USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 49
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1836]
ence over the people of the State. He possessed great native talent, indomitable energy, industry, and perseverance. As a political editor he had few equals. His reputation extended throughout the country. He was kind and amiable. He died in March, 1851.
In the year 1836 Congress voted to distribute about thirty-six millions of dollars of surplus revenue, then lying in the Treasury, among the several States. These millions had accumulated from the sales of public lands, and were still increasing. The national debt had been all paid. General Jackson told his party that this money was a source of danger to the liberties of the country. The Democratic party in those days was hostile to internal improvements, and opposed them everywhere. Rail- roads were built by individual energy ; rivers were obstructed by snags, sawyers, rafts, and sand-bars, and even the harbors of the lakes, and the St. Clair flats, were found pretty much in the condition nature left them. This money was to be distributed in four instalments, - three of which were paid when an angry cloud hovered over our northern borders, threatening war with England, and the fourth instalment of nine millions was re- tained to pay the expenses of transporting troops to Maine, to Niagara, and to the Indian Stream country in northern New Hampshire. The amount paid over to New Hampshire ex- ceeded $800,000. The legislature voted to divide the money among the towns in proportion to population.
In the fall and winter of 1836 Hon. Boswell Stevens, of Pem- broke, held the office of judge of Probate for Merrimack county. He was an able lawyer, and a popular and upright judge. During the session of the legislature of that year he was struck with a paralysis, entirely disabling him from ability to discharge the duties of his office. His case came before the legislature at their fall session. The evidence of able physicians was received that there was no reasonable prospect of his recovery. Accord- ingly, both branches of the legislature united in an address to the governor, requesting his removal from office. The place of the judge was soon occupied by his successor. Judge Stevens died in January of the next year.
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HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
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After protracted litigation the proprietors of the fourth turnpike were victorious over their enemies. The Court of Common Pleas, at the first term, 1837, obeyed the mandate of the higher court. The corporation, standing upon the thin edge of a technicality, had won a barren victory which presaged ulti- mate defeat. The whole community, with the tavern keepers and stage proprietors and drivers on the lead, united for free roads.
On July 2, 1838, they carried through the legislature an Act authorizing selectmen and the court to take the franchise and other rights of corpora- tions for public highways in the same manner as they took the land of indi- viduals.
The assault soon commenced all along the line. A monster petition, headed by Reuben G. Johnson, to free the turnpike from West Andover to its Boscawen terminus was filed in the Court of Common Pleas for Merrimack county, February 11, 1839.
At the term of that court commencing on the third Tuesday of March, 1839, Simeon P. Colby, Jesse Carr, and Stephen Sibley were appointed a court's committee thereon. At the September term, 1839, Moses Norris, jr., of Pitts- field, and Nathaniel S. Berry, of Hebron, were substituted for Carr and Sibley. The hearing was had at Johnson's tavern - the Bonney place-in Boscawen, October 28, 1839, and lasted seven days.
They freed the turnpike, and ordered that Andover should pay $566, Salis- bury, $600, and Boscawen, $534, for the benefit of the stock-holders of the turnpike. The report was accepted at the March term, 1840. Upon similar petitions the turnpike had been freed from the other termini to Grafton line. The great highway thereafter swarmed with travel as it never had done before.
But in 1846-7-8, by successive steps, the Northern Railroad was put through from Concord to White River. A great revolution had thus been wrought. The thoroughfare, with its long lines of pod, gimlet, and big teams, and its whirring stage coaches teeming with life and animation, became almost as silent as a deserted grave-yard. The taverns which dotted almost every mile were silent, too, and the great stables at the stage stations and elsewhere, filled with emptiness, looked like the spared monuments of another period.
Railroads have taken the place of canals and turnpike roads.
The foregoing account of the fourth New Hampshire turn- pike is taken from an extended account written by John M. Shirley and published in the Granite Monthly. The other turn- pikes of the State suffered the same or similar fate. Like the toll bridges they became the property of the town, or the county, or were disused.
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TURNPIKES, CANALS, RAILROADS.
1839]
John Page, jr., was elected governor in 1839, and re-elected in 1840 and in 1841. He was a native of Haverhill, born in 1787, and son of John Page, the first white man that wintered in the town. He served on the northern frontier in the 1812 war, fre- quently represented Haverhill in the legislature, was register of deeds of Grafton county in 1827, and again from 1829 to 1835, when he was elected United States senator to serve the unex- pired term of Governor Isaac Hill. He was interested in agriculture, and promoted Dr. Jackson's geological survey of the State. He died in 1865.1
In March, 1839, Edmund Burke of Newport was elected to Congress. Mr. Burke was born in Westminster, Vt., in January, 1809, studied Latin with Hon. Henry A. Bellows, afterwards chief justice of New Hampshire, and read law.
2 At the close of his Congressional labors, March 4, 1845, Mr. Burke entered upon the duties of the office of commissioner of patents, to which he was appointed without solicitation on his part by his friend Mr. Polk.
In the summer of 1850 Mr. Burke returned to his home in Newport, and resumed the active practice of his profession as a lawyer, which he steadily pursued with great success for over thirty years, attaining a position at the bar second to that of no lawyer in the State.
He was prominent in the Democratic councils in the State, and ever after the period of his Congressional service was regarded, throughout the country, as one of the foremost representatives of the New Hampshire Democracy. In the conventions of his party, State and national, he took a conspicuous part. He presided at the Democratic State convention in Concord in the summer of 1853, and again in the winter of 1866-7. He was a delegate from New Hamp- shire to the national Democratic convention in Baltimore, in 1844, which nominated James K. Polk for president, and to the convention holden in the same city in 1852, in which Franklin Pierce received the presidential nomina- tion. It may here properly be remarked that to the strong influence of Mr. Burke, properly exercised through his extended acquaintance and high stand- ing with leading men of the party from different sections in the convention, more than to the efforts of any other individual, the choice of the convention was ultimately bestowed upon the then favorite son of the Granite State. Mr. Burke died in 1883.
3 The year 1840 was a notable year in the history of this country. No political campaign ever exceeded this in inter- est and excitement. The Democrats had nominated Martin
' Adjutant-general's Report, 1868, part 2, page 20. 3 Rev. J. I .. Seward.
2 H. H. Metcalf.
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HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
[1840
Van Buren for a second term, and the Whigs had nominated General W. H. Harrison. The shouts for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," the long processions in which were the log cabins and barrels of hard cider, and the excited political debates and stump speeches, will never be forgotten by any one who participated in the eventful campaign. General James Wilson, of Keene, remarkably distinguished himself in this exciting struggle, delivering stump speeches in all parts of the country, and contributing largely to the success won by the Whig party.
General James Wilson was the son of Hon. James Wilson (born in Peter- borough in August, 1766, graduated at Harvard College in 1789, representa- tive to Congress from 1809 to 1811, an able lawyer and a firm Federalist, died in January, 1839) and Elizabeth (Steele) Wilson, and inherited not only the practice but the great talents of his honored father; he was born in Peterborough, March 18, 1797. His early years were passed in his native town. His educational advantages were such as were obtainable in a country town at that time. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, graduated at Mid- dlebury College in 1820, read law with his father and took his practice.
In the military service of his State, General Wilson was deservedly popular. He was appointed captain of the Keene light infantry, January 1, 1821, and rose through all the various ranks until he was made major-general of the Third Division of the New Hampshire militia.
In 1825 he was chosen as one of the two representatives to the General Court from the town of Keene. In 1828 he was elected speaker of the House. In the legislature at that time were Hon. Ezekiel Webster, Hon. B. M. Farley, Hon. Joseph Bell, Hon. P. Noyes, and other noted men. From the year 1825 to the year 1840 inclusive, General Wilson represented Keene in the State legislature, excepting the years 1833, 1838, and 1839. In the last two of the years just named he was Whig candidate for governor, but was de- feated by his Democratic opponent.
He had been famous as an orator and advocate before, but his rhetorical triumphs, at this time, extended his reputation to all parts of the land. His presence was unusually impressive. He was six feet four inches in height, straight, well-built, with black curling hair and bright blue eyes, as fine a set of white, sound teeth as was ever seen, of a stern and determined, yet fascinating and impressive countenance. He delighted to joke about his personal appearance, and would describe himself as a " rough-hewn block from the Granite State." His friends spoke of him familiarly as "Long Jim," "Gen. Jim," etc.
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1840]
He had all the qualifications of a first-class orator. He was a logical think- er, and arranged the subjects of his thought methodically. He was well read in history and the Bible, and was ready with a good illustration to enforce his points. He was a capital story teller, and knew just when and where to tell one. He could laugh or cry at will, and could produce either effect upon his auditors at pleasure. Nor was this done wholly for effect. He was a sincere man. He had fine feelings and instincts and was remarkably humane; and, whenever he spoke, he was tremendously in earnest. He was no hypocrite. His political principles were based on study, reflection, and sound arguments. He had a powerful voice, and could be distinctly heard for many yards in an open field. He had a marvellous command of language and an inexhaustible fund of wit. He was a keen, shrewd observer and a good reader of human nature; hence he knew how to adapt himself to his audience. Possessing all of these manifold qualifications of a first-class orator, it is no wonder that he . gained a hearing in the famous canvass of 1840. Men of every shade of poli- tical opinion flocked to hear him. A curious anecdote of the time is preserved. One day he was making a stump speech in some place, and, in another part of the same field, some distance away, some one was addressing a Democratic assemblage. Some stray auditors from the Democratic fold found their way to the side of the field where Wilson was speaking. They returned with a glowing account of his eloquence. One by one the Democrats went to the other side of the field to hear the famous Whig orator, till finally not a list- ener was left for the Democratic speakers.
The Whigs were victorious, but General Harrison enjoyed his victory only a single month.
The visit of General Wilson to Keene, in 1861, after an ab- sence of more than a decade, was a memorable one. Soon after his arrival, the shot was fired at Sumter, and the regiments be- gan to be formed ready to march to the conflict.
One memorable occasion will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. It was on the 22nd of April, 1861. A mass meeting was announced to be holden in the public square on the morning of that day. General Wilson accepted an invitation to address the meeting. The knowledge of this fact was conveyed to the adjoining towns. An immense aud- ience assembled, filling the square. It was the general's first public appearance since his arrival. As the hour for the speak- ing drew near, a band proceeded to the general's residence and escorted his carriage to the grand stand. When the door was opened, and the familiar form of the old hero was seen mounting the rostrum, such a tumultuous applause was heard as was never known in Keene before. Old friends from Keene
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HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
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and the adjoining towns were there in great numbers, repre- senting all occupations and professions. When he began to speak, all voices were hushed. It was the same grand old voice, with its familiar ring, the same telling and forcible gestures, the same oratorical power, with fun and anecdote alternating with the most solemn and pathetic passages, the same earnestness, and the same persuasive and convincing eloquence which so many had heard in former days from the same lips.
It was a scene never to be forgotten by those who were pres- ent ; and it did much good, the immediate effect being to add many names to the roll of enlistments. General Wilson died in Keene in May, 1881.1
2 A charter was obtained from the legislature of New Hampshire in 1836, shortly after the incorporation of the Eastern Railroad in Massachusetts, establishing a company for the purpose of continuing the railroad from the Massachusetts line to Portsmouth. A company was then formed, and a sur- vey and location of the route were made by Mr. Barney, but the stock was not wholly taken up, and no measures were taken for the prosecution of the work, until 1839. An additional Act was then obtained authorizing a new location, with a limitation as to its termination in Portsmouth, and the company was reorganized and the subscription completed. The new company was com- posed in part of individuals who were proprietors in the Massachusetts com- pany, and a majority of the directors chosen were also directors of the latter company. Colonel Fessenden was appointed engineer, and under his direc- tion new surveys of the route were made. He made a report to the directors on two lines, an eastern and western. The western line, although a little longer than the other, was recommended by him as entitled to the preference, as having fewer curves, a less extent of bridges, and not crossing any naviga- ble streams. It also passes near a greater 'amount of population. This route was adopted by the directors, and the grading of the line was soon after contracted for. After leaving the Merrimack river at Newburyport bridge, the line passes west of the old Salisbury village; after reaching Hampton Falls, leaves the village a third of a mile at the west, and the landing on the east, passes a little west of Old Hampton village to Cedar Swamp in Green- land, and after crossing the Greenland road above the plains proceeds to Portsmouth. The termination was originally fixed near the Universalist meeting-house, but by authority of a new Act of the legislature passed in 1840, and with the consent of the inhabitants of Portsmouth by vote in town meet- ing, it is changed to a point in the northerly part of the town, where it may be extended, if it should hereafter be determined so to do, by a bridge over Piscataqua river. The length of the line thus located in New Hampshire is fifteen miles and two thousand five hundred and seventy feet, and from Mer-
I Rev. J. 1 .. Seward.
2 Contemporary Magazine Article.
1840]
TURNPIKES, CANALS, RAILROADS.
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rimack river nineteen miles one thousand and eighty feet. Of this distance, eighteen and a third miles are straight, and the residue curved on a radius not less than a mile. About five miles of the distance are level, and the gra- dients for the residue vary from fifteen to thirty-five feet per mile; the greatest elevation being about ninety feet above the marsh level. The whole length of the railroad from East Boston to Portsmouth is thus fifty-three miles two thousand three hundred and ninety feet.
The remaining portion of the Eastern Railroad in Massachusetts, interven- ing between Newburyport and the New Hampshire line, was put under con- tract for grading, as was also the erection of the bridge over the Merrimack river at Newburyport, in the summer of 1839, to be completed in the follow- ing summer. These two portions of this railroad were opened in 1840.
Photo Cho Co UK
CHAPTER XVIII.
ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION, 1841-1860.
STEPHEN S. FOSTER - HARRY HUBBARD - PITTSBURG -INDIAN STREAM WAR -JOHN H. STEELE - JOHN P. HALE - ANTHONY COLBY - MAN- CHESTER -JARED W. WILLIAMS - SAMUEL DINSMOOR, JR. - DR. NOAH MARTIN - FRANKLIN PIERCE - KANSAS - COUNTESS RUMFORD -NA- THANIEL B. BAKER -- RALPH METCALF - DANIEL CLARK - WILLIAM W. HAILE - ICHABOD GOODWIN - REMINISCENCES.
M R. STEPHEN S. FOSTER,1 the zealous abolitionist, faith- ful to the enslaved and to his own solemn convictions, con- ceived the idea of entering the meeting-houses on Sunday, and at the hour of sermon respectfully rising and claiming the right to be heard then and there on the duties and obligations of the church to those who were in bonds at the South.
This measure he first adopted in the Old North church, at Concord, in Sep- tember, 1841. He was immediately seized by " three young gentlemen, one a Southerner from Alabama, and the other two guards at the State Prison, thrust along the broad aisle and violently pushed out of the house." A full account of the transaction was published in the Herald of Freedom on the following Friday. 17th of the same month. But Mr. Foster could not be deterred from his purpose. And the measure proved so effective as a means of awakening the public attention to the importance of the anti-slavery enter- prise, that others were led to adopt it. Of course it led to persecution, and some were imprisoned for the offence, - Mr. Foster as many as ten or twelve times, in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Perhaps his most memorable experience at the hands of the civil law, at the time, was in Concord, in June, 1842. On Sunday, the twelfth of that month, being in Concord, he went in the afternoon to the South church, and at the time of sermon he rose in a pew at the side of the pulpit, and commenced speaking in his usual solemn and deeply impressive manner. He evidently would have been heard, and with deep attention, too, for many in the house not only knew him well, but
I Parker Pillsbury.
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1841]
knew that this was a course not unusual with him, and one in the rightful- ness of which he conscientiously believed, and, besides, was sometimes able to make most useful and effective. Even the Unitarian society, one Sunday, gave him respectful hearing; the minister, Rev. Mr. Tilden, even inviting him to speak.
But not just so the South church; there he was immediately seized and rushed with great violence to the door, and then pitched headlong down the rough stone steps to the street, injuring him so severely that he had to be helped to his lodgings, and a surgeon was called immediately to attend him. Fortunately no bones were broken nor dislocated, but bruises and sprains compelled his walking with a cane for several days. But that was not all. On Monday he was arrested by leading members of the church " for disturb- ing public worship," and carried before a magistrate for trial. Perhaps no justice's court in Concord ever excited profounder interest than did this. But Foster came most triumphantly out of it. Even the small fine imposed as matter of form was paid, and nearly doubly paid, by the throng that crowded the room, tossing their quarter and half dollars on to the table. The kind- hearted magistrate, seeing that he would be sustained, remitted the fine and the costs, and Mr. Foster was discharged, amid the acclamations of the mul- titude that filled the court room, and then, with louder cheers, demanded that all the money be taken from the table and handed over to Mr. Foster. And it was done.
Stephen S. Foster was a native of New Hampshire. Long before slavery was abolished, or had appealed to the arbitrament of war as a forlorn hope, he had seen and demonstrated that his native State had profounder interests in it than any of its wisest sages, statesmen, clergymen, or churchmen had ever dreamed. Though among the least of her sister States, the war of the Rebellion drew away from her noblest, bravest, strongest sons more than thirty thousand ; and over four thousand perished in battle, or by disease and exposure inseparable from war, so often more dreadful than death at the cannon's mouth ! All this, not to speak of other thousands who escaped death, but pruned of limbs, plucked of eyes, and scarred and disabled for life by the iron hail-stones of the bloody field. All this, not counting the sighs and tears, bereavements and losses of mothers, sisters, widows, and orphans. All this, not reckoning financial, moral, nor spiritual impoverishment and desolation, not to be restored even by the incoming generation !
And so slavery became a New Hampshire institution after all ; and Stephen Foster, being native to the State, and superemi-
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nently an anti-slavery man, had intellectual and moral gifts and graces of which any State might be proud.
Stephen Symonds Foster was born in Canterbury, in November, 1809. His father was Colonel Asa Foster, of Revolutionary memory, and of most amiable and excellent qualities and endowments. Mrs. Foster, too, was re- markable for sweetness of disposition and fine culture for her time, joined to elegance and beauty of person, lasting to great age ; both herself and husband almost completing a century. The old homestead is in the north part of Canterbury, on a beautiful hillside, overlooking a long stretch of the Merri- mack river valley, including Concord, and a wide view, east and west, as well as south.
His parents were most devout and exemplary members of the Congrega- tional church, to which he also was joined in youthful years. At that time, the call for ministers and missionaries, especially to occupy the new opening field at the West, called then " the great valley of the Mississippi," was loud and earnest. At twenty-two he heard and heeded it, and immediately entered on a course of collegiate study to that end, and it is only just to say that a more consistent, conscientious, divinely consecrated spirit never set itself to prepare for that then counted holiest of callings.
With him "Love your enemies" was more than words, and " Resist not evil" was not returning evil, nor inflicting penalties under human enact- ments.
In Dartmouth College he was called to perform military service. On Christian principles he declined, and was arrested and dragged away to jail. So bad were the roads that a part of the way the sheriff was compelled to ask him to leave the carriage and walk. He would cheerfully have walked all the way, as once did George Fox, good naturedly telling the officer, "Thee need not go thyself; send thy boy, I know the way." For Foster feared no prison cells. He had earnest work in hand, which led through many of them in subsequent years.
Eternal Goodness might have had objects in view in sending him to Haver- hill, for he found the jail in a condition to demand the hand of a Hercules, as in the " Augean " stables, for its cleansing. His companions there were poor debtors, as well as thieves, murderers, and lesser felons. One man so gained his confidence as to whisper in his ear that on his hands was the blood of murder, though none knew it but himself. Another poor wretch had been so long confined by illness to his miserable bed, that it literally swarmed with vermin.
Foster wrote and sent to the world such a letter as few but he could write, and wakened general horror and indignation wherever it was read; and a cleansing operation was forthwith instituted. And the filth on the floor was found so deep., and so hard trodden, that strong men had to come with pick- axes and dig it up. And that jail was not only revolutionized, but the whole prison system of the State, from that time, began to be reformed; and im- prisonment for debt was soon heard of here no more.
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His college studies closed, he entered for a theological course the Union Seminary in New York.
In 1839 Mr. Foster abandoned all hope of the Congregational ministry, and entered the anti-slavery service, side by side with Garrison of the Boston Liberator, and Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the New Hampshire Herald of Freedom. And from that time onward till slavery was abolished, and indeed to the day of his death, the cause of freedom and humanity, justice and truth, had no more faithful, few if any more able champions.
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