USA > New Hampshire > New Hampshire and Vermont : an historical study > Part 1
USA > Vermont > New Hampshire and Vermont : an historical study > Part 1
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.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
ـمعوح
中文
Ge 974.2
1770180
M. L ..
PEYROUDE HE TORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Go
E
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00074 9587
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
http://www.archive.org/details/newhampshireverm00haze
NEW HAMPSHIRE AND VERMONT:
AN HISTORICAL STUDY.
BY REV. HENRY A. HAZEN, D. D., OF MASSACHUSETTS.
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the New Hampshire Historical Society.]
CONCORD, N. H. Republican Press Association 1894.
1:
F 842 .41
Hazen, Henry Allen) 1832-1900. " New Hampshire and Vermont : an historical study. By Rev. Henry A. Hazen ..
15 p. 25cm.
Einder's title: History of New Hampshire.
SHELF CARE
1. New Hampshire-Hist. 2. Vermont-Hist. historical society, Concord.
I. New Hampshire
4-33435+ - 55954
Library of Congress ₣49.H42
1770180
ADDRESS.
NEW HAMPSHIRE AND VERMONT : AN HISTORICAL STUDY.
A loyal son of Vermont, bidden by your kind favor to ad- dress the New Hampshire Historical Society, I find a natural and inviting theme in a study of the common history of these sister states, with some of the parallels and contrasts suggested by such a review.
In the great sisterhood of American states constituting our continental republic. Vermont and New Hampshire stand side by side, in a relationship very near, and in some respects unique. Their united territory forms a parallelogram, approximately 160 miles long and 120 miles broad, bisected by the diagonal course of the Connecticut river, which gives New Hampshire two thirds of the whole breadth at the south line, and Vermont two thirds at the north line. Vermont has slightly the larger area. ,By the census of ISSo, New Hampshire has 9.005 square miles, and Vermont 9, 135. Some authorities give Vermont a larger area.
If I were geologically wise, and able to explore with you the " story of the rocks," and alluvial deposit, we might traverse fields of great interest. Whether in such a discussion I could show Mansfield to be older than Washington, or Champlain more recent than Winnipiseogee, in the vast periods of planetary formation, are questions beyond our present range. But if the old world is the newer, as science assures us, the Vermont of a 100 years' history, may geologically outrank her elder sister,
4
and imagination may take a wide and interested flight among such fancies.
But limiting ourselves to the history, which is your province, New Hampshire has twice the age of Vermont.
And yet, we may remind ourselves, that a European saw the sun rise over the Green mountains, some years earlier than the White mountains come within the range of human records. Champlain sailed up the beautiful lake, whose name is his best monument, in 1609-11 years earlier than the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and 14 years before the Hiltons came to New Hampshire. But the Hiltons were Englishmen, and Champlain was a Frenchman ; they had come to stay, and develop the stay- ing qualities of the Anglo-Saxon ; and it was not till the same race appeared at Bennington, almost 150 years after, that Vermont history began. Judged by American standards, then, New Hampshire is old, and Vermont is young ; though on a wider scale of comparison, European, or Asiatic, each is alike modern,-and the difference of 125 years between them, is too trifling to weigh much in comparative estimates. Yet, it is only truth to say that the Vermont of to-day, cannot be rightly under- stood, if we overlook the fact how brief her record is, and that the children of men who, with Allen and Chittenden and War- ner helped to lay the foundations, still survive to tell her story, with some of the animation, caught from the very actors.
Each state has a large element of romance interwoven with its beginnings. You, who are more familiar than I with the early life of New Hampshire, understand this very well. You know that the more carefully this mine is explored, the more attractive it becomes. Heroism is not wanting which would have illumined the pages of English or Roman story. As your children of coming generations study these records they will become brighter, and this not simply on the familiar principle of distance lending enchantment. They will, in fact, be better understood. Those who come after us will know better than we do, the difficulties with which the early New Hampshire men had to contend, and will be prepared to do more exact justice to the patience, courage, and wisdom with which they planted their homes in the wilderness, guarded
5
their precious heritage from foes within and without, and reared the structure of the state to the fair proportions she has reached. Growths of this kind can be neither hasty nor accidental. Nothing in history is accidental, and the harvest always shows what kind of seed has been sown. The faith, the courage, the prayers, the patriotism of generations of ear- nest men and women are interwoven in the fabric of New Hampshire's heritage, as she comes into your keeping.
It would be interesting to single out and dwell upon illus- trations of what I have in mind ; but the single instance of the Lovewell expedition and its results, is the only one I can allude to. For two generations the dark cloud of Indian perils had hung over the colony. Settlements were restricted, invit- ing fields were left unoccupied, and occasionally the shrill war whoop sounded the death-knell of some unsuspecting settler. The situation had become intolerable to brave men, and at last they gathered up their scanty forces and went forth to grapple with the stealthy foe on his own ground. The skill, the cour- age, the endurance which found expression in that tedious march into the depths of the wilderness, and the successful struggle by Pequawkett were masterly. A braver deed has rarely shown manhood at its best. It will yet inspire higher and truer strains than the good minister of Haverhill was master of. The result was decisive, and the fear of the red men ceased to disturb the dreams of eastern and southern New Hampshire. When our civilization is older, and we come to appreciate, as we do not yet, the significance of monumental remembrance of our heroic men, New Hampshire will, in some such form, teach her children to remember and honor John Lovewell and Seth Wyman.
Vermont vies with New Hampshire in the picturesque and romantic elements of her early life. The beautiful virgin wilderness awaiting the occupancy of civilized man ; the con- test of New York and New Hampshire for its possession ; the sturdy settlers gradually finding out that their own interests were not identical with those of either contestant, or secure in their keeping, and the increasing clearness and force with which they came to the discovery and defence of their own
6
rights, asserting them against all comers, are elements of a story fascinating and instructive. Misunderstood or opposed by their neighbors on every side, the Green Mountain Boys maintained their ground with a statesmanship which, on broader fields, must have been recognized as masterly. And, at last, after fourteen years of practical independence, when the United States was ready to welcome them, without haste, but with some hesitation, they yielded, and Vermont became the eldest daughter of the new republic.
On one point we may recognize, and I am sure a New Hampshire Society will agree with me in remarking, the superior felicity of Vermont, in her name. Our best state names are those which are indigenous with a flavor of the soil- American in the best sense-and some of them in dignity and fitness are of supreme excellence. Ohio, Alabama, and Oregon could not be improved. For such use, a compound name is necessarily bad, and when it is a foreign importation it is much the worse ; and the double misfortune is yours. If your founders had been given the wisdom to choose from among such names as Merrimack, Pascataqua, Chocorua, Naticott, Amoskeag, and Laconia, the gain of fitness, elegance, and convenience would have been great.
The excellence of Vermont, as a name, is the more surprising from the fact that it is not indigenous, but is, so far as we know, simply a French fancy as the beholder gazed with pleasure on her hills and mountains. It has the capital merit of being both unique and fit, and helps to inspire the loving loyalty of her sons and daughters. There is much in a name.
That there is such a name, or such a state calling for any name, is one of those historic developments on which we may dwell for a little : it is one of the surprises of our American history. New Hampshire missed, narrowly, from holding Lake Champlain for her western boundary. The claims of New York were too remote and tenuous to have stood against any intelligent and resolute purpose of New Hampshire to hold the western half of what might have been her broad domain. The grant to the Duke of York was very doubtful in terms; it represented an ignorance of geography as dense as that which
7
assumed the westward course of the Merrimack, and it had been so long in abeyance that no real rights could have been sacri- ficed and no injustice done, if the claim had never been asserted or heard of again.
Equitably, the Green Mountain territory was open to the possession of any company of men and women ready to make their homes in the wilderness, and transform it to the purposes of civilization ; and no state had such prior rights of domain, that they could fairly be set up in the face of, and in resistance to, such settlement. And when the Bennington men went to Governor Wentworth for their charter, there can be little question that they recognized the largest proprieties of the situation, that his right to give what they sought was better than that of any other authority, and that the jurisdiction of New Hampshire would be most natural and helpful to them. And when, after the interruption occasioned by the French and Indian War, the currents of settlement were again in motion from Connecticut and Massachusetts, the case was essentially unchanged. The natural impulse of the settlers was to look to New Hampshire for government and protection. New Hamp- shire had only to respond in order to become mistress of the situation, and find her citizens west of the Connecticut as loyal as on the east.
.But government meant protection, and protection involved expense. The authorities of New Hampshire hesitated ; the Grants were remote, and a wilderness lay between them and Exeter, or even Concord. The population was scant, its wealth more scant, and when the call came for forts and forces to man them, at Brattleboro and farther west, we can see the reasons for their negative. They were not ambitious ; they did not want more territory, perhaps, and thought they had more than their children could need, and they left the Grants to care for themselves. Massachusetts was not wholly deaf to their plea, for the reason, it may be, that there were more Massachu- setts people among the settlers, and gave help at Fort Dummer. But, substantially, the Grants wrought out their own problems of defence and development, and were a law unto themselves, with results of which their children may well be proud.
8
It was at this early point that New Hampshire missed her great opportunity. A broader vision and a brave, enterprising faith on the part of her leaders could have secured, and prob- ably with much less expense or danger than they feared, the extension of New Hampshire from the ocean to Champlain. For the result, I have no regrets, as probably you have none. Each state has developed the high qualities worthy of separate statehood ; each has followed the lines of her own develop- ment with a success which might have gained little, and might have lost somewhat from a union of currents ; and, on the stage of our national life, each has had two senators instead of one, and we cannot go far in recalling the names of Vermont and New Hampshire senators without a very strong conviction of their value to the country, and how much the country would have lost if half of them had been denied these opportunities or public service. But one who ever ventures to dream of the " might have been," will hardly miss his chance to picture the commonwealth which New Hampshire could have become, and the place she could have had on the roll of the United States, in breadth and wealth of population and power, if her history had unfolded in this ample fashion and she had become an earlier and New England Montana.
I have spoken of your great opportunity, not forgetting that the emphasis rests on the adjective. As we shall see, others followed ; but they had become less simple. The pretensions of New York had thriven, in the opportunity given by New Hampshire's neglect. New conditions had arisen, and new interests ; the people of the grants had ceased to be united for New Hampshire, as a firm hand might easily have held them ; national policy had become an element in the case, and, whether she desired to do so, or not, New Hampshire could not recover the ground she had lost. Two stars were emblazoned, instead of one, on our national escutcheon.
Our historical students are learning more and more how interesting a subject is found in the play of forces and varying phases of the drama enacted in the Connecticut valley, and in the semi-independent position of Vermont, while the Revolutionary struggle was in progress. Much has been written, and some
9
things very well written, upon the subject. But the situation is not complex or obscure to the student, who accepts and remem- bers a few controlling facts.
From the day when Thomas Hooker and his company found themselves cramped in Newtown and impelled to seek more land at Hartford, this craving has been the characteristic of genuine Americans. But a more inviting opportunity has sel- dom opened before them than that which the peace, following the French war, presented to the men of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the beautiful Connecticut valley and Green Mountain region. They had long felt the attraction, and when the danger was removed they were ready for a forward move- ment, as rapid as their circumstances would admit. In spite of greater distance, Connecticut was foremost. Securing their charters from Governor Wentworth, and probably at the out- set, with no thought that New Hampshire could fail to defend and include them, their homes began to multiply on both sides of the river in Chester and Charlestown, Windsor and Cornish, Hartford and Lebanon. Of the river as a dividing line, they had no thought. They were neighbors and friends, and repelled the idea of separation. At the outset, there is no rea- son to suppose that they thought of a new state. That idea was the growth of later conditions. If New Hampshire had welcomed them and extended her civil mantle over them, inviting their loyalty, she would have found no more faithful citizens.
Very early in the movement a new force came into it with important influence. The pastor of one of the churches, from which this colonizing stream was flowing, had for several years sustained an Indian school. It needed a better location and ampler. opportunity, and this sagacious man saw that he could join his neighbors in their new settlement, to their com- mon advantage. It was no accident which led Wheelock to Hanover. He came naturally, with those whom he knew, and founded Dartmouth college, " vox clamantis in deserto." But if he had dreamed that a location on the east side of the river would have involved ultimately his separation from neighbors on the west side, there is small probability that he
10
would not have chosen the west, and Norwich, or Fairlee, or Windsor might have been the home of Dartmouth.
It is easy in the light of these facts to appreciate the position of the Connecticut Valley settlers, when it dawned upon them that they were not to be included in New Hampshire. If not all, then not any, was their feeling. They had come to the wilderness together. The country they regarded as alike open to their common occupancy. It was not clear to them, it can scarcely be clear to us, why, if New Hampshire extended beyond the Mason line, it should stop short of Champlain. The river was an afterthought and an expediency to New Hamp- shire, the propriety of which they were not called upon to recognize, with its ruthless sundering of ties and plans so dear to them. But if it cost the average citizens along the river a pang to contemplate separation, their relations to Dartmouth college contributed a still more vital element to the case. To this company of colonists on both sides the river the college was dear, and alike dear. It belonged to them in faith, and prayer, and interest, and they cherished it. A state line to sever many of them from it, they had no intention of accepting, - if they could help it, and they did not believe that any righteous principle demanded such a sacrifice of them.
It has been charged as a matter of reproach that the Dres- den men were the centre and inspiration of the hostility to New Hampshire and that the river would have been easily accepted as a boundary, if Wheelock and his friends had not stirred opposition. Very likely that is the fact, and I do not know that discredit to any one is involved in that fact. The college men were naturally leaders in a movement in which all
had a rightful interest. They were able men and good · writers. The tract which they issued from the Dresden press in 1777, " A Public Defense of the Rights of the Grants on Both Sides the Connecticut River to Form a Single State," would have done credit to any political writer of the time. This was the prime point of their contention, and the propriety of it has never been disproved, except by the strong hand. Hence, when New Hampshire declined to cross the river, they said that she had no right to come to the river and divide them,
-
11
that the heights within which the Masonian line was drawn were her legitimate bound. The valley towns east of the river sent their representatives to the legislature of the new state, and the Vermont legislature once met in Cornish.
It is no part of my purpose, neither my time nor your patience would permit me, to try to thread the mazes of policy, through which the final results were reached. A compact of union with the eastern towns was twice made and dissolved, and naturally there were troubles and excitements attending process. In my judgment they all have explanation in the facts I have here recalled, and it is an explanation which does credit to the heads and hearts of the Green Mountain Boys. Their desire to include the eastern towns was not ambitious, or in any way unworthy. They were simply faithful to breth- ren and friends, and they did not seem to themselves to be straining any point of duty towards New Hampshire in what they did.
The relations of New York to the territory and the contest were very different. The claim which, after almost a hundred years from the grant to the Duke of York, was put forward was unnatural, and is open to the suspicion that the greed of speculators inspired it. Be that as it may, it came near suc- cess, and one cannot help some wonder that it did not succeed. It had a strong and ambitious state behind it, and so much in its favor that many of the New Hampshire grantees, when they found that they could not rely on her to defend their title, turned not unnaturally to New York for security.
When the Green Mountain Boys launched the craft of their New Connecticut, a candid looker-on might have been for- given for doubts if she could ever outride the storm and find a safe harbor. But there were sturdy seamen on board and sagacious leaders-men as dauntless and wise as ever had to do with the making of a state. Chittenden stands worthily first, whose patience was equal to his tact and skill, lacking possibly the popular and hero-making elements of the Allens, or the military qualities of Seth Warner, but superior to either in moulding the affairs of state, and through clouds and tem- pests guiding the ship to her desired haven.
12
He has been charged with disloyalty in connection with the " Haldemand" negotiations, and it may be doubted if the time has yet come, if the facts are all in, for the telling of that story fully. But my study of it seems to me to make it clear that that correspondence (read between the lines) reveals a percep- tion of the perils to which Vermont was exposed, and the means of defence, which was masterly. In a good sense, and with full justification, as I believe, he temporized. It was the best way, perhaps the only way, to save his beloved state from destruction. In the same circumstances Washington would have done as he did, and had the plaudits of history for his courageous wisdom. Doubtless he misled his enemies. Has any great commander ever hesitated to do it if he could? But that he did it by means inconsistent with truth and justice has never been proved and never can be.
One result which New Hampshire secured, in holding the Connecticut as her boundary, is, the possession of Dartmouth college. For her it was a most fortunate result, and may well have been one of her motives. No institution of the state has contributed so much to her high character and fame. The association of these two names is intimate and world-wide, and you may well be proud of it. Among the older states, only Rhode Island has shown similar wisdom in planting no rival, but making one such institution the depositary of all her higher educational force. To Vermont the loss was partial only, for the doors of Dartmouth have always invited and received her students, sometimes in almost equal numbers with New Hamp- shire's sons. By the test of the graduate number of her sons, it would not be strange if Dartmouth could claim to be as truly a Vermont college as either of those which she has herself planted ; but if Vermont had retained her early college, it might have saved her the misfortune of two smaller and rival institutions.
New Hampshire can afford to deal generously by her one college-in fact, she cannot afford not to do it, for no possible investment of her wealth and influence is so sure of permanent and large returns. You recognize the fact that the Dartmouth of the past has brought uplift, comfort, wealth, and power to
13
the state, which are measureless. Is the Dartmouth of the next hundred years to bear similar fruit and in similar propor- tions? If it is to do so. it can only be as New Hampshire shall put her best life into the college, keep her in the forefront of the best thought and life of the times, see that her resources are adequate to her needs, and that she is worthy to train your sons (and, shall I add, your daughters? Why not?) of the coming years.
The best product of any state is in her sons and daughters. Whether they stay by the hearth-stone, or reach out for wider opportunities, the men and women whom the state gives to the world prove the character of the state. That is the true test of her institutions and her life, not the multitude of her material products. New Hampshire may welcome the appli- cation of such a test. Her children are in all the land and all the world. She has given the country a president, more than one cabinet officer, judges, with one illustrious chief-justice, senators and representatives in great numbers, including the prince of all our senators, merchant princes in all our marts of commerce, educators who have filled high places usefully and honorably, men who have adorned the learned professions, ministers of the gospel who have carried the tidings of heaven's love to men to all the land and to all the world ;- to call the roll of even a few such men would be invidious as needless. The suggestion only will call to your minds a " great cloud of witnesses " testifying the fact I would emphasize. But these are not all. I doubt if all these are so priceless a contribution to the life of the country as the plain men and women, many in the humbler walks of life, who have gone forth to help build other states, and especially our newer states. What would our great West be to-day but for the leaven which they have con- tributed to its moulding, if the ignorance and the greed of the multitudes from other lands had been left to work out their natural results without the guiding influence of neighbors trained in American ideas, civil and religious? Of such, New Hampshire and Vermont have contributed more than their proportion. It is a grand proof of their quality, that they have been able to send out such representatives ; and it is a narrow
14
view which laments their departure, or deems them lost to their parent states. "There is that scattereth, and yet increas- eth." The " greater Britain " is a favorite theme ; the greater Vermont and New Hampshire finds no bound this side of the Pacific.
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.