USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Northampton > The Northampton book; chapters from 300 years in the life of a New England town, 1654-1954 > Part 7
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In appreciation of the wisdom of his moral and political prin- ciples, the subscriptions of several hundred persons throughout the state made possible the collection of his gubernatorial speeches in a book published in 1808 under the title of Patriotism and Piety. This was tribute enough to sweeten any man's retirement, and if Caleb Strong had only kept his resolve to retire from politics, he might have avoided the most difficult and controversial years of his political career.
III. MR. MADISON'S WAR
For five years, Caleb Strong basked in the sunshine of private life in his beloved home town. Meanwhile, the Federalist party of Massachusetts was being severely buffeted by the storms of party
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politics. In four of those five years, their opponents won the gov- ernorship of Massachusetts, winning so decisively in 1811 that it seemed that the Jeffersonian Republicans would have as long a political reign in Massachusetts as they had already enjoyed in the nation.
Yet, the fortunes of politics are often fickle and the popularity of the Republicans was soon lost. The flagrant partisanship of Governor Gerry's political appointments and the crudely unfair manner in which the state senatorial districts were redistricted (hence the word "gerrymander" in our political vocabulary) caused the Republicans to lose favor with the voters. At the same time, the Republican party in New England was seriously weak- ened by the growing opposition to President Madison's foreign policy. As the United States came closer and closer to a break with England and Republican "war hawks" in Congress clamored for war, the Federalists in Massachusetts began to return to public favor.
The people of Massachusetts remembered how disastrous for them had been Jefferson's economic warfare with England, cul- minating in the embargo of 1807-09. A war with England would mean the destruction of New England's commerce on which the prosperity of all groups depended, farmers, fishermen, and lum- bermen, as well as the merchants and shipowners in the seaports and river towns. To the Federalists, also, it was unthinkable that the United States should go to war against England, when France had committed as many injuries to our national honor, and when it was obvious that Napoleon was the greatest tyrant, the greatest enemy of political and religious liberty in Europe.
So the Federalist party, seeing its chance to capitalize on the growing public disfavor with the Republicans, turned again to Caleb Strong, their most successful leader of bygone days. With many misgivings, the conservative patriarch agreed to stand again as Federalist candidate for governor. At the age of 67, he led the revived forces of Federalism to victory over the Republicans with a majority of 1200 votes in a total vote of 104,000.
Immediately, Governor Strong was plunged into a situation which he had dreaded most. June 18, 1812, Congress declared war on England, and Massachusetts and her sister states in New Eng- land faced the problem of what policy to follow towards "Mr. Madison's War."
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There was absolutely no question of the continued and im- placable hostility of the Federalists to the war policy of the Madi- son administration. Governor Strong took the initiative in re- cording these sentiments, six days after Congress had declared war by a divided vote of 19 to 13 in the Senate and 79 to 49 in the House of Representatives, by issuing a proclamation for a public fast to atone for a declaration of war "against the Nation from which we are descended and which for many generations has been the bulwark of the religion we profess."
In a Federalist Fourth of July dinner held in Salem a fortnight later, the following formal toast was offered concerning the war: The Existing War-The Child of Prostitution, May no American ac- knowledge it legitimate!
This derisive toast was followed by a toast to Governor Strong with the words:
Physical and Moral strength-the State is favored of Heaven which sees itself STRONG in the field, STRONG in the cabinet, and STRONG in the hearts of the people!
Nor did the Federalists content themselves with mere words; they followed a policy of "no voluntary support" for the war. Caleb Strong took the first step on June 22, 1812, when he re- fused to comply with a request of the Federal government to de- tach several companies of the state militia for the service of the United States in the coastal defense of New England. He took this stand on the ground that the Constitution authorized the Presi- dent to call for the militia of the states to execute the laws of the Union, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions. Since no part of New England was invaded, and since the Madison ad- ministration was obviously preparing to invade Canada, Gover- nor Strong asserted that, as Commander-in-Chief of the state militia, he could not comply with such an unconstitutional re- quest. His action was supported by an advisory opinion of three justices of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
This was a thorny constitutional question-whether the Presi- dent of the United States, or the Commander-in-Chief of the militia of the several states had the right to determine if any of the exigencies exist which are specifically mentioned in the Consti- tution as proper for the use of the militia by the President. In-
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deed this constitutional question was not decided by the United States Supreme Court until 1827, long after the war of 1812 was over. The practical effect of this dispute over the interpretation of the Constitution was to enable the governors of three New Eng- land states to prevent the detachment of state militia for services in the army of the United States. Governor Griswold of Connec- ticut and Governor Chittenden of Vermont followed the ex- ample of Caleb Strong.
In a similar fashion, Massachusetts bankers refused to subscribe for any of the war loans of the Madison administration. This voluntary boycott really hurt because Massachusetts banks and New England banks generally were the soundest banks with the largest specie reserves in the country. Indeed, during the War of 1812, even more money poured into New England because New England merchants had large stocks of British manufactured goods to sell to other sections of the country where the war had brought severe shortages.
Thus, the policy of the Federalists in Massachusetts was to give the war the minimum support consistent with obedience to the laws (as interpreted by Federalists) in the hope that the Madison administration would be forced to begin negotiations for peace as quickly as possible. Militia and loan subscriptions were with- held, but no obstacle other than hostile public opinion, was placed in the way of voluntary enlistments in the regular army and all national taxes were faithfully paid into the national treasury. As a matter of fact, during the War of 1812 Massachusetts paid more war taxes into the national treasury than any other state, and also furnished more troops to the regular army by voluntary enlist- ment than any other state except New York.
Caleb Strong was re-elected in 1813, and again in 1814, so that there was no change in Massachusetts' policy of minimal support for the war. The Federalists watched the failure of the military campaigns against Canada and the mismanagement and bungling of the war administration with righteous and ill-concealed satis- faction. To them these failures were the bitter fruits of an unjust and unnecessary war. In any case, Massachusetts and all of New England prospered in the first 18 months of the war. The war gave an immense impetus to manufactures in New England, and commerce did not suffer greatly since the British did not main- tain an effective blockade north of New York until 1814.
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But in 1814, calamities and disasters hit the United States from all sides. The British invaded New York by the Champlain route; the national capital was captured and burned by a British raiding force; banks in Philadelphia and New York on which the national administration had depended for war loans were forced to sus- pend specie payment. Nor did New England escape this time. The British navy established a tight blockade in New England waters, and began to conduct destructive raiding operations on the coastal districts of Maine.
The Federalists of Massachusetts were now thoroughly con- vinced of the stupidity and helplessness of the Madison adminis- tration. In January, 1814, the legislature of Massachusetts was deluged with memorials sent in from legal town meetings calling for "a convention of deputies from the Northern states to de- liberate on the present gloomy crisis upon the interests of those states and to propose amendments to the Constitution for the security of those interests, [and to] remedy or mitigate the evils under which the country is now bitterly suffering.'
Ten of these memorials came from the river towns of the Con- necticut Valley and the similarity of language suggests a com- mon origin. Some time afterwards this was proved to be the case, when Noah Webster, the great American lexicographer then prominent in the local Federalist organization of Amherst, dis- closed that a circular letter had been drawn up at a meeting of leading Old Hampshire Federalists in Northampton on January 19, 1814. Another leader of this group of Old Hampshire Federal- ists was Joseph Lyman of Northampton, who had studied law in Caleb Strong's office and at this time held the office of sheriff of Hampshire County.
These proposals for a convention continued throughout the spring and summer and Governor Strong on September 7, 1814, summoned the General Court into special session in order that such measures might be "adopted as in their judgment the pres- ent state of public affairs may render expedient." Out of this special session came the call for a convention of the New Eng- land states to be held in Hartford, Connecticut "to confer upon the subjects of their public grievances and concerns, and upon the best means of preserving our resources and of defense against the enemy."
Many contemporaries, and afterwards many historians, main-
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tained that the Hartford Convention was a conspiracy engineered by Federalist extremists to bring about the secession of New Eng- land from the Union. Undoubtedly there were some members of the Essex Junto who might have desired such an outcome. Actu- ally, however, the Hartford Convention was controlled by mod- erate Federalists who wished only to take legal and constitutional means of satisfying their grievances. Caleb Strong was in com- plete agreement with these moderate purposes. On hearing that some of his Essex County friends were disappointed in the work of the Convention, he remarked that "so far as he had any agency in the calling of that body, he had acted under the conviction that such men as New England should elect to represent her ... would never forget for a moment their duties to the general government."
Thus, the Convention drew up a series of demands to the Na- tional Congress, some of which were proposed as amendments to the Constitution. The Convention requested that the states be allowed to take defense measures into their own hands and apply a reasonable portion of their national taxes to defray the costs of such defense. The suggested Constitutional amendments were de- signed to change the basis of representation in the national gov- ernment so as to eliminate the counting of negro slaves in the population and thus to reduce the unfair advantages of the South- ern (and Jeffersonian Republican) states in the Congress; to require a two-thirds vote of Congress for all embargo acts and declarations of war; to limit the President to one term, and to re- quire that a president could not come from the same state two terms in succession.
Governor Strong and the legislature acted immediately upon these recommendations, and on June 27, 1815, appointed three commissioners to go to Washington to present these proposals. But when the commissioners appeared in Washington the news of Jackson's great victory at New Orleans and of the Treaty of Ghent ending the war arrived at the same time, so that their mis- sion was made ridiculous. The whole country, jubilant over the end of the war, roared with laughter as these "three ambassadors" went home as quietly as they could in such embarrassing circum- stances.
Although the people of Massachusetts welcomed the news of the peace with as much delight as the rest of the country they
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apparently did not share the Republicans' gleeful belief that the Federalists had been completely discredited by the Hartford Con- vention episode. Federalist leaders noted that the Treaty of Ghent did not settle a single grievance for which the Madison adminis- tration had gone to war. To them, this was final proof of the iniquity of the war. Senator Christopher Gore wrote to Caleb Strong at the time saying, "The Treaty must be deemed disgrace- ful to the Government, who made the war and peace, and will so be judged by all, after the first effusions of joy and relief have subsided."
In any case, the people of Massachusetts showed their con- tinued affection for Caleb Strong by re-electing him governor for his eleventh term in 1815, by a majority of 7000 votes in a total of 94,000. But at the age of 71 Caleb Strong was exhausted from the political struggles of the war years. In 1816, he announced his in- tention to retire again from politics and this time he had the satis- faction of seeing his party win again under the leadership of his successor, John Brooks, who was to keep the governorship in Federalist hands until 1823.
In the last years of retirement, Caleb Strong lived among his neighbors in Northampton with all the dignity and honor that be- fitted a man who had become a "river god" in the tradition of the 18th century leaders of the political and social life of the Con- necticut Valley. In November of 1819 he died suddenly of a heart attack and, with his passing, the last of the great leaders who had made Old Hampshire Federalism into such a powerful politi- cal and social force was gone.
Many were the eulogies that were uttered at his death, but what shall we, in the 20th century, say of this man? To this his- torian, anyway, it seems fair to say that Caleb Strong represented the best that there was in New England Federalism in the early days of the Republic. He was the true conservative who believed in the time-tested institutions of society-the constitutions of Mas- sachusetts and of the United States which he had helped to pre- pare, and the more ancient institutions of the family and the Christian Church.
He believed in the sanctity of property, and often asserted his conviction that, by habits of industry and temperance, any man might prosper. He was a wealthy man, yet he continually warned the wealthy men of the state to avoid "an eagerness for dissolute
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pleasures and frivolous amusements." The rich have a special duty to set an example of "purity of manners," for "the rich will be considered as patterns of imitation by those of moderate for- tunes, and these will be followed by others of still less ability."
He hated the asperity and intemperance of political contro- versy. To him the good society was a society of decency and order in which political discussion was carried on with honesty and decorum. His greatest troubles came when crises gave ex- tremists and demagogues the chance to win popular favor and political power. At such times, he strove even more valiantly to remain faithful to his principles of moderation. But that, of course, is the perennial problem of the true American conservative-how to prevent conservatives from being misled by reckless men in their own camp as well as in the opposition, who would be willing to subvert ancient institutions and traditional liberties in their de- sire to gain political power.
PART II Enterprisers and Forerunners
Chapter Nine
Economic Transition: 1817-1860
By FRANK H. HANKINS
N 1817 Northampton was still a typical New England vil- lage, with the vast majority of its inhabitants living on farms and with home industries providing the major needs of a simple life. The corn and saw mills, taverns, meeting house, house- hold activities, shops, stores, and town meeting were faithful replicas of what would have been found in a hundred other vil- lages from the Penobscot to the Hudson. Hucksters and itinerant traders and craftsmen plied their several vocations in town and countryside; small shops owned and run by skilled workers, with an apprentice or two, supplied various tools, articles, and services; a few mills along Mill River foreshadowed the power machines and factories of a later day. The citizenry included a sprinkling of professional men, lawyers, doctors, and ministers. The latter were leading personages and guiding lights, though none of them was as yet entirely detached from the soil. In consequence of the isolation due to slow travel and communication, even the indi- vidual household was necessarily largely self-dependent, and the community as a whole even more so. Hence Northampton was not a mere aggregation of families and households but a com- munity, with a well-developed sense of mutual aid in times of stress and danger from fire or flood, sharpened by still lingering memories of Indian raids.
Class differences were slight among the 2854 inhabitants of 1820. Day laborer, skilled craftsman, farmer, merchant, mill owner-all were of one blood and culture. Henry S. Gere notes that as late as 1845 there were only three voters in the town of alien descent, all others being of old Yankee stock. All lived more or less as neighbors; each was likely to have members of his own family tree both higher and lower in the socio-economic scale than his fellows. By 1860 there were many signs of basic changes.
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The Industrial Revolution from shop, mill, and water wheel, to factory and steam power was getting under way. The total value of industrial products was estimated at $463,000 in 183 1, $620,000 in 1845, and $2,400,000 in 1855, though the data are incomplete for all dates. The population grew to 3839 in 1830, 4610 in 1840, 5278 in 1850, and 6788 in 1860. Moreover the racial and cultural composition had become more varied. There had been a consider- able influx of Irish fleeing the terrible famines of the late 1840's, followed by the advance guard of the French-Canadian invasion. While these brought cleavages of blood, religion, and language, they brought the variety and color that helped to transform the staid and perhaps somewhat stodgy village into a microcosm of the larger world.
This transition, accompanied by integration of the town econo- my with that of the nation, was partly forced and partly induced. It was forced by the decline in soil fertility and the depletion of timber resources. These were re-enforced by the increasing com- petition of western farm products following the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and railway connections in 1845. The hill towns of this region all reached their maximum populations in 1820-1840. At the same time these changes opened wide markets for the productive skills of the Connecticut Valley, while the in- flux of workers from the hills supplied a reservoir of labor. The transition from farm and mill village to industrial and commercial center was facilitated by five basic essentials, all present locally: liquid capital; a quota of profit-minded, enterprising, and ingen- ious men; Mill River as a source of power; raw materials; and a labor supply.
Liquid capital was supplied here as elsewhere in the early days of the industrial revolution by the merchant class, the class whose eruption some generations earlier had introduced the tenets and institutions of capitalism and democracy into western culture. This class in America made money in all branches of trading, banking, money-lending, and, especially in this country, in land speculation-"the unearned increment" of power and business sites. Once industries got under way they were often a source of additional capital, the rate of profit being markedly high for suc- cessful ventures. During the 1820's single ownership was the rule, with partnerships tending to increase. By 1845 joint stock com-
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panies had become familiar and were becoming the usual means of securing the larger capital sums needed.
The citizens of Northampton seem to have supplied all, or nearly all, their own capital until 1836. In that year we meet the first large capital investment by outsiders when Samuel Whit- marsh formed the Northampton Silk Company with $100,000 subscribed by 22 New York financiers. The failure of this ven- ture may now be seen as a future blessing. At least Northampton escaped the social blight of absentee landlords and owners that withered the cultural values in many "mill towns" of New Eng- land. Its transition was carried out by men who lived here or came here to live, who secured their capital largely from local sources and who were variously interested in promoting the community life.
The two original factors in the development of a city are its geographical location and its supply of talented men. Northamp- ton's location near the mouth of Mill River was a very special asset. Until the late 1850's this river was almost the only source of power. In 1855 it counted 74 plants on its banks. For the entire Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts this was 25 per cent of all plants, employing 10 per cent of all labor and producing 10 per cent of all values. By 1850 the advantages of steam power-greater reliability at all seasons-were causing shifts thereto. The first factory to use steam power exclusively was a small button plant in 1857; others were using it as a supplementary source. The first large plant to use steam exclusively was the Florence Sewing Ma- chine Company in 1861; but the river continued to be the main source of power until the flood of 1874.
Like most New England towns Northampton had its quota of "Yankee ingenuity." Though it does not seem to have been ex- ceptional in this respect the list is long and honorable, including, 1817-1860, two or more in a number of families, such as Bridg- man, Clapp, Clark, Clarke, Edwards, Hayden, Hinckley, Hop- kins, Kingsley, Lyman, Metcalf, Parsons, Shepherd, Strong, War- ner, and Williston. The town's central location enabled it to profit from the business and inventive talents in neighboring places, such as Samuel Williston in Easthampton and the Hayden brothers and uncles. The New Englanders of that day were filled with the spirit of Calvinistic capitalism. The words "calculate" and "reckon" came readily to their lips. They accepted the "Prot-
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estant ethic" making every honest business a "calling" approved by Divine Providence, and often stretched to include sharp shrewdness that secured profit at others' expense. That ethic in- culcated thrift, industry, sobriety, and rationality in practical af- fairs. While it viewed poverty as no disgrace, it considered the achievement of comfort as evidence of God's approval. The suc- cessful in business became church deacons, civic leaders, and exemplars for youth. Our high standard of living, our advance- ment in science and invention and our present ability to play Santa Claus to the rest of the world owe much to this Puritan moralization of practical success and the sober industriousness thereby required.
The regional raw materials were not peculiar to this locality. Wood was abundant and of first quality; it entered into nearly the whole gamut of economic activities. Sumac and oak bark were available for leather working. Sheep raising, flax growing, and later silk culture supplied the textile industries. Imported were indigo, madder, logwood, olive oil, castile soap, as well as some wool, for the woolen mills; mahogany for clock cases; English tin, Russian iron, Calcutta goat skins, French and Russian calf skins, and Pennsylvania coal and iron.
The labor supply seems to have been adequate at all times. At first entirely of local origin, it was supplemented after 1850 by Irish, French-Canadian, and other immigration. Relations of em- ployer and employees were personal and paternalistic, with loy- alty and industriousness balanced by fairness and responsibility. Wages were, in modern terms, extremely modest. In 1825-27 wages at Shepherd's, the largest woolen mill, averaged about $13 per month for trained women workers and $21 for men, plus board and housing in both cases, for which the going rate was $1.50 per week. Carpenters received 75 cents per day. Henry S. Gere, later long-time editor of The Gazette, served his apprentice- ship on J. P. Williston's abolitionist paper, The Hampshire Her- ald, receiving $30 for the first year, $35 for the second, and $40 for the third, plus board and washing. Two years later he became foreman and assistant editor of the combined Herald and Courier at $8 per week, paying his own living expenses. Hours were long for farmer, shopkeeper, and mill hand, running around 13-14 hours per day in summer and 9-10 in winter. Mills allowed one hour for two meals. Little wonder that the entire community
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