USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume III > Part 8
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At this time an attempt was made to amend the Constitu- tion of the United States, so as to elect the President for a term
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of six years and make him ineligible afterwards. New Hamp- shire voted against the proposed amendment.
Up to this time the State had been giving bounties for kill- ing crows, wolves, bears and wildcats.
The election of 1830 resulted in the choice of Matthew Harvey for governor, who had 23214 votes. His opponent, Timothy Upham, had 19,040 votes. Matthew harvey was born at Sutton, June 21, 1781, descended from William Harvey, who was of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1639. He was fitted for college by the Rev. Samuel Wood of Boscawen and graduated at Dartmouth in 1806. He read law with John Harris of Hop- kinton and begun practice there in 1809. That town was repre- sented by him in the legislature from 1814 to 1820, and he was Speaker of the House for the last three years of his term of serv- ice. He was representative to congress in 1821-5 and then three years in the State senate, acting as its president a part of the time. After serving three years on the governor's council he was chosen governor and during his term of office he resigned in order to accept the position of judge of the United States court. He removed to Concord, where he died in 1866. He was a man of upright, religious character, and his message shows him to have been a man of broad views. It will be useful to re- call a few things he said to the legislature.
He pointed out more clearly than anybody before him the evils of imprisonment for debt. Ameliorating laws had con- structively made the gaol limits the same as those of the town in which the poor prisoner was confined. The whole town was the gaol-yard. No such prisoner ever calculated to pay his debts, and nothing was accomplished by such imprisonment. Such terrors of law did not act as a deterrent from similar offenses, and often a poor man was imprisoned for no fault of his own, but simply for his misfortune. Others put their prop- erty into the hands of friends and then took the poor debtor's oath. Governor Harvey advised the abolition of the law of imprisonment for debt. Its operation was harmful to the debtor and to society. Public sympathy was always with the man imprisoned, with "the under dog in the fight."
In this connection the governor called attention to the fact that the State prison was so crowded that two criminals had to-
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sleep in one small cell, and the cells were so situated that con- versation from one to another could be carried on by night. This furnished opportunity for the prison to become a school of crime. "The hardened and experienced villain communicates to the young and less guilty than himself his contaminating pre- cepts and an account of his fraudulent achievements, and while they suffer for crimes already committed, they too frequently prepare themselves for more extensive and successful depreda- tions upon the property and peace of society, after their term of confinement has expired." Modern reformers may see that their principal argument is not absolutely original. The evil has been known ever since prisons were built, but the aim of prisons until recently has not been to make a good citizen out of the convict, but to make him suffer, so that others will beware, or sometimes to take vengeance upon him for his misdeeds. Theory and practice are changing. Is there danger that the feeling of pity will outrun the demand for justice?
Governor Harvey also recommended that when a prisoner was discharged a small sum of money should be given him, on which to start a new life. "A more miserable and hopeless con- dition for a free man can hardly be conceived, than to be turned out suddenly upon the world, without money, or credit, or friends, and with a consciousness that he bears upon him the marks of infamy. Crimes are again committed, as opportunity occurs, and justified by them, on the principle of imperious necessity." Is there anything new under the sun? We seem to be listening to the voice of some present day re- former. Give Governor Harvey his due.
His unexpired term of office was filled out by the then president of the senate, Joseph Morril Harper, physician, born at Limerick, Maine, June 21, 1789, though his parents were of New Hampshire. He served in congress from 1831 to 1835 as a supporter of President Jackson. Afterward he resided on his farm in Canterbury, yet acted as president of an insurance com- pany and as president of Mechanics' Bank, Concord. He had been a surgeon in the regular army in the War of 1812, serving three years. In later life he frequently lectured on temperance. He died January 13, 1865. A son, Charles Augustus Harper, graduated at Dartmouth, practised law in Virginia, removed to
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Texas and was colonel of a regiment of Texan rangers in the Mexican War.
In the election of 1831 Samuel Dinsmoor of Keene was chosen governor by 23,503 votes against 18,681 votes for Ichabod Bartlett. Governor Dinsmoor's ancestor was of the Scotch com- pany from the north of Ireland who settled Londonderry. He was born in Windham, July 1, 1766, and graduated at Dartmouth College in 1789. He settled in Keene as a lawyer and became specially interested in military matters, organized the Keene light infantry, one of the best drilled and equipped corps of the State militia, and rose to the rank of major-general. He held a seat in congress from 1811 to 1813. Later he was judge of pro- bate and one of the governor's council. In 1822 the Democrats nominated him for governor, but he was defeated by Levi Wood- bury. He held the gubernatorial office for three successive years from 1831, and died in March, 1835.
Samuel Dinsmoor was the first governor to call attention of the legislature to the condition of the insane and to advocate a hospital for their benefit. His message on this topic was rein- forced by an address delivered before the legislative body by Dr. William Perry of Exeter, and a special committee made investi- gation and reported in favor of a State Asylum, yet it was ten years before such an institution was opened for the recovery and kind treatment of a large class of people specially afflicted. Indeed, it has been more recently maintained that one person in ten is more or less insane and that every person is insane one- tenth of the time.1 Temporary pressure of labor, care, grief, disappointment, or sickness may unbalance the mind, and unwise treatment may lead to confirmed insanity. It has been proved that the great majority of insane persons can be restored to health, if wise treatment is begun in season. The special com- mittee, in 1832, reported that about two hundred insane persons had been found in New Hampshire, half of them town paupers, and that this did not represent the whole number of afflicted ones. The condition of many of them was extremely deplorable and would excite the pity of the most hard-hearted. The news- papers throughout the State took up the subject and awoke pub-
1 The Psychic Factor, by President Van Norden of Colgate University.
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lic opnion in favor of compassionate and rational treatment. The committee reported :
Many, laboring under an inoffensive hallucination of maind, wander about, the sport of unthinking boys and unprincipled men. A large propor- tion, seventy-six, are reported to be in close confinement. Some of them in chains, or in cages made for their confinements; some are in the out- buildings, garrets, or cellars of private houses; some are in our county gaols, shut up with felons and criminals of every description; some are in alms houses, in brick cells, "never warmed by fire or lighted by the rays of the sun." The facts presented to the committee not only exhibit severe, unnecessary suffering, but utter neglect, and in many cases actual barbarity. An insane woman who had wandered from her friends was con- fined in one of our gaols in winter and without fire. From the severity of the cold and her fixed posture her feet became so much diseased that it was considered necessary to amputate them at the ankle; which was accordingly done, and the woman was afterwards restored to her friends in this mutilated condition. Another woman was confined in a garret, where from the lowness of the roof and her consequently constrained position she grew double, and is now obliged to walk with her hands as well as feet on the floor. A man was confined for years in a cellar, nearly naked, with a bed of wet straw. The accounts submitted exhibit a mass of extreme, unmitigated suffering from the details of which humanity revolts. This state of things has been permitted to exist merely because it was unknown. In the extremity of the disease the maniac is withdrawn from observation. He is placed out of sight and forgotten.
Thus for ages the insane had been treated worse than any criminal, besides being blamed in many countries and communi- ties as under the curse of God and possessed by the devil. We now wonder that it took so many centuries to arouse human sympathies and scatter intelligence sufficient to wipe out this blot upon civilization. In the treatment of the insane for a long time the authorities seem to have been more bereft of reason than the maniacs themselves.
A circumstance which aroused many to a sense of the State's need of an asylum for the insane about this time was the con- viction and execution for murder of a feeble-minded youth of eighteen for a crime committeed. Many believed him irresponsible.
In 1833 President Andrew Jackson visited New Hampshire by invitation of the legislature. The celebration at Concord was on the twenty-eighth of June, and a vast multitude gathered to show their admiration for the man, or to satisfy their curiosity. The president was accompanied by the vice-president, Martin
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Van Buren, the Hon. Lewis Gass, Secretary of War and a native of Exeter, the Hon. Levi Woodbury, then Secretary of the Navy, and Major Donaldson as private secretary. The party was met in Bow by a cavalcade. Eight companies of the militia formed the escort, the entire body commanded by Colonel Stephen Pea- body of Milford. The president rode into town on horseback and was entertained at the Eagle Hotel. He reviewed the troops on State street and there was a grand reception in the Repre- sentatives' Hall. President Jackson remained over Sunday, at- tending church at the North Congregational, the Unitarian and the Baptist churches. On his departure the following day the town committee escorted him to the town line.
Governor Dinsmoor, in his message of 1833, bemoans the decline of the military spirit. The people saw no danger of war and the expenditure of time and money in training the militia as in former days seemed to be wasteful, imposing a needless burden of expense. The law requiring drill and inspection was a dead letter in many places. Those who came together for a muster sometimes made it an occasion for scenes of levity and insubor- dination. It would seem that a standing army, or a fully trained and equipped militia, can not be maintained without an occasional war or some danger of war. The people will not turn a grind- stone, unless there is somebody to grind, some axe to sharpen. War expenses are intolerable in time of peace. Our country never has been prepared for war. Her size and position have made full preparation appear unnecessary. A militia large enough to quell internal disorders has seemed to be sufficient, and some would do away with even this, as being more in the service of capitalists than of laborers. The militia of New Hamp- shire continued to decline in popular favor till trainings and musters disappeared.
By advice of the governor the legislature appointed a com- mittee to learn the number and condition of the blind throughout the State.
William Badger was elected governor in 1834, with only a few scattering votes in opposition. He was born at Gilmanton, January 13, 1779. His father and grandfather had been promi- nent in the civil and military history of the State, and the Badger family ranked first in Gilmanton. The early life of William
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Badger was devoted to business. In 1810 his town sent him to the legislature for two years as their representative. He was State senator in 1814-6, the last year presiding over the senate, and was associate justice of the court of common pleas from 1816 to 1820. The office of high sheriff for Strafford county was filled by him for ten years, 1820-30. His re-election to the gov- ernorship in 1835 was by a very large majority. His wealth, his family connection, his genial spirit and his business ability ele- vated him to the highest office of the State. He was generous, hospitable, kind-hearted and honorable in all his dealings. His death occurred September 21, 1852.
In his first message he called attention, for the first time in public records of New Hampshire, to the advisability of doing away with capital punishment, suggesting solitary confinement and hard labor for life as a substitute more to be dreaded and hence a better preventive of crime.
The Jacksonian Democrats were in evidence in the State legislature. Resolutions were passed approving the course pur- sued by the delegates of the State in congress, "with the excep- tion of that of the Hon. Samuel Bell." He had voted the previous year in a way that did not meet approval. His resignation was desired, because he with others had condemned the course taken by the President. On the other hand, the same set of resolu- tions declared, that "the President of the United States, by his ardent endeavors to restore the Constitution to its original purity, by his stern integrity and unbending firmness in resisting the approach of corruption in every protean shape-in staying the lavish expenditures of the public money in an unconstitutional system of internal improvements, by the national government, in setting the tariff upon a more equitable basis, in his prompt resistance to all measures tending to the dissolution of our Union, in his veto on the recharter of that dangerous Institution, the United States Bank, and in the unyielding stand which he has taken against the recent alarming proceedings of that Institution, has proved himself to be a true disciple of Thomas Jefferson, the father of American democracy, and has greatly increased the debt of gratitude due to him from the American people." The resolutions passed by a vote of 163 to 62, showing the trend of political opinion and the subjects that were thought to be of
ISAAC HILL
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vital interest. A resolution granting the use of the Hall of Representatives for an anti-slavery speech was voted down in 1835. The same year the Nashua and Lowell, as well as the Boston and Maine Railroad was incorporated, of which more will be said later in this work.
In 1836 Isaac Hill was elected governor of the State with but little opposition. He was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, April 6, 1788, descended from Abraham Hill of Charlestown in 1636. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed for seven years to the publisher of the Farmer's Cabinet, a newspaper printed at Amherst, New Hampshire. In April, 1809, he took charge of the New Hampshire Patriot, at Concord, and by his rare genius for political journalism made it the leading organ of the Demo- cratic party in the State. Such was his influence that he was said to "carry New Hampshire in his breeches pocket." He could write editorials and carry on conversation at the same time. Many of his articles were composed at the case. Manu- facturers and railroads found a champion in him. Four years he served in the State senate and was comptroller of the national treasury under President Jackson. From 1831 to 1836 he was United States senator, which office he resigned to become gov- ernor of his State, receiving five-sixths of all the votes cast, and re-elected in the two succeeding years. In 1840 he was appointed sub-treasurer at Boston. The same year he established Hill's Patriot and published it for seven years, when the two news- papers were united. The Farmer's Monthly Visitor also was published by him. He possessed unusual native ability, wonder- ful energy, facility in the use of powerful words, and convictions that aroused others. He was a journalistic prophet, uttering the voice of the people. Vox populi, vor dei. He died in Wash- ington, D. C., March 22, 1851.
Former gubernatorial messages had consisted of from two to six printed pages; Governor Hill's first message occupies thirty pages of the printed Journal of the House. He had just come from a seat in the senate of the United States, and he opened his message with a severe criticism of that body. A prominent fault of both branches of congress was, that they were made up of men, many of whom were talkers and not doers, "men who either delight in hearing themselves, or suppose
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they delight others in being heard, or else who speak that they may be heard elsewhere." Some had been sent to congress too long and had forgotten that they were sent to represent the wishes of their electors. Governor Hill advised frequent changes or rotation in office. The senate of the United States was putting at defiance the instructions of the bodies that elected them, and its members should be chosen for six years, and be ineligible for a second term. The proceedings of congress were tiresome and vexatious. "There have been too many ulterior views, too much of electioneering, interlarded in those proceedings." Months of time were spent in useless talk. Senators should obey the instructions of State legislatures or resign. This was a thrust at Senator Samuel Bell.
The governor had no sympathy with internal improvements at the expense either of the nation or of the State. Canals, railroads, turnpikes and expensive bridges would better be built by private capital in the hands of State-created corporations. He had not heard of modern socialism.
The tendency of increasing the salaries of employees of the national government and of multiplying salaried positions was deplored. The salaries of the higher officers in the navy yard in Portsmouth harbor, "in a single sub-ordinate department," exceeded in amount "the whole compensation of our State Civil List, with the exception of the two branches of the Legislature." A mere boy in the navy was paid as high, in some instances,, as the judges of the highest State court, and the temptation was great for all the civil and military officers of the national govern- ment to clamor for higher pay. What would Governor Hill have said, if he could have foreseen the practices of the present day! The older and richer a nation becomes, the greater is the evil of multiplying offices needlessly and of paying public offi- cials far more than they could get in any other occupation. "The benefits derived from our State and local administrations far transcend those of the general government; yet the expense of the former, from the highest to the lowest, including the support of the legislature and the judiciary, of our admirable system of common schools, our public highways and bridges, our internal police, our various municipal officers, and our desti- tute poor, are believed not to equal in amount the proportion which this State pays, and will continue to pay under the present
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system of impost into the national treasury. It is true the people feel the direct burden under the State and municipal regulations, because it is assessed in a manner that obliges them to count it when they pay it. They do not as directly realize what goes into the coffers of the nation, because it is included in from twenty to one hundred per cent. of the prices of many articles which they put on for wear or consume for sustenance." Hence he argues for a decreased tariff.
The students of banks and banking should carefully read all the messages of Governor Isaac Hill. They show that he had made a special study of those financial institutions. He saw the defects of the National Bank and of the banks chartered by the States, that had followed the example of the National Bank. The evil results all reduce to this, that too much paper currency was issued, and many banks refused to redeem this in specie. Governor Hill said, that "the business of manufacturing paper, more than equivalent to coining money by the banks, is at the best a tax upon the people among whom it circulates. The paper circulated by any bank beyond its capital in specie is usury over and above the legal interest on such capital. The expenses of the bank paid by the substitution of paper issues for money, as well as all additional profits from such issues, are taxes assessed directly on the borrowers and those among whom the paper circulates. Where there is no specie to represent paper, there is no safety in that paper; money is plenty or scarce as banks issue or cease to issue; sudden changes of issues or con- traction produce immense revolutions in property ; and banks issuing or contracting their paper, acting in concert either for speculation or for political effect, may create panics, stop the wheels of business, and even threaten revolution with impunity. It is too much that banks, conducted by private and irresponsible individuals, should wield such a power as that of contracting or expanding the currency at will; it is a power that ought to be regulated and wielded only by the law of the land. . It is ascertained and known that there is not one specie dollar in bank for every ten paper dollars in circulation, whatever may be the banking capital in use. . The legislator will deserve the thanks of the whole community who lends his efforts to do away that circulating paper credit, which is the prolific source of
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panic and pressure." The State should take its stand in favor of hard money.
Perhaps as a result of Governor Hill's enlightenment the legislature in 1838 considered an act to authorize free banking in the State. All bills issued by any bank were to have printed. upon their face, "Secured by pledge of real Estate," and the. real estate was to be productive and unincumbered, the mort- gages thereupon bearing interest at six per cent. and of one- third greater value, aside from the buildings thereon, than the amount for which it was mortgaged. This backing would give value to the paper issued. Such bank bills were to be redeem- able in specie instantly on demand. Over-issue of bank bills. was punishable by fine of three thousand dollars, or imprison- ment for two years, or both, visited upon the treasurer. The. amount of capital stock of a bank must be at least fifty thousand dollars, and the maximum limit was half a million dollars. Re- port of the condition of each bank must be made four times each year, and its affairs were open to the inspection of a Bank Com- missioner at all times. Thus safeguards were put about the deposits of the people, and provision was made for a paper currency that would not fluctuate in value. After some debate. the bill was referred to the next session of the legislature and there it was indefinitely postponed. It was a time of extensive bankruptcy and great consequent distress. Nevertheless within a period of six years the amount of gold and silver in the United States had increased from six millions to one hundred millions. Some banks of New Hampshire had suspended specie payment, sending their specie out of the State in exchange for depreciated bank bills of other States. Fractional paper currency took the place of silver, in spite of law against the same.
At this time there was a surplus in the United States treas- ury, occasioned by high tariff and the sale of much land in the West. Distribution to the several States was ordered, in four payments, of thirty-six million dollars, and the share of New Hampshire was over eight hundred thousand dollars. The legis- lature voted to divide this amount among the towns, in propor- tion to their population, and the question was publicly dis- cussed whether the general government had a constitutional right to collect money from the people by a tariff and give the same
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back to the people, for the sake of "protecting" certain industries.
During his term of office as governor Isaac Hill acted as pension agent of the United States, and a debate arose whether in harmony with the constitution of the State the two offices could be held by the same man. All turned on the question, whether a pension agency was an "office or place," or a "con- tract," as Governor Hill claimed, but a special committee of the legislature reported that it was an office, and that therefore he could not constitutionally be governor while acting as pension agent. But he had been governor the usual three years by the time the debate was concluded, and so voluntarily relinquished the governorship, announcing that he would not be a candidate for re-election.
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