USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Concord > History of Concord, New Hampshire, from the original grant in seventeen hundred and twenty-five to the opening of the twentieth century, Volume I > Part 45
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1 Recollections of Woodbridge Odlin in Concord Monitor, June 27, 1884.
2 See further account of the meeting in a special chapter.
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418
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
ered that great crowd into my arms and swayed it about as the gen- tle winds do the fields of ripening grain. That inspiration never for a moment left me. It followed me over the state during the ensuing campaign, into the senate of the United States, remained with me there, and subsided only when the proclamation of President Lincoln declared that in this land the sun should rise upon no bondman and set upon no slave." 1
The Annexation of Texas, early in 1845, was followed by the open- ing hostilities of the War with Mexico, early in 1846. On the 13th of May of the latter year congress declared and President Polk pro- claimed that "by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that government and the United States." Six days afterwards a battalion of five companies of infantry-to consist of three hundred eighty-nine men-was called for from New Hampshire. The call met with prompt and favorable response. In Concord the light infantry company largely tendered service as volunteers. Fire Engine Company No. 2 voted, " with only one nay," to offer the gov- ernor their services " for the war with Mexico, whenever needed." Three printers in the office of the New Hampshire Patriot-John C. Stowell, Ezra T. Pike, and Henry F. Carswell-stood ready to go to the distant scene of war. And thither they finally went; and, hav- ing done brave and honorable service, perished ; the first two from wounds; the third from disease, after coming unscathed out of the fierce.battles in the valley of Mexico. Soon, too, some twenty citi- zens of Concord volunteered by signing an agreement drawn up by the adjutant-general. Of this number was Franklin Pierce, who had recently declined the attorney-generalship of the United States, and who seemed inclined to persist in his expressed determination to allow nothing but the military service of his country to withdraw him from the pursuits of private life. With inherited tastes and zeal, this favorite party leader and brilliant lawyer now turned his earnest attention to military tactics and drill. As he had believed in Texas annexation, so he believed in the Mexican War, its natural sequel,-and would serve therein.
The first six months of the war had been occupied in General Taylor's successful operations in the vicinity of the Rio Grande, sig- nalized by the victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and the capture of Monterey. In this last achievement, accomplished on the 26th of September, 1846, Second Lieutenant Joseph H. Potter, of the regular United States Infantry-a West Point graduate of three years before, and a classmate of Ulysses S. Grant-participated, and was severely wounded. His gallant and meritorious conduct at
1 See Proceedings at the unveiling of the Hale Statue, p. 170.
419
THE MEXICAN WAR.
Monterey earned for the young officer-born in Concord twenty-five years before, the eldest son of Thomas D. Potter-promotion to a first lieutenancy ; the first of a series of promotions by which he was to reach the grade of brigadier-general in the regular army of the United States.
When it was finally decided to adopt General Scott's plan of con- quest, by marching upon the City of Mexico from Vera Cruz rather than from the scene of General Taylor's operations, congress provided for raising ten new regiments, enlisted for the war, and to be attached to the regulars. Of one of these, the Ninth, or New England regi- ment, Franklin Pierce was appointed colonel on the 16th of Febru- ary, 1847, and on the 3d of the following March was advanced to be a brigadier-general in the United States army. Concord supplied its proportion of volunteers to the rolls of the Ninth regiment. Its men were also to be found in Colonel Caleb Cushing's Massachusetts reg- iment; one of these being Lieutenant Charles F. Low, afterwards of the Ninth.1 In May, upon setting out for Mexico, the popular gen- eral was presented with a handsome sword by ladies of Concord, and by gentlemen, with a valuable horse.
General Pierce, at the head of his brigade of twenty-five hundred men, comprising the Ninth regiment and detachments from others, reached on the 7th of August the main body of Scott's army resting at Puebla. In the further advance upon the cnemy's capital, with the consequent battles of Contreras and Churubusco, fought on the 19th and 20th of August, General Pierce and his brigade partici- pated. While, on the afternoon of the 19th, they were advancing over "the rough volcanic grounds" of Contreras, " so full of fissures and chasms that the enemy considered them impassable," 2 the gen- cral's horse, stepping into a cleft, fell with a broken leg, and heavily threw his rider, who received painful and severe injury. Urged by the surgeon to withdraw, the sufferer refused to do so, and mounting the horse of an officer mortally wounded, remained in the saddle till late into the night. At daylight he was again in the saddle; and though suffering intensely and advised by General Scott to leave the field, he persisted in accompanying his command in the operations against Churubusco. On the advance he was obliged to dismount in crossing a ditch or ravine. "Overcome by the pain of his injured knee, he sank to the ground, unable to proceed, but refused to be taken from the field, and remained under fire until the enemy were routed."3 General Grant, who served through the Mexican War as a second lieutenant of regulars, has left this testimony in his " Per-
1 See lists of Concord men in Mexican War, in note at close of chapter.
2 Correspondence in Adjutant-General's Report, 1868, p. 350.
3 Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. V, p. 8.
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
sonal Memoirs ": 1 "General Franklin Pierce had joined the army in Mexico, at Puebla, a short time before the advance upon the capital commenced. He had consequently not been in any of the engage- ments of the war up to the battle of Contreras. By an unfortunate fall of his horse on the afternoon of the 19th he was painfully injured. The next day, when his brigade, with the other troops engaged on the same field, was ordered against the flank and rear of the enemy, . General Pierce attempted to accompany them. He was not sufficiently recovered to do so, and fainted. This circumstance gave rise to exceedingly unfair and unjust criticisms of him when he became a candidate for the presidency. Whatever General Pierce's qualifications for the presidency, he was a gentleman and a man of courage. I was not a supporter of him politically, but I knew him more intimately than I did any other of the volunteer generals."
General Pierce, having served as a peace commissioner in the inef- fectual armistice that existed for about three weeks, or until the 7th of September, was, on resumption of hostilities, again at the head of his special command and other troops in the fierce battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, where the enemy made the last desperate stand, and whence, on the 14th of September, 1847, the victorious American army entered in triumph the capital of Mexico, and the Mexican War was practically over.
General Pierce was welcomed home to Concord on the 27th of Jan- uary, 1848, where he was greeted at the railroad station by an assem- blage of three or four thousand. He addressed the people at Depot hall, and, in the evening, at a levee held in the state house, received the congratulations of his friends.2
The New Hampshire legislature, in recognition of his war services, voted him a sword; and on the afternoon of June 27, 1849, formal presentation of the elegant memento was made by Governor Dinsmoor, in the presence of the members of the legislature and many citizens assembled in front of the capitol. The ceremony, with its happy words of gift and acceptance, had one silent, unobtrusive, but attentive spectator; it was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had come from his work upon " The Scarlet Letter"-which was to give him world-wide rec- ognition as standing among the foremost of American authors-to grace with his sympathetic presence the occasion of honor to Frank- lin Pierce, his friend.
. As a result of Texas annexation, Democratic ascendancy in New Hampshire was lost in 1846-as already seen; but with the Mexican War, the result of that annexation, in issue, that ascendancy was regained in 1847. The political field was closely contested, and Con-
1 Vol. I, pp, 146-7. ? Bouton's Concord, 484.
421
DEMOCRATIC ASCENDANCY.
cord was an important center of electioneering influences. Espe- cially was this true of its partisan press. The columns of six reg- ular newspapers-the two New Hampshire Patriots, the Statesman, the Courier, the Granite Freeman, the Independent Democrat,-and of three campaigners,-The True Whig, The Rough and Ready, and The Tough and Steady-poured the hot shot of controversial liter- ature over the state. The war had the full Democratic support against the full Whig and Freesoil opposition. It was denounced as a war for the extension of slavery; but the charge was parried by Democratic concession to growing anti-slavery sentiment so far as to uphold the Wilmot Proviso, with its express declaration that no territory acquired from Mexico should be slave territory. This assurance, by allaying scruples as to slavery, helped to restore to the Democratic fold some who had gone into the independent move- ment of the year before, and to restrain others from breaking party ties. Moreover, accession came to Democratic strength through the partisan opposition-often bitter-manifested against the actu- ally existing war with a foreign power, and tending to give aid and comfort to the enemy-an opposition that ran counter to the popular instinct of patriotism, and rendered effective the appeals of the Democratic press and orators against the " Mexican allies," as they chose to designate their party opponents. The aroused senti- ment of country before party caused some renunciation of party ties that helped to ensure Democratic success in this contest. Thus, in one of the largest meetings of the campaign, held in the town hall of Concord on the evening of the 8th of February, 1847, presided over by Jonathan Eastman, a veteran of 1812, General Joseph Low, for nineteen years a leader in the National Republican and Whig party, voiced his renunciation in such decisive words as these: " I think it my duty to stand by the government in its present crisis, and now in this hour, when foes assail from without, and enemies attack at home, I shall be found with the party that supports the government. I take my stand on the side of my country ; patriotism orders it, duty directs it." 1
Democratic ascendancy in the government of the state having been restored as the result of the struggle was to be maintained for eight years, though troubled more or less by the slavery question, which, in some form, would never down until the institution itself should perish. Concord, which in 1846 had given on the governor vote a combined Whig and Freesoil majority of ten, with four scattering, and had elected two-one Democratic and one opposition-of the five or six members of the legislature to which it was entitled, did
1 See A Subscription, in note at close of chapter.
422
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
not, now in the general reactionary movement of 1847, show a dis- position to contribute to Democratic reascendency, giving as it did, ninety-five opposition majority on the state ticket, and electing six anti-Democratic fusion members of the general court. Of these was Asa Fowler, who also served as moderator of the town-meeting by ap- pointment of the two Whig members of the board of selectmen-being the first and the last thus to serve under a short-lived law, passed at one session and repealed at the next. The bitter disappointment felt by the defeated party over the result of the town election, led to un- executed threats of prosecuting the selectmen for unfair and illegal management of the check-list, and to sundry unsustained charges against the winning party, as to the "free use of money in buying up floodwood," "hiring poor Democrats to stay away from the polls," furnishing " Whig dinners at Hook's,"' et cetera. But some such un- satisfactory after-election solace had not been unusual or confined to one party before, as it certainly has not been since. The town, however, in this election, supplied a winning Democratic candidate in the first congressional contest under the district system,-General Charles H. Peaslee being elected representative to congress from the second of the four districts, and the first resident of Concord ever chosen to that position. In 1848 the town increased its anti-Demo- cratic majority on the state vote to one hundred and twelve, and by coalescence the Whigs and Freesoilers secured six members of the legislature. In 1840, although, on the state vote Concord showed an opposition majority of forty, yet, from failure of effective coalition, five Democratic members of the general court were chosen. By 1850 the town had come to stand politically with the state, and contrib- uted its sixty-six majority to the state's more than five thousand for Samuel Dinsmoor, Democratic candidate for governor. It also elected six Democratic members of the general court, one of whom was Nathaniel B. Baker, who became speaker of the house of repre- sentatives at the ensuing session of the legislature-being the second citizen of Concord to hold that office ; the first having been Thomas W. Thompson, thirty-seven years before. The regular Democratic ticket for selectmen was also elected, notwithstanding a somewhat remarkable display of go-as-you-please spirit and of futile attempts of the opposition elements to coalesce with their variety of tickets ; such as the Whig, the Freesoil, the People's, the Temperance, the California, and the Workingmen's. The number of selectmen elected -five instead of three-is the solitary repetition in the history of Concord, of an ancient precedent occurring in 1733, at the transition of the Plantation of Penacook into the Township of Rumford.
1 N. H. Patriot.
423
DEMOCRATIC ASCENDANCY.
In 1851, the third year of the Taylor-Fillmore administration,- placed in power by the Whig party at the sixteenth presidential elec- tion,-some political revulsion in state and town was wrought. For the question of slavery had not been effectually settled, as it was fondly hoped it would be, by the Compromise of 1850, acquiesced in as it was by both Whigs and Democrats. The stringent Fugitive Slave Law, which was one of the Compromise measures, was very repugnant to Northern sentiment. The Reverend John Atwood, who had early in 1851 received and accepted the unanimous Demo- cratic nomination for governor upon a platform unqualifiedly endors- ing the Compromise, ventured, a little later, to express somewhat confidentially his dislike of the fugitive slave law. The fact coming to the ears of the Democratic leaders, the candidate was called to account, and, after recantation and a subsequent disavowal thereof, was dropped by the convention, reassembled, which had recently nominated him, and Samuel Dinsmoor, serving his second term as governor, was substituted. At the ensuing election, the candidate, thus rejected by his party, was supported by the Freesoilers and some Democrats, and received twelve thousand votes. Governor Dinsmoor, being in a minority of more than three thousand on the popular vote, was chosen for his third term by the legislature. Concord participated in the political change, giving one hundred anti-Democratic majority on the governor vote. From failure of the opposition parties to coalesce, only one of the town's quota of seven representatives to the general court was elected. This was Nathaniel B. Baker, a Democratic candidate, who, through personal popularity, carried more than his party's strength, and who, thus elected, was chosen for the second time to the speakership in the house of repre- sentatives. Of the three selectmen, two were Whigs-one of whom, Nathan Stickney, son of William, the taverner, and grandson of Colonel Thomas, of the Revolution, was chosen now for the eighth and last time within eleven years.
At the March election of the following year, the Democratic vote for governor in the state rose from a minority of three thousand to a majority of twelve hundred, and Noah Martin was elected. In Con- cord, the Democratic minority on that vote was reduced to sixty-two. Six Whig and Freesoil members of the legislature were chosen, while the three selectmen were Democrats. One of the representatives was Nathaniel White, prominent in the business activities of his town, and so sincere and resolute an abolitionist that his home often afforded refuge to the hunted slave fleeing over the " underground railroad " to find freedom in Canada.
The year 1852 was that of the seventeenth presidential election.
424
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
In this, from the candidacy of a favorite citizen of New Hampshire and its capital for the chief office of the nation, extraordinary interest, political and personal, was felt in both state and town, with a conse- quent increase of Democratic strength. Early in the afternoon of Saturday, June 5, a telegram announced in Concord that the Balti- more convention had, on the forty-ninth ballot, nominated for the presidency of the United States General Franklin Pierce, by two hundred eighty-two of the two hundred ninety-three votes cast. The town was aroused to unwonted excitement. The bulletin board and telegraph office were eagerly sought, until a second despatch had confirmed the first. Then were run up, in glad haste, the stars and stripes, gayly to float on the fresh summer breeze. And now from Sand Hill began to be heard the cannon salute of two hundred eighty-two guns, to be continued into the late evening. Church bells rang out their merry accompaniment of inspiring peals. The towns- men of the personally popular nominee-many not of his political faith-thronged the streets, exchanging congratulations, or, at least, respectful and friendly comments. A Democratic meeting, hastily called together in Natural History hall, with the special purpose of arranging for an early mass convention, became forthwith almost such itself, and was obliged to adjourn to the state house grounds, where the enthusiastic multitude listened to words of congratulatory elo- quence. Thus promptly did the home of Franklin Pierce help set the winning pace in the coming presidential contest.
During the ensuing five months, the Democratic party of the country reached its climax of relative numerical strength. It was a unit in the support of its presidential candidate. On the contrary, the Whig party did not find in General Scott the expected avail- ability as a candidate; there being much lukewarmness and some outright defection. Indeed, the party was in decadence, and, after the present struggle, was never to engage in another, as a distinct national organization. The Freesoil party, with John P. Hale for its candidate, hopefully stood by its principles, though without expecta- tion of gaining any place in the electoral college. The battle, fought under such conditions, and with the consequent advantage of clec- tioneering zeal largely upon the Democratic side, naturally resulted in a great Democratic victory. Its presidential candidate received two hundred fifty-four of the two hundred ninety-six electoral votes of the thirty-one states, backed by one hundred seventy-five thousand popular majority. In New Hampshire, Pierce's majority over Scott and Hale was nearly seven thousand votes; in Concord, two hundred twenty-nine-a gain of two hundred ninety-one over the Democratic vote in March.
425
PIERCE ELECTED PRESIDENT.
During the contest two illustrious leaders of the Whig party were removed by death : one, near the opening of the campaign, the other, near its close; Henry Clay, on the 29th of June, Daniel Webster, on the 24th of October. Special honors were paid in Concord to the memory of each, in the death-toll of the bells, in the solemn assem- bling of citizens without party distinction, and in speech and resolu- tion duly exalting the character of the great statesmen. On each occasion, Franklin Pierce spoke with much feeling and power; and it was in the rounding of his tribute to the memory of Webster, that he uttered these words of solemn thrill: "How do mere earthly honors and distinctions fade amid a gloom like this! How political asperities are chastened-what a lesson to the living! What an admonition to personal malevolence, now awed and subdued, as the great heart of the nation throbs heavily at the portals of his grave!"
But the sealed future permitted not that he who thus spoke should foresee how heavily would throb his own heart in the anguish of bereavement, when, president-elect of the United States, he should shortly stand childless at the open grave of his beloved son, "Little Benny," suddenly, cruelly snatched from life by accidental death.1
The March town-meetings of 1851 and 1852-the general political results of which have been noted-passed upon amendments pro- posed by a convention held at the capitol, in Concord, to revise the state constitution. In this convention the town was represented by seven Democratic delegates : Franklin Pierce, Nathaniel G. Upham, Cyrus Barton, George Minot, Nathaniel Rolfe, Jonathan Eastman, and Moses Shute. General Pierce was made president of the con- vention. At the first session, commencing on the 3d of November, 1850, and continued, with recesses, until the 3d of the succeeding January, the constitution, for the revision of which the people of the state had allowed no attempt for nearly sixty years, was too radically handled in the adoption of fifteen amendments. All of these were rejected when submitted to the popular vote of the state at the next March election. The votes in Concord upon the fifteen propositions averaged thirteen negatives to one affirmative. The extremes were fifty-seven to one and four to one; the former, upon making state elections and legislative sessions biennial ; the latter, upon the aboli- tion of the property and religious tests. In view of this manifesta- tion of the popular will, the convention, having reassembled in April, 1851, agreed upon three amendments: 1. To abolish the property qualification for office ; 2. To abolish the religious test ; 3. To em- power the legislature to originate future constitutional amendments. All of these were rejected in Concord, in March, 1852: the first, by yeas, 304, nays, 341 ; the sceond, by yeas, 286, nays, 360; the third,
1 See Death of " Little Benny," in note at close of chapter.
426
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
by yeas, 294, nays, 348. On the vote of the state, the first was the only one of the three that received the two-thirds majority requisite to adoption. Only so far did the people of New Hampshire permit, in 1852, the constitution of 1792 to be amended.
By the year 1849 the idea had become somewhat prevalent that a change of municipal government was desirable, since the interests of the growing town, becoming more and more varied and complex, could not be properly subserved by the legislation of the time-hon- ored, but now unwieldy, town-meeting. In June of that year, the ยท petition of Joseph Low and four hundred twenty other citizens was presented to the legislature, praying for a city charter-a draft of which was also introduced. A precedent existed in New Hampshire in the case of Manchester, which had already been under city gov- ernment four years. In course of the session "An act to establish the City of Concord " became a law, to be effective when the charter should be adopted by a majority of voters present in town-meeting, and voting thereon by ballot. Portsmouth, the ancient colonial capi- tal, received a city charter at the same session as did Concord, the modern capital of the state. The former at once adopted the new form of government ; but the latter was nearly four years in doing so. From various causes-not the least of which was the apprehen- sion of increased expense-much and persistent opposition was mani- fested, both in the main village and in the outlying portions of the town. In September, 1849, the charter was refused adoption by 183 yeas to 637 nays; and in May, 1851, by 139 to 589. These were results of special meetings, and upon votes far from full. The third trial was made at the regular March meeting of 1852-a meeting, which, like that of 1851, occupied six days. The balloting was pre- ceded by an able discussion, in which Joseph Low, Asa Fowler, Nathaniel B. Baker, Thomas P. Treadwell, Jeremiah S. Noyes, Jacob A. Potter, Josiah Minot, and Samuel M. Wheeler favored the adop- tion of the charter; and Richard Bradley, Samuel Coffin, Franklin Pierce, Dudley S. Palmer, Abel Baker, and some others opposed it. The result of the ballot was four hundred fifty-eight votes for adop- tion to six hundred fourteen against. The negative preponderance, though obstinate, was decreasing; and in view of the serious and detrimental inconvenience of tediously protracted town-meetings, past and prospective, a committee was raised to draft a bill making provi- sion for dividing the town into districts for the purposes of clection, and to take measures to procure its passage at the next session of the legislature. But nothing was to come of this new movement, the purpose of which was amply and better met by the city charter in providing for the division of the town into seven wards.
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