USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 14
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In July of this year the English brig Boxer began its destruc- tive operations on the coast. The Boston Patriot of August 5, 1813, reported the fact, as well as her capture of the Industry of Marble- head at the mouth of the Sheepscot River "on Wednesday last," and the sighting of the frigate Nymph and the brigs Curlew and Boxer, off Monhegan "with three schooners in tow." The Boxer carried eighteen guns and a crew of one hundred and four men and remained on the coast to bring the American brig Enterprise of sixteen guns and one hundred and two men into an engagement. The two ships sighted one another on the morning of September 5th, apparently a clear day with a northwest wind so that there was no haze to obscure the view of the people gathered on the top
11Born in Waldoboro, Oct. 4, 1802, died at Belfast, 1889. 12Sprague's Journal, VIII, 140.
13New York Commercial Advertiser, May 29, 1813.
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of Stahl's Hill in Warren14 and Isaiah Cole's Hill in Waldoboro. The action was begun at 3:15 P.M., with the two ships within pistol shot of one another. For thirty-five minutes the action was animated and incessant until the Boxer struck her colors, having lost forty-six men, killed and wounded. Two Americans lost their lives and twelve were wounded in this action in which both cap- tains fell. The next day the Enterprise reached Portland with her prize.
This action caused great jubilation. Even the Federalists seem to have been gratified, for the depredations of these British cruisers had for some time been touching scruples more deep even than their party principles. The war had been coming home to them and in April 1814, when the British Admiral, Cochran, declared a blockade of the whole Atlantic coast from Eastport to the Missis- sippi, they seemed in Waldoboro to have thought for the first time in terms of defense, although they remained unrelenting so far as the government in Washington was concerned.
When President Madison made a requisition on the states for militia for defense purposes, Governor Strong of Massachu- setts disregarded the call, and when the President ordered eleven British officers to be sent to the county jail in Worcester in retalia- tion for similar action taken by the Governor of Lower Canada against American officers, the General Court refused to allow the United States the use of the jail for such a purpose. Such incidents, to be sure, did not happen in Waldoboro, but they did happen under the governmental jurisdiction of which this town was a part and were initiated by those executives from whom the local leaders consistently derived their "party line."
The village squires, however, if not moved by Mr. Madison had been moved by the British, for enemy ships were close and were seizing property in coastal waters. Their crews might land at any time and conduct destructive raids on the coastal towns, and so, not to defend their nation with its evil government, but to protect their property, it was perhaps time to move. Accordingly, two years after the war had been under way, a Committee of Safety was formed, and it seems to have had representatives at a convention of similar committees from adjoining towns which convened on April 11th at Aunt Lydia's Tavern to confer and to adopt measures for general safety. An agreement resulted to station guards at strategic points and to adopt methods for spreading the alarm in case of invasion.15 Not until June, however, is there evi- dence of these local reluctant die-hards having taken any measures for defense. On the 23rd of this month, apparently on instructions by the town, a Committee of Defense made up of Isaac Reed,
14Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed. (Hallowell, 1877), p. 314. 15Eaton, op. cit., p. 315.
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Charles Miller, Jacob Ludwig, Jr., and Payn Elwell submitted the following report:
Report of Committee appointed to consider some suitable system of defense for the towns and of conveying information on the approach of danger ... report that a Committee be appointed to consult with similar committees in the towns of Bristol and Friendship and with the officers of the militia and agree with them on some uniform mode of communicating alarm upon the approach of danger, and that this Com- mittee be authorized to carry such system into effect at the expense of the town; that the Selectmen be requested immediately to cause fifty pounds of powder to be made into cartridges with a ball in each car- tridge, deposit them in portable boxes with two flints to every twenty- four cartridges and lodge them in three places on the eastern side of the river, and in two places on the western side, where the Selectmen shall judge convenient and safe and that information of such places of deposit be made known to the commissioned officers of the militia in this town, and to no others. . .
Isaac Reed
At the same meeting to which this report was submitted, it was voted that a Committee of Safety be appointed "to carry said report into effect and to adopt such other measures for the safety of the town as they shall think fit." This committee, which appar- ently assumed charge of the town's defense for the balance of the war, was made up of Doctor Benjamin Brown, Henry Flagg, Joshua Head, John Stahl, and Payn Elwell. Of this committee of five the first three members were certainly minds of the Federalist pattern, Payn Elwell was a Democrat, and while we may not speak of John Stahl's views with certainty, the early tradition of this family was certainly Democratic. With the Federalists exercising majority control in this committee the responsibility was theirs, not only for the town's abstention from any cooperative effort in the first years of the struggle, but also for the limited measures it was compelled to assume for its own defense in the closing years of the war.
The British, to be sure, were not as yet present on the coast in force, but there was now the ever-present possibility of landing forces from their cruisers striking a quick, destructive blow at any undefended point on the coast. It was to meet such an emergency that all the town cooperated and their militia was mobilized for rapid action. From the Orderly Book of Captain Richard Hiscock, we catch a quick glimpse of the militia in action on the local scene. We read: "You are here by ordered to assemble with all officers and soldiers under your command at your alarm post with the least possible delay and there wait for further orders to repel the enemy force now in New Harbor."16 This was apparently a mere harrying attack, since the enemy did not remain long at this point.
16Libr., Me. Hist. Soc., Portland, Me.
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Lieutenant Levi Soule's guard from Colonel Thatcher's regiment was stationed at Waldoboro from June 30th to July 16th. Among the local citizens in this detail were Corporals Charles Heavener, John Stahl III, Charles Wallace, and Isaac Winchenbach.17 This same detachment saw service at Friendship from October 5th to October 11th, while Lieutenant John Hunt's detail held the Waldo- boro post from July 6th to August 15th.
During these months of 1814 the British continued to raid commerce on the coast. The sloop Betsey of Waldoboro was captured by the Wolverine and the schooner Ranger of Friend- ship by the Lunenburg.18 Sometimes the tables were turned, as when Captain Geyer of the sloop Polly of Waldoboro, on a Sunday evening in November off Cape Ann, with the wind blow- ing fresh, captured the sloop Jefferson, bound for Halifax with a British prize crew aboard, and took her unto Boston.19 The most notable of such captures in the course of 1814 was on June 6th, when the sloop Mary, sailing from Waldoboro, was captured by a barge manned by twenty men from the British frigate Junon. The sloop was burned and the crew taken to Halifax and placed in Melville Island prison. The Mary's crew was made up of Captain Jacob Kaler, Charles W. Kaler, Henry Kaler, and James Benner. They were held at Melville Island for six weeks and were then shipped to Plymouth, England, and here placed in Dartmoor, the prison of black memory. Here they found two Waldoboro friends, young Benjamin Brown and Benjamin Kinsell.
Kinsell had been impressed into the English service, and refusing to fight against his own people, was confined as a prisoner of war. Brown had been captured on an American privateer. James Benner during his confinement took a severe cold while bathing and to all appearances died of pneumonia. Preparations were made for his burial, but after twenty-four hours of sus- pended animation he recovered consciousness, and after remaining delirious for three days began to recover, and ultimately died in Waldoboro, September 3, 1873, at the age of eighty-one. All these men were in the infamous "Dartmoor Prison Massacre," when, in order to suppress a supposed mutiny, a company of Eng- lish soldiers fired on and killed seven American prisoners and wounded sixty others, thirty of them dangerously. On the conclu- sion of peace these Waldoboro men were transported to New York. From there they proceeded to Boston and took passage from that port for Waldoboro with Captain Charles Samson.20
17Lincoln Co. War of 1812 payrolls.
18Nova Scotia Hist. Soc., Memo of Prizes Taken, War of 1812, Vols. 11-13. 1ºN. Y. Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 10, 1814.
20Oral tradition of Capt. Charles Kaler, cited by S. L. Miller, History of Waldo- boro (Wiscasset, 1910), pp. 113-114.
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In the summer of 1814 the war situation became more serious for New England. By July, Sir Thomas Hardy had moved in with a sizable land and naval force from Halifax and seized a consider- able section of the Maine coast. Governor Strong, acting in the purely parochial way of New England for the defense of New England, ordered out five thousand militia men. The Waldoboro militia was included in this mobilization. Previous to 1810, there had been two companies enrolled in the town, ununiformed with the exception of the officers. The first of these was Captain Philip Keizer's company, Lieutenant Colonel S. Thatcher's regi- ment. The local unit was headed by Philip Keizer, captain; John Hunt, lieutenant; Friedrich Castner, ensign; sergeants: George Fuller, Gardiner Davis, Zebedee Simmons, and Joseph Vinal; sec- ond sergeants: George Kaler and George Keizer; corporals: Joseph Overlock and Nathaniel Pitcher; musicians: Bradley Maxey and Caleb Howard. The second company, also a part of Thatcher's regiment, was made up of the following: George Clouse, captain; Levi Soule, lieutenant; John Wagner, ensign; sergeants: Godfrey Ludwig, William Clouse, George Kuhn, and Charles Belnap; cor- porals: Eleazer Nash, Jacob Roler III, and Joseph Ludwig.
In 1810 the Waldoboro Light Infantry was organized, equipped and uniformed, a sort of élite guard of the local Federal- ists. It too was attached to Thatcher's regiment and was captained by Charles Miller, brother-in-law of Major Isaac G. Reed. Jacob Ludwig, Jr., was the lieutenant, Thomas Simmons the ensign, John Brown, Samuel Morse, Samuel A. Thomas, and Daniel Samson the sergeants; Daniel Blake, Martin Demuth, John Freeman, and Jacob Barker the corporals; while Christian Walter and James Simmons served as musicians. The three companies constituted a battalion under the command of Major Isaac G. Reed.
On Saturday afternoon, December 3rd, 1814, a courier reached Major Reed with the news that a British fleet had appeared off Camden, and that he was to have his battalion under arms at sunrise the next morning, with three days' rations and ready to march to the defense of Camden. This was short notice, and mes- sengers were scurrying around the town all through the night rounding up men and having them effect the necessary prepara- tions. On Sunday morning the troops were mustered in front of the town house and a roll call showed only eight absentees, some of whom joined the companies before they reached Camden.
After an inspection of the one hundred and seventy-five men a prayer was offered by one of the local clergymen, and the bat- talion with the Light Infantry on the right took up its march, followed a long distance by weeping mothers, wives, and sweet- hearts. The battalion remained at Warren Sunday night and not
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being provided with tents, the men where sheltered in barns and other buildings. On Monday morning the command was ordered to what is now Rockland, where shelter for the night was provided by Jacob Ulmer. Alfred Hovey, quartermaster, was ordered to report to Major Reed, as acting adjutant. On Tuesday the force moved to Camden, where it was joined by the other battalion of Thatcher's regiment, under Major Hawes of Union. Colonel E. Foote's regiment of militia was already at the scene, and the display of this rather formidable force perhaps deterred the enemy from attempting a landing. After the departure of the British the two regiments were reviewed by Major General King of Bath and were then ordered home after a campaign of one week in which not one shot had been fired. The battalion arrived in Waldoboro on Saturday and was quartered in Major Reed's house and barn21 until Monday, when another review took place in Smouse's Field,22 after which the men were dismissed.
In November trouble was brewing again in the Rockland- Camden district. On the 2nd of this month the British brig Furieuse made a demand on Camden for a $40,000 prize cargo which had been seized by a barge from Lincolnville. When a request came to Waldoboro for immediate aid, the available men were organ- ized into a battalion under Isaac G. Reed, and this was rushed to the danger point. At Clam Cove several British ships were sighted fairly close in, and the Major made as great a show of strength as possible by deploying his scant force. This action was thought to have persuaded the ships to withdraw.23
The initial economic dislocation felt in New England in the early months of the war was followed by a period of considerable prosperity. By 1813 the farms were producing larger crops of wheat, corn, and rye, and food conditions improved. With the coastal blockade cutting off contact by sea, farmers transported goods from this area by ox-team to Portland and Boston, and labor was sought on the farms to replace these overland teamsters. The price of wood, lumber, cattle, and all farm produce rose markedly; money became more abundant and a minor boom started. Markets were expanded, for some of the farmers of indifferent patriotism smuggled their produce to Canada or supplied British vessels off the coast. By an Act of Congress in December 1813 this very con- siderable smuggling trade was illegalized by a new embargo, which brought a halt to certain practices in New England's traitorous prosperity. As a consequence the whole section seethed. From Washington Josiah Quincy wrote: "The time has arrived when ordinary opposition will prove futile,"24 while the citizens of
"Demolished in 1951-52.
22The farm now owned by Millard W. Winchenbach, west of Medomak Terrace.
23 Accounts based upon Samuel L. Miller's History of Waldoboro, pp. 115-116.
24Boston Gazette, April 4, 1814.
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Newburyport in Town Meeting declared themselves ready to resist unto blood.
This policy of treasonable opposition was followed by the New England Federalists to the very end of the war, and in Waldo- boro the village squires and their henchmen stood to the finish with their party rather than their country. Their convictions and feelings are boldly and clearly set forth in some resolutions passed unanimously by a convention held in Waldoboro on Septem- ber 30, 1814, made up of delegates from those towns comprising the Third Congressional District convening for the purpose of nominating a candidate for Congress. The show was run by the Waldoboro dons. Benjamin Brown acted as its chairman, and Isaac G. Reed was its secretary. The resolutions which were re- ported and unanimously adopted are the clearest and most direct expression of local Federalism which we have. For this reason they are offered here verbatim, together with interpretative comments revealing their true meaning:
I. Resolved as the sense of this Convention: That the American people are now called upon by every feeling of honour and interest to rescue the country from the disgraceful situation to which it has been reduced by the administration which has sacrificed to party feelings, foreign partialities, the dearest interests of the nation.
This "disgraceful situation" was a war with a foreign power imposed upon the United States by a long series of indignities and acts which could not have been avoided except through the sur- render of sovereign rights, and the "dearest interests" were those of a particular class in American society, namely the Federalist aristocrats, who identified as ruin all forms of social control exer- cised by others than themselves.
II. Resolved that we see no rational prospects effecting this great object except by reasserting and maintaining at every hazard those prin- ciples which in the darkest times guided our fathers and which went before them as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.
All that was being reasserted in this clause was the prevalent political credo of the Federalist Party, and most certainly its coun- terpart could have been found in the "darkest times" only in the attitudes of the Tories of the Revolutionary period.
III. Resolved that while we deprecate the odious measures of a party which has driven the friends of Washington from the councils of the nation, we entertain a Republican jealousy of that vile spirit which would sacrifice our dearest rights to the insidious cry of Union raised by men who would use it as a shield against public indignation, and that we entertain no hope of a speedy and honorable peace except from a radical change of men and measures in our National Government.
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Here the "friends of Washington" who had been driven "from the councils of the nation" were the Federalists themselves, naïve enough through their later party history to pin the sanction of his name to their treasonable acts and utterances. The cry of union branded here as "insidious," had been raised because of the Federalist plots and threats for the dissolution of the union. Even in the year in which these words were penned, New England con- trolled the major part of the specie of the country and one third of its banking capital, and the Federalist newspapers were openly advocating cutting the Federal Government off from any financial support, and thus, by stopping supplies, securing the speedy and honorable peace advocated by the Waldoboro Convention in Resolution III, a peace involving the defeat of their own country by withholding from it the means of continuing the war.
IV. Resolved that we have the utmost confidence in the wisdom, prudence and patriotism of His Excellency, Governor Strong, and that we will exert ourselves to the utmost to aid his prompt, energetic meas- ures for the defense of our native soil.
This Governor Strong who so inspired the confidence of the Waldoboro Convention was the selfsame one who had pro- claimed a day of fasting and mourning when war was declared and had refused to allow the Massachusetts militia to enter Fed- eral service; while "the defense of our native soil" went no fur- ther than the defense of Massachusetts soil. This and nothing more had been counselled by the party leaders in Boston from the out- break of the war, and it is here the selfsame policy reaffirmed by the local Federalists in the closing days of the war. Throughout the struggle they had clung consistently to this fundamental policy.
V. Resolved that venerating the spirit which made this country independent, great, prosperous, we will use every effort to restore the government to the friends of Washington and with this view we will support Joshua Head, Esq., as candidate to represent this district in the next Congress.25
Benjamin Brown, Chairman Issac G. Reed, Secretary
This resolution by the local Federalists states little more than the one aim to restore control of the national government to them- selves. This was hardly the spirit which made America independ- ent in 1782. In fact, as before stated, we believe that their "spirit" finds its only duplication in American history in the attitudes of the militant Tories of 1775 and the Copperheads of 1861. It is in- teresting to note that in the above document there are no "depre- cating" references to the British capture and burnings in Wash- ington a bare two months before. This was hardly a concern of
25Columbian Sentinel, Boston, Oct. 8, 1814.
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the Federalist mentality which thought of itself as a sectional group whose wise and saving leadership had been rejected by the rest of the nation. If other sections would not have salvation, then New England would reserve salvation for itself, and the Federalist journals had become very outspoken on the question of the dis- solution of the Union, and were whipping up a public sentiment which led straight to the Hartford Convention with its devious agenda and secret discussions pointing toward secession from the Federal Union.
In my judgment little of harsh condemnation should be meted out by history to these local leaders. The basic motivation of their beliefs was neither sordid nor low. Their faith in their political rightness was as fervent and as fixed as their religious beliefs. Theirs was no individual view but rather a party view based upon a po- litical philosophy which was as rational and noble as the principles laid down by Plato in his Republic for the guidance of the ideal statesmen.
The end to intrigue and treason, if it be so construed, came with startling suddenness. First, there was the news of the com- plete defeat of the British in the Battle of New Orleans, and shortly thereafter the Treaty of Peace, two events which possibly averted a disruption of the Union. It was a face-saving ending and an hon- orable peace, to which the Federalists in Waldoboro had contrib- uted nothing. In fact, throughout the struggle their main contri- bution had been one of indirect aid to the British through obstruct- ing their own government's prosecution of the war.
It was on February 14, 1814, that the western mail stage brought to Waldoboro the news that a treaty of peace had been signed the 24th day of the preceding December. Pandemon- ium broke loose in the town, trumpets sounded, people gathered in crowds and cheered, bands played, houses were illuminated, and bonfires kindled. Patriots rejoiced that there had come a peace with honor; Federalists rejoiced that the end had come to the war which they had utterly detested and opposed.
The whole attitude of many of the leading men in the town throughout the struggle certainly provides little cause for pride or satisfaction. There were, to be sure, those who had enlisted in the Federal service for the duration of the war, and had fought and shed their blood on the battlefields of the States and Lower Canada, but for the town leaders and the large majority following their lead, the war had been little more than a matter of consistent denunciation of the Federal Government and noncooperation with its war program; a brief mobilization and a march to Camden; watchful waiting at the key points on the Medomak and the adja- cent coast, a bloodless, silent war with a review at Camden and a mustering out on Smouse's field.
XXXII THE VILLAGE SQUIRES
Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.
PSALM 62
HE PEOPLE IN THE TOWN on the Medomak were slow in stratify- ing into class-conscious groups. In the early years of hardship nearly everybody had been reduced to one dead level by the common factor of suffering. Hunger, cold, disease, danger, and death in the first years fell equally to the lot of all, and compelled the group to organize a society on a basis of mutual aid in which all class distinctions were obliterated. Indeed, in these years there was no ground for such distinctions, for in the main these early German colonists were peasants drawn from one Old World social class. For two decades they faced together one common problem, that of survival, and they faced it as a unified social group.
With the coming of a more permanent peace in the early 1760's following the last of the Indian wars the struggle for sur- vival assumed another form. The fit began to emerge from the dead level of the communal decades, some with more land, some with better land, some with land located at the key points of eco- nomic development, and some with a keener understanding of future economic trends and possessed of the initiative and enter- prise to use such insight for individual profit. Such is the basis of most of the social distinctions in a free society. Capital and wealth accumulate in the hands of a few, while the mass is still struggling for its bread.
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