USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Stockbridge > Stockbridge, 1739-1939; a chronicle > Part 14
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When John Bacon's top chaise or Elijah Brown's two- wheeled carriage, or Theodore Sedgwick's brand-new phaeton, drew up at Loring Andrews's for the weekly paper, they carried back news of foreign affairs. Europe was in a ferment. "The first army under Bournonville; and that under General Moreau, and the Archduke Charles was advancing by the Rhine towards Swabia." Catherine of Russia was taking arms against Mahomet Khan. And one day the village received an astonishing piece of information. Napoleon, whose advancing autocracy was a horror to all republican hearts, was pronounced upon good authority to be a fraud. "A gentleman of respectability" in Paris had written to New York: "Dear Friend, The likeness of General Bonaparte having just come out a singular discovery has been made concerning the place of his origin. He happens to be a countryman of yours and even one of your friends instead of a Corsican as first reported. Bonaparte is an assumed name, his family name is Shaler, from Middletown, Connecticut. You will no doubt be able to judge of the truth directly and not fail to ascertain the fact in case the people of America have any doubt about it."
Although Andrews was deep in local politics, his columns covered subjects ranging from farmers' grievances to ironic comments upon Doctor West's religious beliefs. Even before 1800 liberalism had begun its insidious work. Litera- ture of every kind was available at the printing press. Andrews did not allow his political allegiance to interfere with book- selling and on a list of literary wares the Tory Governor Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts rubbed shoulders with the works of the radical Tom Paine. For serious reading Seneca's Morals and Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity were but two out of a list of more than forty- books, while The Sentimental Journey, The Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Sandford and Merton, Robinson Crusoe, and
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THE FEDERALIST PERIOD
The Mysteries of Udolpho took the place of the fiction shelf in the bookstores of today.
Buying books, then as now, was an expensive business and beyond the reach of many respectable citizens. Twenty-five of these, believing that "attainments of the mind are very important and advancement in knowledge and literature a very laudable pursuit," subscribed a share apiece towards the Berkshire Republican Library organized in 1789. As chil- dren's books were few and far between, about 1812 the little girls of the village decided to form a lending library of their own, and its rules suggest little girls as well-behaved as even Maria Edgeworth could wish. "Fine for turning down a leaf -turning over a leaf with wet, greasy or dirty fingers-a drop of tallow, or a blot of ink, not less than sixpence-for tearing a leaf-bruising or cracking a cover, not less than one shil- ling, and as much more, in each case, as the Librarian shall adjudge. . . "
In 1806, a number of young men formed a debating society. Jared Curtis, who later carried his talents into schoolteaching with marked success, was chosen the first president. The club met at different members' houses and, in order to maintain a cool impartiality, no discussion of party politics was allowed. Questions, of a mildly exciting pitch, were followed by lengthy discussions: "Are dancing schools on the whole beneficial?"; "Are theatres beneficial to the public?" In one debate, however, there was no discussion at all: "Are the original intellectual capacities of women equal to those of men?" was quickly and finally negatived by Sedgwick and Curtis. "Is the present degree of luxury in the United States compared to what it will be in the future too great?"; "Is the marriage state more happy than celibacy?" and "Is virtue its own reward in this life?" were decided in the affirmative. With correct village loyalty the suggestion
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"Is a town life preferable to a residence in the country for a man of education?" was definitely denied.
Frontier simplicity was becoming a thing of the past. Young gentlemen wore frilled shirts; young ladies, whose parents could afford it, went to finishing school. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, prosperity had indeed rounded the corner. Barnabas Bidwell, son of the Tyring- ham minister, had moved to Stockbridge to practice law and could say with justice in his Fourth of July oration: "Agriculture is converting our country into a vast garden of fruit and flowers . . . Manufactures are springing up among us . .. works of enterprise and utility are bound to succeed beyond the most sanguine expectations." There was more time for leisure. Stockbridge could afford to be gay.
The services of Agrippa Hull were constantly in demand to help with parties. He would leave off cracking jokes or telling the village children stories-of how he had once dressed in his master Kosciusko's clothes, and of how that master had discovered and punished him-to get the tables ready for a feast. His wife, Peggy, was also a village institu- tion, ready to make a wedding cake at anyone's request. A bill for a ball held in 1799 is the measure of contemporary sophistication:
To 4 candles @ 1- 4d
21/4 Gall. Port wine @ 9.6 1.3.9
1 Gall. Sherry wine @ 9.6 9.6
1/2 Gall. Brandy 11-6 5.9
1/2 Gall. Spirits 8- 4.
6 1b. Lump Sugar 2- 12.
2 gross Biscut 6- 12.
Room (paid Capt. Pepoon) 15.
£4.6.4
Musick 2.8
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Agrippa
16.
Taylor
9.
1 pt Shrub
4.9
6 lbs. Cheese
3.6
5 oz. Candles
.4
8.7.7
2 packs cards
3.
Paid B. Rossiter for Printing
6.
£8.16.7
Upon similar occasions invitations were appropriately formal. A faded card marked Ball briefly sums up past tremors and anticipations. "The company of Miss Lucy Pierson is requested at the Stockbridge Assembly Room on Thursday . .. at six o'clock." Henry W. Dwight and A. Byington were to be managers.
Nevertheless, there were dreary stretches of monotony during the winter months. So at least thought the two Sedgwick girls, Theodore's eldest daughters. "They think Stockbridge the most intolerable place in the world and would prefer Greenland to staying here," wrote their mother. "We live without much company and know very little of what goes on in our neighborhood. The girls generally find amusement in conversing upon and scanning the characters of their male acquaintance. They have very few parties and but two balls this winter." They had to content themselves with going to a dance in the scanty, wind- swept village of Lenox, even though they "had no Gallant."
During the years that followed the Revolution, politics crowded religion off the front page of people's minds. Politics gathered men into corners and set the children to quarreling at school. Everyone had a personal stake in the formation of the new country and, although every village was a
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microcosm of national events, Stockbridge could boast two actors on the national stage. The Federalist party, which demanded a strong centralized government, had received new impetus from the scare of Shays' Rebellion. Theodore Sedgwick, its Berkshire protagonist, was a member of the Continental Congress from 1785 to 1788, and after that served in the House and Senate off and on until 1801. He might be taken as a composite photograph of the ideals and prejudices of his party. In his single mind, right and religion allied themselves to property in an unshakable combination. He did not analyze his friend Hamilton's political theory or stop to examine its underlying cynicism. The abstract belief that self-interest is the ruling passion of man, and must be enlisted on the side of government, was for Sedgwick invested with the weight of a religious sanction. No disturbing half tones muddied the primary colors of his canvas. "I declare I consider Jefferson the greatest rascal and traitor in the United States," he wrote. "They say ---- is a Federalist, but he is a fool, so he must be a Democrat."
During his congressional career, ancient enemies of revolutionary and rebellion days confronted him. The Republicans, like their colonial forefathers, scented tyranny in every breeze and stood for the sovereignty of the States, and liberty for the forgotten man. Thomas Allen was still alive and maintained that "the great majority of moral and religious characters in Berkshire are firm friends of our Republican government and resolve never to give it into the hands of the Federalists." The county was no pocket borough for Federalism like the seacoast towns where commerce pre- dominated. Sedgwick's majorities at times were pitifully small, and right on the Plain he had a formidable rival.
Barnabas Bidwell was appointed County Treasurer in 1791 and served as State Senator from 1801 to 1805 when he was elected to Congress. In 1807, Massachusetts appointed
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him Attorney General. Being of versatile interests he had produced The Mercenary Match, a distinguished example of early American drama, while still an undergraduate at Yale. Bidwell played Jefferson to Sedgwick's Hamilton on the county stage. They were a good contrast -- the one adroit and cool, the other direct and vehement. A local wag summed them up in a piece of doggerel which he pinned on the Lenox courthouse: "Duke Ego the bully and long winded Barni."
The Federalists looked to England as their political ideal. To them Republicans and Jacobins were synonomous. "I came forward in a torrent of invective against the Jacobins," wrote Sedgwick, "as the authors of all the evils I had felt or feared. I trust in the valor and resources of Great Britain as the last protection of civilized society against the assault of Jacobinism in the war it has waged of men against property, of atheism against religion and morality." Even his wife's letters, when not taken up with the schooling of the little boys, and the condition of the roads, reflect an orthodox and respectable fear of the "terrible republic."
The light which beat upon Sedgwick and Bidwell did not reach their wives who went about the prosaic business of ordering their households and bringing up their children in a country town. Mary Gray, the Stockbridge girl who married Barnabas, was summed up in her funeral oration:
"Her husband, dumb and bathed in tears, Her children next behind the hearse, Her parent bowed with weight of years, Are not the subject of my verse.
"She's dead, the friend that used to please To sweeten joy and soften grief; Forgetting her own health and care, In granting others kind relief."
When her husband was at home Pamela Sedgwick kept open house. Henry Van Schaack, the erstwhile Tory, would come over from Pittsfield with a new kind of wine for
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Sedgwick to taste, or William Lawton Smith, the southern Federalist, called and complimented him upon having the finest house in town. The young law students at the office had to mind their p's and q's and he did not let them slump in his absence. "You will endeavor to make the young men in the office industrious," wrote Sedgwick to one of the young Williamses who took charge of the law business and collected money for the family when he was away. "It was with pain I saw their idleness and inattention. For their welfare and for my honor and the reputation of the office let me entreat you will be kind enough to assume upon yourself the necessary task of improving their conduct."
Between bursts of glory, life was at once difficult and simple. Fences were breaking down, animals invading the property, wood had to be brought in from the swamp, and hay procured from Timothy Edwards for the cattle. Sheep supplied enough wool for clothes, which must be cut and sewed by village women, and when Pamela wanted luxuries she had to send away for them. Decanters and wineglasses were shipped from New York, and when she went into mourning for her half sister, Electa-who had rashly under- taken a perilous journey to Clinton, New York, to see her son Sewall-she had to write to New York for some black silk and the newest pattern for making gowns.
Then there were children to educate. The oldest boy, Theodore, "seemed to be impressed with the importance of a constant attention to his studies." "I am much pleased," wrote his father, "because I find you begin to love your book. Now, now, my sweet child is the time. Do you not observe how much men who have improved their time well are respected? It will make you feel very ugly to reflect that you might grow up and have people say of you that you would never improve your time, that you was a lazy idle foolish fellow and although your papa gave you great oppor-
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tunities how to do good you had neglected them all. No, No, my son will never permit this to be said."
Sedgwick was kept in touch with home not only by his wife's constant letters but by his faithful henchman, Loring Andrews, who retailed political affairs. When a delegation of Republicans arrived in the village, Federalists were on their stiffest behavior. Sniffing like hostile dogs and treading cautiously, they declined a dinner invitation from the Repub- lican candidate but afterwards condescended so far as to take a glass of wine with him. Judge John Bacon in his com- fortable farmhouse on the Hill might have learned by now to keep his political opinions to himself, but evidently he did not for Andrews considered him "as damned a Jacobin as ever met in any conclave of sedition within the limits of America."
Even Dr. West was called into the controversy. Most gentlemen of the cloth, except for that nuisance, Thomas Allen, had rallied to the Federalist cause and the Stockbridge minister found himself forced to admonish "those who mur- mured against government." "You should have seen," wrote Andrews upon this occasion, "the champion of democracy among us drumming his fingers upon the pew and staring at the floor."
It was a bitter moment for Sedgwick when, in 1800, as Speaker of the House, he announced the election of Thomas Jefferson. He retired the following year and accepted a judgeship on the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, where he devoted a large part of his time to fostering a higher standard of manners on the Bench, at that time far less polished than the Bar. The disappointment of his life occurred in 1806 when he lost the Chief Justiceship of his state. Character- istically, he was furious. "My friends try in vain to soothe me," he wrote. "They say I am reconciled ... they lie like hell." He was a die-hard Federalist, cut and measured to
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order some time since, and Massachusetts wanted a new style. In young Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport, they found their man.
Meanwhile through Jefferson's triumphant years, Barnabas was becoming more and more adroit. His chief depended upon him to put difficult measures through the House and he was instrumental in bringing about the Louisiana Pur- chase. Yet, finally, a gleam of triumph lighted Sedgwick's latter years for by 1811 Bidwell had gone beyond himself. How Jefferson, by now in retirement at Monticello, must have sighed at the weakness of human nature, for Barnabas, despite his clerical father and impeccable family, had helped himself to $12,855.59 of the town's funds. The Federalist press fairly screamed its triumph. In an article entitled "The Defalcations of Barnabas Bidwell," the Columbian Senti- nel pointed out that the Democrats raised a loud cry over the salaries of Supreme Court Justices "but are profoundly silent in regard to the substantial sum of money embezzled by one of their chiefs." Bidwell departed for Canada where he spent the rest of his life.
Bidwell had left the stage, Sedgwick was growing old, yet the era they represented was in fullest bloom. Even the impartial debating club admitted the question: "Was it better for England to make peace with France at the present time?" Bonaparte was a world menace, disturbing even young Archibald Hopkins, son of Electa Sergeant and of Mark, who had died in the Revolutionary War. Archibald was a conscientious young farmer who, Atlas-like, bore the burden of his whole family. He took care of his mother and sister, and saw that his brothers received the liberal education of which he had been deprived. He had married the witty Mary Curtis, daughter of Isaac Curtis, old Elnathan's son, and the young couple lived in Hopkins's farmhouse, Cherry Cottage, which had once belonged to King Ben.
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THE FEDERALIST PERIOD
Archibald had been commissioned lieutenant of a company in a squadron of cavalry. In 1810, he received an order to see that his company was provided "with a sufficiency of cartridges without Ball." He had to leave off cutting the corn to read this order aloud to the troops on the village green. It pointed out that "the whole of the eastern world is convulsed to its centre, and the nations of the earth are dashing against one another . .. Ours is the only republic on the globe which is left amid the wreck . . . Let it then be the ambition of every man to be so equipped . . . as to be ready ... to face, in the field of battle, the enemies of his country."
With these considerations in mind, it seemed too bad that so many of the militia turned up without uniforms. Archi- bald, with his brother-in-law, Jared Curtis, who had added military to debating fame and had become a brigade major, saw to it that their company was properly equipped, and performed a weekly drill.
After all this practice the target for it was destined to change, for when conflict came, it was with England, not with France. Not many years elapsed before England's policy of impressing American seamen and plundering American property drove Madison into the war of 1812.
Instead of uniting the village as the Revolution had done, the new war only caused a deeper rift. The manufacturing interests in Curtisville were delighted with the embargo upon British goods, and relatives writing home from the West expressed their satisfaction in a war which would free the United States of all disputes about the Canadian border. However, the President's action was too much for the Fed- eralists to bear. They did not even pretend to back the war, and some of them talked of secession and a separate peace. John Hopkins's store was ruined because the Republicans, by a series of machinations, took away his trade. One
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Federalist went so far as to build his house upon the Plain with no doors or windows on one side, so that he would not be beholden to his Republican neighbor for light and air. The Association of Churches proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer in view of the distracted state of the nation, and other towns observed it with appropriate and public sedateness but, in Stockbridge, the Republicans were so angry at the idea of invoking God to interfere with their war that the proceeding had to be abandoned and Federalists were forced to pray in secret for the speedy ending of this national disgrace.
The cost of living soared. Flour went to $15 a barrel and the best tea cost $18 a pound, but it was not until 1814 that more than pocketbooks were touched. Now once again shades of Bennington passed fleetingly across men's minds. The British had planned to cut off the New England States and their victories upon the Great Lakes and the taking of Plattsburg pointed toward the successful outcome of such a scheme. Once more Stockbridge was called to the defense of Boston. Dr. West, marveling at how history repeats itself, led in prayer, and blessed the men assembled on the village green. Once more, when the troops reached their journey's end, the emergency which had summoned them was over. They had a pleasant change of scene for six weeks and then, like the King of France in the nursery rhyme, "They marched right home again."
News of the Treaty of Peace did not reach America until February 11, 1815. Great exultation followed. Stockbridge was illuminated and the conchshell, inevitably produced for the occasion, blew its loudest and most triumphant note. Although the war was virtually a stalemate, America's European cord had been cut. As one nation she had dealt with another and held her own. Henceforth she was treated with respect abroad and at home a period of contention was at an end. The Federalists had scolded themselves into the
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Hartford convention: the Republicans were left in possession of the field, a generation which had grown up since the United States was a nation was coming to the fore, and the Era of Good Feeling made its opening bow.
During the War of 1812, the West, that wilderness beyond the Hudson River had found a national voice. Difficult economic conditions caused by the war stimulated the emi- gration westward which had already been going on for some time. Berkshire land was wearing thin, the frequent wheat crops were beginning to deplete the soil so that glowing tales of the richness of New York and Ohio fell upon willing ears. Besides, debating clubs, libraries, stores, and two-wheel top carriages were tame to men who loved a fringe of pine trees to cut down. The Western Star advertised as Wanted to Hire: "a number of able stout hearty young men . . . such as are good axe men . ,fifteen or twenty such may meet with good encouragement to go to the westward for the purpose of cutting a road from the river Paliwa to the Cayuga lakes ... which will give them opportunity to explore that fertile country."
In the course of settling a boundary dispute between Massachusetts and New York State at the close of the Revolu- tionary War, two townships lying between the Chenango and the Susquehanna rivers had been ceded to Massachusetts. The General Court granted a tract of land between the rivers Owego and Chenango to Samuel Brown and his associates, who included most of Stockbridge's solid citizens. So many not content with merely owning the land moved out there, that Dr. West plaintively declared that if any more went he would go too.
Not long after this the Genesee speculation sent fortunes skyrocketing up and down the Plain. One citizen went so far as to say he could never spend the interest of his income, only to find himself destitute. A note was pinned up on a
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public house suggesting a subject for discussion in town meeting: "To see if the town will move to New York and enter the business of speculation." It was in land there that Timothy Edwards recouped the fortune that he had lost during the Revolution.
In 1819, Henry Brown, son of Samuel, left his comfortable house on the village street and bought a tract of land which he called Brownhelm, in Northern Ohio. It was a part of the northwest township of the Connecticut Western Reserve, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Hither he brought nineteen people from Stockbridge, among them Grandison Fairchild and his two-year-old son, James Harris Fairchild, who was later to be the first president of Oberlin College. At Oberlin, too, Hiram H. Pease of Curtisville cut the first tree and built the first log cabin.
Meanwhile, Alva Curtis, one of Elnathan's sons, sold out his share of a family paper mill, receiving one fifth in cash and the rest at $3.50 an acre in "New Connecticut" land. He dragged his wife and his two little girls, Calista and Pamela, the long terrible journey through the wilderness to the neighborhood of what is now Cleveland. Part of the time they had to walk, wading through the mud and camping in whatever shelter they could find. Calista sickened and died of exposure on the way. When they reached their desti- nation Pamela used to beguile her solitude by watching the thousands of pigeons that flew by. "I am sure they are not as lonesone as I am. I have no little girl to visit nearer than two miles." Still, there were some things that happened everywhere. Pamela heard that her cousin William Hopkins had been drowned in safe, civilized Stockbridge. "So we see that little children die in Stockbridge as well as in Ohio," she wrote.
To these emigrants Stockbridge had now become what Boston had been to the earlier pioneers. A shoeless little
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THE FEDERALIST PERIOD
boy in Brownhelm exclaimed to his mother, "Look they are rich!" when some neighbors received a box of provisions from the village. Had Dr. West been alive to visit these colonies he would have felt quite at home. The icy winds would have poured into the chinks of his cabin at night, as it had in the Stockbridge John Sergeant had first known. The church would be as like the first Indian church as homesickness and axes and hand-wrought nails could make it, and the school like the Indian school. Even the land would be somewhat similar, for pioneers always picked soil which in their experience was known to be the richest, and looked for places resembling those they had left behind. So Stockbridge was no longer merely a destination-but a point of departure. It had become a link in the vast chain of western migration which was taking place over New England, whereby the descendants of the Puritans carried their civilization with them, intact and rounded, as the snail its shell.
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