844, the local district voted the sixth time for congressman, and the whigs tried to elect Osmyn Baker, of Amherst, while Chester W. Chapin was still pushed in the interests of a bankrupt law, an anti-United-States bank, anti-high tariff, and always a simon-pure democracy. Baker ran in on a very narrow margin. The loco focos carried their county commissioners' ticket, on which was Willis Phelps, in 1844. Phelps was made chairman of the
456
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
Board. He was anti-Van Buren, however, and many of the demo- crats were disappointed. Charles Howard, chairman of the select- men, was summoned (May, 1844) by the commissioners to explain why no licenses were granted to innholders, and he replied that the town had so instructed. The commissioners then decided also not to grant " approbations " to sell liquor. Howard himself believed in a limited license system, but the rest of the selectmen objected. There had been a succession of exciting town-meetings over this issue. The majority " not to approbate " was finally three hundred and eighty-eight ; so that the temperance wave had swept everything before it. A citizens' committee of fifty was appointed to prosecute violators of the excise law.
The democrats had a rousing ratification meeting of the Baltimore nomination of James K. Polk at the town-hall in June, 1844. John Mills presided, and Dr. Champion headed the list of vice-presidents. Wells Lathrop, the Baltimore delegate, told how the nomination was brought about, and E. D. Beach introduced the resolutions. A few days later the whigs assembled in the same place, with George Ashmun in the chair and Mr. Vose one of the principal speakers, and ratified the Clay and Frelinghuysen ticket with no less enthu- siasm. Mr. Ashmun rebuked the democrats for truckling to the slave power and the Texas party in making up the nominations at Baltimore. So the famous campaign of 1844 was inaugurated in these parts.
The Senate had no notion of swallowing the postmaster nomina- tions. In June both Dr. Elijah Ashley and Ethan A. Clary, subse- quently nominated, were rejected. Then Col. Galen Ames was nominated and confirmed. He was removed, however, and Col. Harvey Chapin confirmed. Henry Stearns, who had been appointed by Levi Lincoln inspector of the Boston Custom-house, was removed in July, 1844, for political reasons.
The great whig demonstration of western Massachusetts took place the first week in August, 1844, at Springfield. Round Hill was
457
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
transformed into a camp-ground of delegations from a hundred towns, and it was said that no less than twenty thousand people were in sight from the canvas-covered grand stand when the eloquent George Ashmun sounded the whig bugle, and Robert C. Winthrop, Rufus Choate, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, Daniel P. Tyler, William E. Robinson, Joseph Hoxie, and others marshalled the whig forces in telling addresses. Springfield probably had never witnessed such a day before.
The democrats responded in a mass meeting at Cabotville the next week ; A. W. Stockweil, Arthur McArthur, and others woke the echoes, and party feeling ran high. A series of meetings was held in the town-hall, and heated debates conducted between David L. Child and George Bradburn on the question whether the local aboli- tionists should follow Child's advice and support Clay.
The result of the elections was locally close. Polk carried Hamp- den county, and so did George Bancroft, who ran against Briggs for governor. But Springfield went whig in both cases. George Ashmun made a fine showing, he scoring a plurality of five hundred and more against Chester W. Chapin and others for congressman. Edmund Freeman, whig, was elected to the Legislature ; but there were four vacancies. Chester W. Chapin was subsequently elected. There was no election in the State Senate contest, - J. Abbott and Charles Stearns, whigs, and Forward and Beach, democrats. The Legislature elected Abbott and Stearns.
The loco focos had held the town offices since 1841, and the whigs now made an assault upon them in good earnest. The town meeting of April, 1845, resulted in the choice of William Dwight as moderator, and Austin Chapin, Jr., Allen Bangs, Henry Morris, Titus Amadon, and Adolphus G. Parker, all whigs, were elected selectmen. The selectmen were again instructed not to "approbate" any one to sell liquor. A curious episode in party feeling was re- ported at this time in West Springfield, when about one hundred and forty men and women signed a paper pledging themselves to do all
458
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
their mailing business at the Springfield post-office, on account of the appointment of an objectionable postmaster.
In 1846 came the exciting debates in Congress over Mr. Webster's political status and personal character, and our brilliant George Ashmun was the most potent champion against the attack of C. J. Ingersoll. George Ashmun also made a memorable speech on the Mexican War in August, 1846. William B. Calhoun was elected as an anti-war whig State senator in November, 1846. His associate from Hampden failed, but was elected by the Legislature. This was the first time in nine years that a whig senator had been elected by the people, and Mr. Calhoun enjoyed his victory. Springfield's representatives were all whigs, - Henry Morris, Walter Warriner, George Dwight, Timothy M. Carter, and Alfred White.
George Ashmun presided over the whig State convention at Worcester in 1847, when Mr. Webster declared, amid tremendous ap- plause, " I never have, I never shall, I never will vote for any further annexation to this country with a slave representation upon it or in it." George N. Briggs was again nominated, and William B. Calhoun was soon after again running for the State Senate. In the winter of 1848 William Dwight, one of Springfield's representatives in the Legisla- ture, made a notable speech on the Mexican War and slavery, in which he said, "If you summon Massachusetts to conquest, to drive away freemen and put slaves in their places : if you summon her to fight under the black flag of slavery with conquest as her motto, - her heart fails her, and her arms are palsied."
George Ashmun attended the whig Philadelphia convention in 1848, and vainly tried to prevent General Taylor's nomination by working for Webster. Ile submitted with the better grace because the whigs of the North refused to meet the South by uniting their forces upon one man. The whigs of this section were not so ready to support a general for President, even upon a whig platform. It was the sentiment that called together the anti-Taylor convention at Worcester, in June, in accordance with a call signed by Charles
459
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, E. Rockwood Hoar, Francis W. Bird, and others. Allen Bangs, of this town, was on the State committee appointed by the convention. At a mass convention of the Sixth Congressional District, at Northampton, to continue the anti- Taylor movement by sending delegates to Buffalo, some fifty Spring- field citizens were present, mainly of the abolitionist stripe. John Mills, who had come out for anti-slavery measures, headed the delegation.
The whig State convention was held in September, 1848, at Worcester, George Bliss, John Howard, and Mr. Vose figuring in the proceedings. In October, Charles Sumner advocated Martin Van Buren's election as an anti-slavery candidate. Ashmun was returned to Congress and Briggs reelected governor, and the whigs were in clover.
The county commissioners of 1847 granted thirty-six liquor licenses for Springfield, and as Hampden county was the only one in the State with licensed bars, there was much talk. Possibly this was why the various orders of temperance held their national festival in Springfield in that year, which was followed a few weeks later by lectures by John B. Gough.
The body of John Quincy Adams arrived in Springfield in the after- noon of March 9, 1848 ; all places of business were closed and many buildings draped. Minute guns were fired when the procession passed down Main street, and all the bells were tolled. The military companies, both local and from surrounding towns, were under the command of Colonel Shurtleff, father of Judge W. S. Shurtleff, fol- lowed by the congressional and legislative committees, members of the bar, and the clergy, fire department, armorers, and many others. The remains were placed in the broad aisle of the First Church, a funeral car having been built for it by David Smith. The congres- sional committees stopped at the Union House.
The frequent visits of Daniel Webster to Springfield were probably due in part to the firm friendship subsisting between him and Ashmun Morris, and several other men of prominence here.
460
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
George Ashmun was a man whose companionship was profitable. The town was only too willing to honor him politically. He had been, as we have related, reëlected to the Legislature in 1835 and 1836. He went to the State Senate in 1838 and 1839, and returned to the House in 1841, when he became speaker. If he had given his later years to his memoirs, his incisive style, wide acquaintance, and inside knowledge of State affairs, he would have contributed to the making of a memorable volume of political and social literature. Mr. Ashmun and Daniel Webster had together faced the Southern spirit of aggression, and it was the most dramatic moment in Mr. Ashmun's life when the great Massachusetts senator showed the spirit of concession in reference to the Wilmot proviso as to slavery in Texas. How could it be otherwise with a man who said, as Ashmun did upon the floor of the House a little later (1850), in a debate on the state of the Union : "There is a spring higher up the hill which is the great fountain from which these bitter waters flow. I refer to the annexation of Texas. It was that stupendous scheme for the extension of slavery - conceived in iniquity and brought forth in sin - which fully roused the slumbering anti-slavery feelings of the Northern people "? But in the self-same speech, thus denouncing the conspiracy of slaveholders, Mr. Ashiun's regard for Daniel Webster, and his ntter fearlessness of political consequences, led him to defend the senator in these words: "Whether my difference with him [Webster] upon any of the points involved is not more seeming than substantial, I leave for others to decide ; but of one thing I am sure, that my tongue shall sooner cleave to the roof of my mouth than it shall join in the temporary clamor which malignity has raised against him. The insects of the hour may strive to fasten their slime-spots upon the fair disk of his fame, but they will disappear, transient as breath-stains upon a mirror. Envy, political hatred, sectional jealousy, and republican ingratitude may disturb the judgment of to-day, but the future is secure."
The friendship which the broadest statesmanship had challenged
461
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
and agreeable converse had ripened acted as the cloud that threw Mr. Ashmun into political retirement. Evidences of his power lin- gered, but the door of a statesmanlike career was closed upon him. Both Webster and Ashmun contributed to the disintegration of the whig party. The course of the latter reveals the impressionable phase of his character. Ashmun was forced into private life by an admiration for Webster's personality, which warped his private convictions. The late Samuel Bowles used to say in private conver- sation that the only man he ever felt dominate him was George Ash- mun, and that the way he measured Daniel Webster was to remein- ber that Ashmun himself had had the same feeling in the presence of the distinguished statesman. We may remark, incidentally, that Dr. Osgood was another chain linking Webster with Springfield. James Osgood, of Fryeburg, father of Dr. Osgood, was the register of deeds referred to in Mr. Webster's autobiography as having employed him. Dr. Osgood became well acquainted with Webster when the latter taught the Fryeburg Academy.
Those who only remember William B. Calhoun as the placid talker at temperance meetings or before agricultural societies, may be sur- prised to learn that he could fight, when put to it.
" Let us withdraw for consultation," said Mr. Calhoun, in the spring of 1851, when Town-Clerk Joseph Ingraham refused to qualify him, Governor Trask, and Theodore Stebbins as selectmen. They withdrew, and Mr. Calhoun said to the other two, " Now, I propose to tell Clerk Ingraham that if he refuse to swear us, we will go be- fore the justice of the peace and take the oath, and if then he refuse to act as our clerk, we will choose another." Clerk Ingraham gave way.
The complications that led to this conflict are matters of history. It was during the trying hours when the village of Springfield was expiring. There may not have been any connection between the con- vulsions of the village and its death, but it certainly did die in a spasm. Slavery was the thought of the hour. In February, 1851,
462
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
George Thompson, the English abolitionist, who had not been allowed to speak in Faneuil Hall, Boston, was announced to address the friends of freedom in Springfield. A series of meetings had been planned. The local hostility to Thompson was by no means grounded in an anti-slavery sentiment, but in a feeling that British wisdom was not needed to settle a domestic difficulty. The town was up in arms. Thompson was burned in effigy. Unsigned handbills were circulated, exclaiming, " Is it rational, is it reasonable, is it even plausible, that George Thompson, a member of that very British Parliament whose laws have placed the masses of the English and Irish people in a position of such want and oppression that they would gladly exchange their lot for the comparative freedom of the negro slave of the South, can be anght but a paid emissary and spy of England?" Hampden Hall was shut against Thompson ; Court square was made dismal with drums, fifes, bonfires, fire-crackers, and a howling mob. There was, however, a Thompson meeting held in a small hall on Sanford street the following night, and the Eng- lishman's departure from the village was a signal for more lurid disturbances. " But what a sad, what a pitful spectacle it was ! " ex- claimed Rev. George F. Simmons from his Third Congregational pulpit the following Sunday afternoon (Feb. 23, 1851). " What a mixture of the vulgar, the nonsensical, and the profane ! To begin with, those burlesque figures, with which some hopeful citizens saw fit to desecrate the Sabbath, to the scandal of the gathering congrega- tions, that they might insult a stranger and make Springfield a laugh- ing-stock ; for the rope that suspended them was round the neck of all of us, and we are still dangling in ridicule before the whole country."
The ugly feeling engendered by these troubles came to the sur- face at the spring elections. Eliphalet Trask had figured as a vice-president at the Thompson meeting, on Sanford street, and in spite of the hue-and-cry Mr. Trask was the only selectman chosen at the town-meeting, April 7, 1851. Two adjourned meetings were
463
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
held, accompanied by the most intense excitement, before the angry elements could come to an agreement as to the election of the rest of the selectmen. On the day of the last meeting, April 28, even the armory was closed, and a frigid stream of surly workmen was thus turned upon the town-meeting. But the staying hand of reason was upon the meeting also, and William B. Calhoun and Joel Brown were added to the list of selectmen. Mr. Brown declined to serve ; but Mr. Calhoun did not, and he did his town great service by a firm and dignified bearing in an awkward situation. At a subsequent meeting Theodore Stebbins was chosen selectman, but the town failed to elect the other members. The friends of the Thompson rioters had surrounded Clerk Ingraham and induced him to refuse to administer the oath to this selectmen's board of three, but the demand of Mr. Calhoun could not be resisted. " Hold up your hands, then," said Ingraham. The oath was administered May 5.
The town-meeting called for the 19th of that month assembled, and in great excitement passed a resolution that the "attempt by three individuals to assume control of the public affairs, in direct opposition to the recorded vote of the town, is high-handed and revo- lutionary, and calculated to seriously embarrass the business of the town ; that we deny the right of such persons to act in our behalf, and that their bold attempt can be excused only by the charitable supposition that their eagerness for office made them blind to the rights of the community and the interests of the town."
These resolutions were expunged by a subsequent town-meeting, and the three selectmen had the honor of presiding over the adminis- tration of the town affairs during the year.
The resolutions reflecting upon the select board of 1851 were unjust to Mr. Calhoun, if they referred to him as president of the board ; for although a publie man, and repeatedly honored with polit- ical trusts, he was for many years in direct antagonism to the local sentiment on the subject nearest his heart, - popular education, - and never used it to gain an office. Springfield must allow to Mr. Cal-
464
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
houn the distinction of sharing with Oliver B. Morris the honor of loy- alty to the public schools. Ten years before, when S. S. Green, the first school superintendent in Massachusetts, had presided over the Springfield sehools for one year and nine months, Calhoun had stood up in the town-meeting and faced the clamoring tax-payers, who were willing to bank up on their children's ignorance in order to pocket a few shillings tax money. Calhoun lost in the fight, and Green was allowed to go and make for himself a reputation as an educator in Rhode Island.
Erasmus D. Beach, whose prominence in the camp of the democracy we have noticed, was also making his mark at the bar. Mr. Beach was a man of fine presence, - genial, condescending, courtly, and gracions. He was a master of the arts of persuasion, receiving a client with great suavity and consideration ; and his power with the jury was a mystery which much better lawyers never fully compre- hended. His practice was large, and his office was always well patronized by all classes of litigants. He would listen to the state- ment of a case with the greatest deference, and would make a client almost feel that it was a positive delight to go to law with such an advocate to represent his interests. If a man came to him with a com- plicated case he would hear him through, and with a wave of the hand, or a smile of relief, he would give the impression that, after all, the case was not important enough for him to conduct, and that his partner - Gillett, or Bates, or Bond, or Stearns - could give the counsel required as well as more able jurists. As a diplomat of the office, E. D. Beach never had an equal at the Hampden bar ; but he knew his limitations thoroughly enough not to appear before a bench of Supreme Court judges. He never was without a strong man as partner, to aid in conducting his large practice. These partners, while wondering at his extended practice, had the deepest respect for him. " Is His Serene Highness in?" William G. Bates would ask in the morning, and this plausible sereneness he never lost nor outgrew. When Mr. Beach bought the " Hampden Whig," in 1835, he moved
465
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
.
it from the hill to the centre of the village, and changed the name to the " Hampden Post." During the nine years that it was under the management of Mr. Beach, the " Post " grew in importance and influ- ence as the mouthpiece of the democracy for this section of the country.
Mr. Beach was a frequent candidate for local and State offices, but not until 1850 did he score an important victory. This was in the memorable campaign when the whigs were beaten by a combination of the democrats with the free-soilers. The coalition did not care so much for the governor as for the Legislature, and after Mr. Beach's election to the Senate he challenged much personal vitupera- tion by refusing to go with other democrats into the free-soil camp and place Charles Sumner in the United States Senate. Day after day he, with a handful of irrepressible democrats, repulsed every effort to whip them into the Sumner column, and it may be said that this party devotion prevailed with Mr. Beach to the end of his career. He strikingly resembled George Ashmun in personal appearance, and was frequently mistaken for the latter upon the streets. They were occasionally pitted against each other, and while it was not a case of the two Dromios in a court-room, it would indeed have been a re- markable jury that would not have been confused by the suavity of one, the legal finesse of the other, and the personal magnetism of both.
Mr. Beach at one time was captain of the Springfield Home Guards, and by a curious coincidence he appeared at the head of this noted organization to do escort duty at a Fourth of July cele- bration, while his law partner, Ephraim Bond, headed the Light In- fantry, which Colonel Thompson had long commanded. This legal firm made a fine appearance as leaders of Springfield's erack com- panies, and they were the subject of many humorous remarks.
When a loan of $2,000,000 was proposed, in 1851, for the purpose of tunnelling the Hoosac mountain, Mr. Beach made a very thorough calculation, and showed how small was the amount for the proposed
466
SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
work, and he was able to forecast very accurately the financial bir- den involved in such a venture. In speaking of the claims of the Troy & Greenfield road, which sought the credit of the State for $2,000,000, in order that it might eut a tunnel in from three to five years, Mr. Beach characterized the scheme as thus presented " a wild one, - baseless and visionary as the dreams of childhood."
In John Mills was a democrat of a different stamp from that of E. D. Beach. Schooled to democratic politics, often a standard- bearer with hopeless majorities against him, even accounted worthy to contest a seat in the United States Senate against Daniel Webster, and looked up to as a pillar of the western Massachusetts democ- racy, he suddenly turned about, in 1848, and advocated a free-soil policy more radical. probably, than even his whig foes would accept. At that early day the men of the Horace Greeley stamp were not prepared to come out in a third-party movement like that which gathered about Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams, not perhaps because they were not as strong in anti-slavery sentiment, but because they had not given up the hope that the work of the great whig fight was ended. The third-party experiment was a perilous one, and it was at this juncture that Charles Sumner withdrew from the whig ranks and joined the free-soilers. Sumner made a mem- orable speech at Boston before the free-soil convention over which Mr. Mills presided, in September, 1848. This was a few months after the national convention at Buffalo had nominated Van Buren and Adams. The whigs nominated Taylor and Fillmore, as we have seen, and the regular democratic candidate was General Cass. The free-soil ticket for governor was S. C. Phillips, and for lieutenant- governor, John Mills, who was the unanimous choice of the conven- tion. The friendship between Sumner, the whig, and Mills, the democrat, meeting as they did from opposite sides upon the common and inspiriting ground of free soil, is worthy of mention. Mr. Mills must have been gratified at the showing of the new party, so far as Springfield was concerned.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.