USA > New Hampshire > Belknap County > Sanbornton > History of Sanbornton, New Hampshire, Vol. I - Annals > Part 38
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340
HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
THE HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
BY REV. FREDERIC T. PERKINS.
"THE HEROISM OF OUR ANCESTORS."
Fellow-Townsmen and Women :
I am to speak to you on ". The Heroism of our Ancestors."
On the third day of July, 1776, men of Sanbornton performed an act worthy of commemoration. I decin it a privilege to bring before you the story of that day's proceedings. The records of the town show that our fathers kept abreast with the movements of their day. The patriotic fire, fed and fanned by British aggressions in and around Boston, burned in their hearts. As it flamed out in Concord and Lex- ington, it became a glowing heat in New Hampshire. News of that Lexington conflict on the 19th of April brought the people of the New England colonies to their feet. With oue impulse they sprang to arms. . On the next day after the battle, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, in a circular to the several towns of that State, called for help in words that sound like the cry of men in extreme peril. "But before they heard this call, as soon as they heard the cry of blood from the ground, the country people snatched their firelocks from the walls." The farmers rushed to the "Camp of Liberty," "often," according to Mr. Bancroft, " with nothing but their clothes on their backs, witli- out a day's provisions, and many without a farthing in their pockets. Their country was in danger; their brethren were slaughtered. Their arms alone engaged their attention." (U. S. Ilist., Vol. VII. p. 313.)
At the same time that committee sent their story and their call for help to New Hampshire. But before they heard that ery, men from this colony were crossing the ferries over the Merrimack. By sunrise on the 21st of April, men from Nottingham, Deerfield, and Epsom, having marched fifty-five miles in less than twenty hours, paraded ou Cambridge Common. By the 23d, about two thousand men from the interior parts of the colony were at the seat of war. The men of San- borntou were roused by this call, and with their neighbors from Can- · terbury, were soon enrolled for future action. The occasion was not
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THE TOWN CENTENNIAL - HISTORICAL ADDRESS. -
long wanting ; for in less than two months, news of the Bunker Hill battle reached this town, on the Sabbath after it was fought. On Monday morning sixteen men started for the seat of war, and on the third day thereafter joined the army at Charlestown. These were Nathan Taylor, Aaron Sanborn, Thomas Lyford, Jonathan Thomas, Ebenezer Eastman, Jacob Garland, Daniel Cale, Levi Hunt, Philip Hunt, William Hayes, John Lary, Joseph Smith, William Thompson, William Taylor, Jacob Tilton, and Stephen Riggs. It is perhaps impossible to ascertain the names of all the men who were in active service during the year 1775. Abraham Perkins - my great-grand- father - is named as second lieutenant of thirty-first company of " six- weeks men," ordered, Dec. 2, 1775, by Gen. Sullivan, to Winter Ilill, Charlestown, where they remained till the British evacuated Boston in the following March.
While the seat of war was continued at Boston, New Hampshire troops were kept near Portsmouth for the defence of the State border.
Though it had become plain that George III. was madly bent upon crushing out the rising spirit of independence, yet it was uncertain which side the majority in many of the colonies would take ; hence the follow- ing Act : -
"IN CONGRESS, March 14, 1776.
" Resolced, That it be recommended to the several Assemblies, Conven- tions, and Councils, or Committees of Safety of the United Colonies, innuedi- ately to cause all Persons to be disarmed in their respective Colonies, who are notorionsly disaffected to the cause of America, or who have not associated and refuse to associate to defend by arms the United Colonies against the hostile attempts of the British Fleets and Armies."
Consequent upon this recommendation of Congress, the General Assembly of New Hampshire, on April 12, sent the following : -
"COLONY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. IN COMMITTEE OF SAFETY, April 12, 1776. " To the Selectmen of Sanbornton :
" In order to carry the underwritten Resolve of the Honorable Continental Congress into execution, you are requested to desire all males above twenty- one years of age ( Lunaties, Idiots, and Negroes excepted) to sign to the Dec- luration on this paper, and, when so done, to make return hereof, together with the name or names of all who shall refuse to sign the same, to the Gen- eral Assembly or Committee of Safety of this Colony."
That request of the General Assembly met a hearty response from our heroic fathers. This is their record : -
"In consequence of the above Resolution of the Honorable Continental Congress, and to show onr Determination in joining our American Brethren, and in defending the Lives, Liberties, and Properties of the Inhabitants of the United Colonies, -
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
"We, the subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage and promise that we will, to the utmost of our Power, at the Risque of our Lives und Fortunes, with Arms, oppose the hostlle Proceedings of the British Fleets und Aruiles ngalust the United American Coloules.
(Sigued) "JOSEPH WOODMAN, BENJAMIN COLBY, and others."
That list of eighty-three names, headed by that of their pastor, - Rev. Joseph Woodman, - was returned, indorsed thus : -
"JULY 3, 1776.
" To the Honorable General Court or Committee of Safety of the Colony of New Hampshire :
"Pursuant to the within request, the inhabitants of said Sanbornton have all except one (Benjamlu Holt) severally subscribed their names hereunto."
A few other names might have been ou this Roll of Honor if they had not previously entered the active service of their country Five of the sixteen called out by the Lexington and Bunker Hill news were at home ou the 3d of July and signed the Test. Others remained in active service, or had entered it previous to the day of siguing ; Capt. Abraham Perkins had so done.
'That was a bold declaration, then and thus made to oppose with arms the British fleets and armies. The aggressions of the king had been educating those men for their manly utterance. It would have been heroic it all the people of all the colonies had been moved by one mighty impulse of patriotism to pledge united resistance to a power- ful kingdom. Even then the uprising would have been of but a handful of people. The entire population of the colonies then was not twice the present population of Massachusetts ; was less than that of the Que State of Pennsylvania, and not two thirds of that of the State of New York in 1870. Moreover, this small population was scattered over a long line of sea-coast, exposed at every point to the ravages of the British navy. On the other hand, all along and far back of their frontiers extended a wide wilderness, the hannt of numerons tribes of Indians, with whom England had free communication and abundant opportunities to induce them to take up the hatchet and drive in the inhabitants towards the coast, there to be smitten and driven back again by the armies and navies of a kingdom.
The colonies had as yet no navy, and no army even ; no gathered stores of arms, provisions, clothing, and the many necessary resources of war ; and had no friendly neighboring nations from which to buy. Their antagonist, on the contrary, had large armies and navies ; was recognized as the "mistress of the seas"; had full magazines, with all Europe at hand from which to draw supplies, and even men ; and was strengthened by the sympathies of all the thrones of the Continent. The Emperor of Austria, at Vienna, declared to the British minister
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that the joint sovereigns had prohibited all commerce between their subjects in the Low Countries and the rebel colonies, and that the cause in which the king of Great Britain was engaged was the cause of all sovereigns. In France there was, however, some enthusiasin for the American canse.
In such a condition. if all had been moved as one man, and every man had been as great a power as Napoleon Bonaparte was when he was regarded as equal to a hundred thousand commou soldiers, it still would have been an act of great heroism to rise against their king. It was the known purpose of that king to strike a blow with forty thiou- sand men that should be irresistible. Ilis imperious words, " Uucon- ditional Submission," which rang through both Houses of Parliament, and were echoed at all the courts of Europe, would seem enough to have appalled our hieroie fathers, even if all the people had stood shoulder to shoulder.
But besides the navies and armies of Great Britain on the one side and Indian tribes on the other, there were formidable agencies at home to be managed. The people of the colonies were divided in sentiment ; Massachusetts herself was not an exception, nor was Boston, where the iron hand was felt most heavily. When Howe was forced by Washington to embark with his eight thousand troops, on his one lun- dred and twenty transports, he had to take along with him out of Bos- ton eleven hundred people who had sided with him. The love of the mother country lay deeply seated in the descendants of a British ances- try. A strong conservative feeling also forbade any change, except where demanded by pressing necessity. This was emphatically true of the middle and southern colonies. At one time the war was re- garded as a New England war.
Many, in all sections, repelled the thought of war with Great Britain, even long after dark clouds were seen hanging over all parts of the conutry, and it was known that the king meant to employ the whole force of his kingdom to crush the spirit of independence, rise wherever it might ; that armies and ships of war were arriving, and that foreign troops had been hired. In April, 1776, the Assembly of Pennsylvania. by a large majority, declared against a separation from the mother country. In many quarters the voice heard was " reconciliation " at any price. Not till all hope of reconciliation had been destroyed did the colonies come to life and stand together. Then they responded a hearty + amen" to the inspiring words of Rutledge of South Caro- lina : " Seeing no alternative but unconditional submission or a defence becoming men born to freedom, no man who is worthy of life, liberty, or property will hesitate about the choice. . . . Such men will do their duty, neither knowing nor regarding consequences. The eyes
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
of the whole world are ou America, and the eyes of every other colony are on this."
That was the spirit, - ench colony, each man, rushing to the front to inspire the rest, - that was the spirit that now echoed over all the land the ringing notes of Patrick Henry, when, in the Virginia Con- vention, his resolution that the colony be put into a state of defence, being opposed, his words burst forth as flames, "I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
A year before this, when the colonies were in great straits, and it was announced in Congress that Howe and Clinton and Burgoyne had landed in Boston, that British forces were arriving, that other parts of the continent were threatened with war, - just then a letter from the Congress of New Hampshire was received and read in the Continental Congress, intimating that the voice of God and nature was summoning the colonies to independence. It is not strange, then, that the men of Sanbornton, at the very time that Congress was - on the 20 of July - passing the great declaration which was the birth of a nation, and on the 3d and 4th was considering the reasons for the resolution and the principles to be for the guidance of the new nation, - that at that very time, without knowing what Congress was doing, they did, as moved by a common impulse, put their hands to the Association Test. Though they knew not what their delegates in Congress were doing, they did know what King George was doing ; they knew that the colonies were languishing in anarchy ; " that the army, uncounted and unregulated, was in danger of vanishing like dew, or being dissolved by discontents." Those men were not swept thoughtlessly forward on the erest of a great tide of popular feeling. Intelligently, calmly, heroically, as men with a conscious personality, they wrote their names, each with a bold hand, willing, like Charles Carroll of Carroll- ton, to be identified. They had principles which must confront violent passions : inward convictions that must repel outward forces ; a mar- tyr spirit ready to face a relentless tyranny. º Convictions, when they have gone deep enough and spread wide enongh, take form, organize, and bring on a crisis. Passion and power attempt to crush out such living forces. But the convictions that were to be stitled are strength- ened ; the fire that was to be quenched is kindled to intense heat, and made to flash in higher and brighter flames ; the forces that were to be dispersed and annihilated are marshalled into orderly hosts. No cord or rack, axe or fagot, can take the life out of such moral convic- tions. The march of moral forces is irresistibly onward ; amid seem- ing reverses they move forward, and come out - through seas of blood, if need be - triumphant.
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The time had come for a complete separation of America from Great Britain. A nation must be born ; a nation must start upou a great mission on this continent.
The unanimity of the men of Sanbornton is noteworthy ; it evinces general intelligence. Men of the most thorough education and prin- ciple were the stanchest patriots. A fact, stated in Mr. Runnels's manuscripts of our town history, is worth recalling : All but two of the sixteen men who hastened to Charlestown in June, 1775, iu giving their receipts, " signed their names in a fair handwriting," while many from other towns, even from Concord, made their marks. Those men could understand the nature of the conflict ; they knew that vet- eran armies must be met by " undisciplined husbandmen." They must have known that Washington had for a long time been in des- perate straits. In the preceding February, according to Mr. Ban- croft, he was almost destitute of money, powder, and men. Iu March, 2,000 men in his army were destitute of arms and unable to procure them ; and in April, when the British ministry were directing against him 30,000 veteran troops, he was obliged to detach from his small effective force of 8,301 men, poorly armed, six of his best battalions, containing more than 3,000 men, for service in Canada.
Then, in May aud June, came the disasters of the Canada cam- paign, which sorely tried the patriotic spirit of New Hampshire ; for her men were there. On the Ist of May, of 1,900 men, including officers, 900 were sick of the small-pox; and 300 of the remaining 1,000, having served ont the time of their enlistment, refused duty or were importunate to return home. By the middle of June, the army that invaded Canada, thinned by death, broken down by disease, one half being sick. almost destitute of clothing, presented so sad a spec- tacle that a physician, seeing the men suffering as they were on reach- ing Crown Point, said, " At the sight of so much privation and distress, I wept till I had no more power to weep. Everything about them, their clothes, their blankets, the air, the very ground they trod, was infected with the pestilence." " In a little more than two months the Northern army lost by desertion and death more than 5,000 men." (Ilist. U. S., Vol. VIII. p. 133.)
The gloom of despair was settling down upon the country. Only the stoutest and bravest could rise above it or see through it. Wash- ington had to defend extensive lines around New York against an army of 30,000 veterans near at hand, while off Sandy Hook, Howe had forty-five ships or more laden with troops, and was expecting the whole British fleet in a day or two. To meet this formidable force, Washington had, present and fit for duty, ouly 7,754 men ; and of these one half had no bayonets, 1,400 had bad tirelocks, while more than 800 had none at all.
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HISTORY OF SANBORNTON.
Washington's new adjutant-general, Reed, quailed before the ine- quality of the British and American forces. He thus described the American camp: " With an army of force before, and a secret one behind, we stand on a point of land with 6,000 old troops - if at year's service of abont half can entitle them to the name - and about 1,500 new levies of this province. Every man, from the general to the private, acquainted with our true situation, is exceedingly discour- aged. Had I known the true posture of affairs, no consideration would have tempted me to have taken an active part in this scene." It would not have been strange if all had been so discouraged. It is a marvel that they were not. There were those who, like Washing- ton, in all the darkest days of the war saw shining through the clouds a bright light as from God.
It was just at this time of gloom that our fathers bad faith and hope enough to come forward and write : " We will, to the utmost of our Power, at the Risque of our Lives and Fortunes, with Arms, oppose the hostile Proceedings of the British Fleets and Armies against the United American Colonies." Heroic men ! When those men, beneath the dark clouds overhanging them, wrote their names, they laid their all upon the altar in the spirit of the Spartans that made the name of Thermopyl a watchword for heroic self-devotion the world over. They moved, as called of God, to a work for their suffering brethren and for coming generations. They moved grandly, from a mighty impulse of patriotism. I see those plain, stalwart men coming out from their farms, with brow calm aud step firm, gathering together for a few earnest words ; and then, under the lead, as was fit, of their pastor, the Rev. Joseph Woodman, they wrote their names, one by one, in steady, bold hand, ready to redeem their pledged lives and fortunes.
In this scene of the citizens of a town acting under inspiration from their minister, we have an illustrative fact, - a fact to be recalled in days when demagogues would deny the ministry rights which are freely given to the ignorant overflowings of the jails and pamper-houses of Europe. The people in those days, when they saw themselves in peril, turned naturally to those who had been their counsellors in civil and religions affairs. Even the goverments - State and national - looked to the ministry, and asked their influence and counsels.
It was a young minister - the Rev. Mr. Dana of New Haven, Com. - who, when Gov. Fitch of that colony was wavering in the Stamp Act crisis, come forward before the Legislature as the advocate of freedom, and from the pulpit addressed the leading politicians, and so fixed the political opinions of that colony. It was a minister - the Rev. Mr. Balch - who took the lead and addressed the Assembly at Charlotte, N. C., on the 20th of May, 1774, and was chairman of the
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THIE TOWN CENTENNIAL - IHISTORICAL ADDRESS.
committee that drafted the ". Mecklenburg Declaration," - said to be the first declaration of independence made in the colonies. 1 miuis- ter, - Rev. Mr. Payson of Chelsea, - when blood was shed at Lexing- tou, called for arms, and headed a party iu the attack, routed and captured a large company bearing ammunition to the invaders. And when Burgoyne was preparing to sweep down from Canada to New York, and hopelessly cut the colouies in two, a minister - Rev. Mr. Allen of Pittsfield, Mass. - roused the people ; pushed his townsmen to the seene of anticipated conflict ; and then, hearing that they slack- ened their pace, joined them to quicken their march, and soon pre- sented them to Gen. Stark. When the forces were drawn up for the battle of Bennington, he went alone within speaking distance of the forces of Col. Baum, and besought them to yield without bloodshed. Receiving in reply a volley of musket-balls, that shattered the log on which he stood, he called for his gun, fired the first shot at the enemy, and was present through the whole conflict.
Another case cited, like the last, from a speech of the lon. James Meacham of Vermont, delivered in the Ilouse of Representatives at Washington, in May, 1854, in defence of the 3,000 ministers who had been bitterly assailed by members of Congress because they saw lit to present a memorial against the repeal of the " Missouri Compromise " : " When Provost came down upon Plattsburg with 14,000 men, MeComb had but 1,400 with which to defend the place, and check the march of the invader. The only resort was to arouse the country around. A courier, hastening through that portion of Vermont bordering on the lake, halted at the door of a little church in a retired village of Frank- lin County. The pastor and his flock were closing religious services preparatory to the sacrament on the coming Sabbath. The startling announcement was made, and the question raised, 'Who will go to the defence of the country?' Upon the brief silence broke the pastor's voice, 'Brethren, I will go; who will go with me?' A company instantly set out for the scene of action. The Rev. Mr. Wooster was made their captain ; and after fighting bravely in defence of their homes, they returned quietly to their peaceful village."
And then again, when came that " critical and hazardous experi- ment in our history," - the change from the old confederation to the new Constitution, - when l'atrick Henry and other great statesmen used all their strength to resist the change, the New England clergy, with great unanimity, used, publicly and privately, their personal and official influence to bring the people to the adoption of the present Constitution.
The history of our country, from first to last, especially in the war of the Revolution and that of the late Rebellion, abounds in facts show-
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ing the patriotism and power of Christian ministers. Their patriotism was in many ways put to severe tests. Liberal offers were made to some of them to induce them to uphold the cause of the king ; but " they dashed asiile every temptation and braved every danger" for the liberty of their country. They educated the people up to the same greatness of spirit.
The British used every effort, and offered many rewards to induce soldiers to turn traitors to their country, and eulist uuder George III. The Greek patriot Themistocles, the conqueror of Xerxes, ton great to pick up the richest of the scattered treasures of the Persian mon- arch, spurned them with the words, "Other men may ; but I am Themistocles !" So our heroic fathers were too great in thought and purpose to stopp to British gold or honors. Boldly and proudly they could say, each man of them, " I am an American patriot !"
Those men stood upon principles, and cherished a consciousness of rights given of God ; and hence not to be surrendered even to men with gold in their hands, or with crowns on their heads, and armies and navies at their backs. Each man, owning allegiance to God, and obedient to his sovereign will, was himself a sovereign as against wrong, - a sovereign with the sacred anointing from the band of his Maker. Thus hokling himself in manly honesty and right royal independence, man is conscious of a personal responsibility to God which hupels him forward in the line of his convictions. Act for the right he must. The utterance of the great reformer, in the frowning face of Europe, " I cannot do otherwise, so help me God," is the voice of all true men. It is the soul inspired directly by the Divine Spirit, as Peter and John were inspired to say to the Supreme Court of Israel, " We ought to obey God rather than men." Such men are great in spirit and in deeds. Such were the meu who wrote their names on the 3d of July, each for himself acting from a divine impulse and for a great canse. As to the world at large, they stood alone, but with each other and with God; like Luther, alone against prelates and potentates, but with God; sure that ultimately " he always wins who sides with God."
" And right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win ; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."
Of the subsequent action of our heroic fathers -and mothers as heroic - I can say but little. It is on Mr. Ruunels's records that " those who remained at home scarcely shared an easier fate than those who were in active service. All were ready to sacrifice every- thing in life, and even that, at the shime of freedom. . . . Every
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dollar that could be raised was cheerfully contributed to aid the cause of liberty, and the only complaint heard was that it was not in their power to do more."
Of the men in active service at some time during the war, it is diffi- cult to make out a perfect record. Men were called out by alarins, for special services and for short periods. Of some of these no authen- tie account is known. We find Capt. Abraham Perkins engaged in special service ; at one time (1775) stationed at Winter Hill, Charles- town, and then, in the summer and antumn of 1776, on into the winter of 1777, in command of a company in Col. Pierce Long's regiment, stationed at Newcastle. Ile was a man to be relied upon in emergen- cies. Ile was ever on the alert, and at the approach of danger was quick to meet it. Thoroughly acquainted as he was with the charac- ter and habits of the Indian, he was a perfect Indian scout. Ilis train- ing for such service began early. When a little boy, in Berwick, Me., attending the school of Master Sullivan, the father of Gen. Sullivan, he had all his sensibilities intensely quickened. Six boys, disregarding the positive orders of Master Sullivan not to leave the fort school-house during the recess at noon, wandered to a small brook near by, and were quickly tomahawked and scalped ; he saw the victims. Until he was fourteen years of age he never attended church or school without his gun. Mothers of little children are said to sleep with one eye open ; he always slept with his ears open. The first bark of a dog suggesting the possible approach of an Indian, brought him instantly to his feet ; sometimes calling for his gun before he was awake. Mr. Rummels has probably traced out all the men who were regularly enlisted, - ninety-three in number, if we include a few as from this town, respecting whom there may be some doubt.
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