USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume IV > Part 16
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 (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31
189
A HISTORY
Littleton in 1839 and from Concord in 1856 and 1857, when he was chairman of the judiciary committee. In later years his advice was frequently sought and freely given respecting pro- posed legislation. He was appointed associate justice of the su- preme court of New Hampshire in 1859 and ten years later he was made chief justice, in which office he continued to the close of his life. Dartmouth College gave him the degree of Master of Arts in 1859 and of Doctor of Laws in 1869. In religious be- lief he was a Unitarian and in spirit and conduct he possessed the characteristics of a true Christian. He was conscientious, kind, patient, impartial, careful in forming opinions and tenaci- ous of them when formed, humorous in conversation and able to tell an anecdote so as really to amuse the susceptible. To laugh at his stories was not considered a duty. He died at Concord, March II, 1873.
Charles Doe was a lawyer and judge that sustained the reputation of the bar and bench of New Hampshire. He was born at Derry, April II, 1830, descendant of Nicholas Doe, one of the early settlers of Oyster River, now Durham. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1849 and studied law with Daniel M. Christie in Dover and at the Harvard Law School. His legal practice was principally in Dover, and he was made solici- tor of Strafford county in 1854 and served three years. He was appointed associate judge of the supreme court in 1859 and in 1874 was removed for political reasons, that is, for no good rea- son. Again he was called to the bench as chief justice in 1876 and held that office till his death, March 9, 1896. His home was in Rollinsford for many years, where he was thought eccentric because he would remove the window-sash from his sleeping- chamber throughout the winter. He had simply learned be- fore others the open-air treatment.
Andrew Salter Woods, born in Bath, June 2, 1803, was of good old Scotch stock, whose father came from the north of Ireland. It is noticeable how many young men reared in the northern part of New Hampshire, in the valley of the Connecti- cut, came to prominence in the legal profession. Dartmouth College allured them and pushed them on. Woods was gradu- ated in 1825, read law with Ira Goodall of Bath and formed a partnership with him. Their office was crowded with clients, and two thousand writs in one year, principally for the collec-
190
NEW HAMPSHIRE
tion of debts, is the record. After twelve years of practice Woods was made associate justice of the superior court in 1840, and chief justice in 1855. He was legislated out of office by a political upheaval; somebody of the opposite party wanted his place. He resumed practice of law at Bath, where he continued till his death, June 20, 1863. It is not claimed that he was highly educated in the law as written in books, but the funda- mental principles of law he knew without studying many books, and sound judgment enabled him to reach wise conclusions. A keen conscience and common sense, with a little book learn- ing, make a pretty good judge, such as New Hampshire often had in the early days.
Jonathan Everett Sargent, born in New London, October 23, 1816, fitted for college at Hopkinton and Kimball Union academies and was graduated at Dartmouth in 1840, defraying his expenses to a large degree by teaching. After graduation he taught in Virginia and Maryland, meanwhile reading law. After having been admitted to the bar in Washington, D. C., he returned to his native State and became a partner of William P. Weeks at Canaan. Later he opened an office in Wentworth and built up a large practice. In 1844 he was solicitor for Grafton county. Three times he was representa- tive in the legislature, and in 1853 he was Speaker of the House. The following year he was a member of the senate and presi- dent of that body.
In 1855 he was made justice of the court of common pleas and served till that office was abolished in 1859. Then he was appointed a justice of the supreme judicial court and remained in office till 1874, being chief justice for the last year and a half. In 1874 he resumed legal practice in Concord. He was a delegate to the constitutional convention in 1876 and the fol- lowing year was chairman of a committee to revise the statutes of the State. He was much interested in historical studies and served in 1888-9 as president of the New Hampshire Historical Society. Dartmouth College honored him with the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1880. He was more than a lawyer and judge ; he was also a kind neighbor, a genial friend, a man well read in general literature and a leading citizen of exemplary character. With neither money nor influential friends to boost him he climbed to the top of his profession by patient hard
191
A HISTORY
work and honest conduct. His business ability placed him at the head of the National State Capital Bank in Concord. He died in Concord, January 6, 1890.
Nathaniel Gookin Upham, born in Deerfield, January 8, . 1801, was graduated at Dartmouth in 1820, having been fitted at Phillips Exeter Academy. His law practice was begun at Bristol, but soon he removed to Concord, and at the age of thirty-five he was appointed a justice of the superior court. After ten years on the bench he resigned the judgeship in order to become superintendent of the Concord Railroad. Later he became president of that company and altogether spent twenty- three years in its service. In 1853 he was chosen by President Pierce to adjust claims between citizens of the United States and of Great Britain. This occasioned a trip to London to con- fer with the British commissioner, and together they adjusted claims amounting to several million dollars. In 1862 he rend- ered a similar service as umpire in a commission for the settle- ment of claims between the United States and New Granada.
In politics he was a Democrat till the time of the Civil War, when he cast all his influence in favor of preserving the Union. Several of his addresses were published, a eulogy on Lafayette, "Rebellion, Slavery and Peace," and "Progress of Civil Liberty in New Hampshire." The last was delivered when he was president of the New Hampshire Historical So- ciety. His biographers speak of him as conscientious, religious, inflexibly honest, studious of the law and of the business in which he was engaged, interested in promoting in all possible ways the welfare of his city.
William C. Clarke, born in Atkinson, December 10, 1810, was graduated at Dartmouth in 1832. After studying law at Harvard Law School and serving one year as principal of Gil- manton Academy he began the practice of law at Meredith, whence he removed to Manchester in 1844. He was first solici- tor of Belknap county. At Manchester he was made city solici- tor in 1849 and 1850. In 1851 he was appointed judge of probate of Hillsborough county and in 1855 he declined the offer of an appointment as judge of the supreme court of the State. In 1863 he was made attorney general of the State and held that office till his decease, April 25, 1872. In all his business activi- ties as director of banks, trustee of institutions, treasurer and
192
NEW HAMPSHIRE
clerk of the Manchester and Lawrence Railroad and prosecut- ing attorney he was faithful and efficient, winning the confi- dence and esteem of many.
A prominent lawyer who never sat upon the judges' bench was Harry Bingham, of Littleton, yet from college days to the end of life he was known as "Judge Bingham," the familiar title being a recognition of the man's judicial traits. Though born in Concord, Vermont, March 30, 1821, he was of a New Hampshire family and he spent his active life in this State. While studying at Dartmouth, where he was graduated in 1843, he employed the winters in teaching school, the way then open but now unfortunately nearly closed for college students to pay their expenses. He was admitted to the bar in 1846 and practiced for over half a century at Littleton. No lawyer had more cases in court, and no cases were better handled. He en- joyed the confidence of the community, and this was evidenced by his election eighteen times to the House and twice to the Senate of his State. Here he was the acknowledged leader of the Democratic party, that seven times made him their nomi- nee for the United States senatorship. It was a disappoint- ment to his own ambition and some think a distinct loss to the State that he failed to represent it at the national capitol. His speeches and public addresses, no less than his pleadings at the bar, demonstrate that he had the gifts and learning of a states- man. Especially was he well grounded in his acquaintance with constitutional law, to which at times he gave, as some think, a too literal interpretation. In the conventions of the Democratic party, both in the State and nation, he took a prominent part. He found time to acquaint himself with general literature, know- ing that to be a great lawyer one must be more than a lawyer. His address on "The Influence of Religion upon Human Prog- ress," delivered before the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1907, shows an acquaintance with the history of religions throughout the world such as is rarely possessed by a layman, and his interest in religion is the more remarkable, since he never united with any church, though often seen at the services of the Episcopal Church. The Portsmouth Times, after his demise, called him "the ablest member of the New Hampshire bar and the strongest leader of the Democratic party in the State." Dartmouth College gave him the honorary degree of
193
A HISTORY
Doctor of Laws, and it was no vain title; he was an actual teacher of the law to many. His reading was wide and he had a tenacious memory and ability to recount interestingly to others the experience and acquisition of a long life. One reason of his success at the bar was that he always believed in the justice of the cause he undertook. Harry Bingham died at Littleton, September 12, 1900.1
1 See Memorial of Hon. Harry Bingham, LL.D., Lawyer, Legislator, Author, edited by Henry Harrison Metcalf, under the direction of Edgar Aldrich, Albert S. Batchellor, John M. Mitchell, literary executors. Con- cord, 1910.
1
Chapter XI IN THE NEWSPAPER WORLD
Chapter XI
IN THE NEWSPAPER WORLD
Journalistic Prophets-Newspapers as Educators-Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune-Charles A. Dana and the New York Sun-Charles W. March-Rev. Hosea Ballou as Preacher and Editor-Rev. Henry Wood-Charles W. Brewster and the Portsmouth Journal-Franklin B. Sanborn and the Springfield Republican-Charles L. McArthur- George W. Kendall and the New Orleans Picayune-Stillson Hutchins and the Washington Post-Rev. Alonzo H. Quint and the Congrega- tional Quarterly-Rev. John H. Morrison, Editor of the Christian Reg- ister and the Unitarian Review-Joseph C. Foster-Frank P. Foster- David Atwood-James M. Bundy and the New York Evening Mail and Express-Horace White and the New York Evening Post.
T HE Hebrew prophets have been called "open-air journal- ists." They were moral reformers who took the only way then open to reach the hearts and minds of the common people. They sought to stir up opposition against national sins. The printing-press revealed a new, swift and far-reaching way to accomplish similar ends. The pen became mightier than the voice. The printed page cried aloud, not now in the wilderness but on the crowded street and in quiet homes. The reformer can now sit in the seclusion of his study and scatter his burning thoughts all over the country, and many can do this who have little power as orators. The imagination of the reader clothes the thought of the writer with the latter's personality, and the reputation of a man never seen adds weight to whatever comes from his pen. The modern prophet with a message in his soul thus finds a way to deliver it. The thought that really burns and glows within studies no novel means of expression. "The words come skelpin rank and file," almost before one kens. It matters not so much how one shouts "fire," so long as he feels the danger to himself and others. He can not shout it indiffer- ently. His style of expression is the outflow of fire within, a realizing sense of the situation. In such a case nature outdoes art and the cry of the man in dead earnest is at once listened to and obeyed by many. They rush to put out the conflagration.
197
198
NEW HAMPSHIRE
The century past has witnessed the career of a number of such journalistic prophets who wrote in burning and winged words. To publish a book once a year did not suit the character of their message nor could this method relieve their souls. The message was to them new every morning and fresh every eve- ning. Nothing but a daily newspaper could be a sufficient chan- nel for the outflow of their freshet. They had no ambition to break into literature; they wanted rather to break into im- prisoned minds and set them free. A great journalist must be a great moral reformer, if he wants to accomplish something more than to make money and sway elections. A mere distributor of news, real and manufactured, ought not to be called a journalist ; an advertising sheet is not a journal. A newspaper should be an educator of the public in things most essential to good citi- zenship and exalted character. It should be a discerner of the signs of the times and warn the people of approaching danger, as well as point out the way of escape. The real editor sits on a watch-tower and answers the constant question, "What of the night?" He must be able to see the distant dawn.
Such an editor was Horace Greeley, born in Amherst, Feb- ruary 3, 18II. The story of his early poverty and struggles is well known. It is told that at the age of four years he was quite a phenomenon in reading and spelling, which accomplishments he seems to have grasped without the trouble of learning. He read everything he could get hold of, such was the lack of books in his home. The Bible he had read at the age of five. His father was forced by debt to remove to Westhaven, Vermont, and there Horace Greeley worked and read on a farm from the age of ten to fifteen. Then he sought employment in a printing office at Poultney, Vermont. His manners were uncultivated and unsubdued to the rules of polite society, though natural kindness needs no studied ways of expression. He had, as some- body has said, an "incapacity for clothes." They never seemed to fit him. They looked like his penmanship, too hastily put on to look well. To write legibly required too much time and checked the free flow of thought. He ought to have had a type- writer and a shorthand reporter constantly with him. From Poultney he followed his father to the southern boundary of New York State and there found odd jobs of farming and typesetting. In 1831 he arrived in New York City with ten dollars and began
-
Havace Goede
199
A HISTORY
hunting for work. His first job was to set up a New Testament in very fine type. Soon he was working on the Evening Post, the Commercial Advertiser, and Spirit of the Times. Then he and Francis V. Story formed a partnership for job printing and the publication of the Morning Post, which latter was not suc- cessful as a business enterprise. TheNew Yorker was the next venture and then he was editor of the Jeffersonian with a salary of five thousand dollars. In 1840 he was editor of a campaign paper called the Log Cabin, whose first edition was 48,000 copies and it reached a circulation of 90,000. All this work was only preparatory to his career as editor of the New York Tribune, which he began in 1841 with six hundred subscribers and sold for a cent per copy, while the Sun sold half as much news for two cents and sought to crowd the Tribune out. The opposition advertised Greeley and his paper.
Mr. Greeley was by nature opposed to any form of op- pression. His sympathies were with the toilers. Hence slavery invoked his wrath and he acknowledged no palliation of the monstrous evil. He was not reckoned among the abolitionists, yet they read his paper and found it an ally. In politics he was as independent as he was in the matter of dress, said what he wanted to and what, according to his convictions, ought to be said. He sought no political office, yet he seems to have been disappointed because the political leaders did not offer him any. The editorials of many newspapers are the driest part and are rarely read; those of the Tribune were what sold the paper. What Horace Greeley wrote was copied all over the country. It was moral earnestness clothed in easy and forceful words. His vocabulary was picked up on the farm and in the printing office and enlarged by omnivorous reading. The study of Greek and Latin had not spoiled his English. Long words and sen- tences he had little use for. The flourishes of rhetoric and the captivating flights of poetic fancy he left for other writers. He was overrunning with ideas and gave a hospitable reception to every new ism that arose without being carried away by it. Some of the fundamental principles of socialism he advocated without being called a Socialist. He was a temperance man without advocating prohibition, except where public opinion de- manded it. He grew to be hostile to slavery, when he saw that the times demanded the emancipation of the slaves in the South.
200
NEW HAMPSHIRE
If he differed from Lincoln, Grant, Seward, or anybody else, he did not hesitate to give expression to the difference. He sup- ported them when they supported his ideas of what ought to be.
His principal literary work was the "Great American Con- flict," or history of the struggle between freedom and slavery, enough in itself to win reputation as an author. About the time of his marriage he wrote some verses, but was wise enough to assert long afterward that he was not a poet.
In politics he was a Whig, a Republican, a Liberal Repub- lican and an Assistant Democrat. His former friends mourned when in 1872 he accepted the endorsement of the Democratic party to his nomination for the presidency by the Liberal Re- publicans. He did not seek the nomination, but ambition did not permit him to refuse it. He found himself the nominal leader of a party that he had strenuously and bitterly opposed for years, and in opposition to President Grant, whose first election he had favored. His old anti-slavery admirers lifted up their heals, voices and votes against him. The disappointment of his political defeat may have hastened his death, which occurred in 1872. I can see him now as he stood upon the rear platform of a railway train at Brunswick, Maine, and made a short address to a great throng drawn by curiosity to see him, and I remem- ber the widely published cartoon entitled "Maine's Opinion of Greeley," in which he was represented as being kicked out of doors by the voters of the Pine Tree State, a prophecy which had speedy fulfillment. The aberration of the last year of his life was somewhat parallel to the unfortunate speech of Daniel Webster, that alienated so many former frineds. Both mistakes have been forgiven by those who remember the general effect of their lines.
Horace Greeley knew how to gather to his aid young writers of promise like Henry J. Raymond, George William Curtis, Bay- ard Taylor and Margaret Fuller. One of the number was Charles Anderson Dana, born in Hinsdale, August 8, 1819. His boyhood was spent at Gaines, New York, and Guildhall, Ver- mont, whither his parents had moved. At the age of twelve he went to live with an uncle at Buffalo, New York. After two years at Harvard College he was obliged to leave on account of failing eyesight, but he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts with his class of 1843. In the same year his journalistic career
.
G. A. Sana.
Hosea Ballon.
20I
A HISTORY
began with the Harbinger, a paper connected with the Brook Farm experiment at Roxbury, Mass. In 1844 he was assistant editor of the Boston Chronotype and in 1847 he was assisting Greeley on the Tribune. In 1862 he was too radical for Greeley in demanding the utmost prosecution of the war and was more intensely anti-slavery than Greeley. In 1864 he was assistant secretary of war. In 1855 he had begun to compile with George Ripley the "New American Cyclopedia," and the original edition was completed in 1863. In 1867 he started the Chicago Repub- lican, and January 27, 1868, he issued the first number of the New York Sun as editor and proprietor, making it in 1872 a Democratic paper. He continued to edit it till his death, Oc- tober 17, 1897, and he made it a paper well known for its literary finish. For a time after the death of Greeley the Sun outshone the waning Tribune, and it has maintained till the present a very high rank among newspapers. The impetus given it by Charles A. Dana has not lost its force.
Another New Hampshire man that assisted Horace Greeley on the Tribune was Charles Wainwright March, born in Ports- mouth, December 15, 1815, descendant of Hon. Clement March, of Greenland. After graduating at Harvard in 1837 he practiced law for a short time at Portsmouth and served in the legislature, but removed to New York and became an editorial writer on the Tribune and the Times as well as correspondent of the Boston Courier, under the pen-name of "Pequot." He was regarded as a brilliant essayist. His principal productions were "Daniel Webster and His Contemporaries" and "Sketches in Madeira, Portugal and Spain." He died in Alexandria, Egypt, January 24, 1864.
Hosea Ballou is better known as the founder of the Uni- versalist denomination than as a journalist, yet he had experi- ence in many lines of activity. He was born in Richmond, April 30, 1771, son of a Baptist minister who had six sons. Three of them became Baptist ministers and the other three preached the doctrines of Universalism. So poor was his father that he learned to write by use of birch bark and charcoal. His chief educator was the family Bible. He was admitted to the Baptist church at the age of eighteen and cast out when he became a Universalist. There was nothing against his character and con- duct; he was accused only of thinking erroneously and talking
202
NEW HAMPSHIRE
out his thoughts to others. At the age of twenty-one he began to preach, having had but a trifling amount of schooling. He learned by teaching in Rhode Island week days and preaching Sundays. For seven years after 1794 he was at Dana, Massa- chusetts, preaching also in Oxford and Charlton. At the age of thirty he removed to Barnard, Vermont, and here he wrote his "Notes on the Parables" and "Treatise on the Atonement." In 1807 he became pastor of the Universalist church at Ports- mouth. In 1815 he removed to Salem, Massachusetts, and after two years was settled as pastor of the Universalist church at Boston, where he remained thirty-five years. In addition to his ministerial duties he wrote many controversial papers, essays and hymns, lectured often and preached wherever he could. In 1819 he established the Universalist Magazine, which later be- came the Universalist Expositor, and still later the Universalist Quarterly Review. As a writer and speaker he was logical, clear, impassioned, earnest. His message he felt to be a divine conviction. Love moved him and made him speak. All of the previously established churches opposed his teachings, for he undermined the basis of their theories. Universalism has been greatly modified by changes in its advocated theories, and the opposing churches have changed their teachings for the better. Hosea Ballou began a movement that has had a wide and radical influence upon the theology of the last century. He lived to see established a thousand Universalist churches, to preach ten thousand sermons and to write enough to make a hundred vol- umes. Some of his interpretations of certain passages of scrip- ture would sound strange to some of his followers to-day, but his main contention has been gaining ground through influences outside of the Universalist denomination. He was a worthy man and an honor to New Hampshire.
The Rev. Henry Wood, D.D., was born in Loudon, April 10, 1796, and was graduated at Dartmouth in 1822. After serv- ing a short time as tutor there and at Hampton-Sidney College he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and became a Congregational minister. From 1841 to 1853 he was editor of the Congregationalist Journal, at Concord. In 1854-6 he was United States consul at Beirut, Syria. Then he became a chap- lain in the United States navy and served for a time in Japan, where he taught twenty-five young men English to fit them for
203
A HISTORY
interpreters. He introduced the first Protestant minister in Japan, offered the first prayer and preached the first sermon in English in that country. He died at Philadelphia, October 25, 1873.
Charles Warren Brewster was known for over half a cen- tury as editor of the Portsmouth Journal. He was born in that town September 13, 1812, and died there August 4, 1868. He began as an apprentice in the office of the Journal and after fif- teen years became its proprietor. He served several terms in the legislature and was a member of the constitutional convention of 1850. He was the principal writer of his own paper and with patient research gathered up and printed a lot of local history and tradition, which he afterward published in two volumes under the title, "Rambles about Portsmouth." Another publica- tion of his was "Fifty Years in a Printing-Office." He had a pleasing style and his newspaper gave satisfaction to many po- litical opponents. His conduct as a consistent Christian was well known, and this added weight to whatever he wrote. His "Rambles about Portsmouth" needs some revision under the light of recently discovered and published historical data. The claim that he was descended from Elder William Brewster has never been proved. His first known ancestor was John Brews- ter, of Portsmouth.
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.