USA > New Hampshire > State builders; an illustrated historical and biographical record of the state of New Hampshire at the beginning of the twentieth century > Part 3
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as it does in that under review. In point of character and ability the list of governors in these twenty-three years is striking and conspicuous. It includes Josiah Bartlett, one term; John Taylor Gilman, fourteen terms; John Lang- don, six terms; Jeremiah Smith, one term, and William Plumer, one term.
Among the senators in congress were Samuel Liver- more, Nicholas Gilman, William Plumer, John Langdon and Jeremiah Mason. Samuel Livermore, Nicholas Gil- man, Jeremiah Smith, Thomas W. Thompson, George Sullivan, Charles H. Atherton and Daniel Webster were among the representatives in congress.
It was in this period that the prestige of service in the Revolution continued many of the old leaders in the high- est prominence in the state.
At the same time a later generation of politicians of transcendent ability was developing such statesmen-jur- ists as William Plumer, Jeremiah Smith, Jeremiah Mason and Daniel Webster, and the national service of Webster and Mason were not more useful to the state than were the achievements of Jeremiah Smith in the reform and construction of a system of jurisprudence, and what Plumer accomplished in the reforms of the political sys- tem embodied in the constitution of 1792, and in other lines of political effort, notably that which resulted finally in the Toleration Act of 1819. This was a period of as- cendency of the Federalists in this state the greater part of the time, but the not infrequent successes of Langdon and Plumer in contesting the governorship and the fatal mistakes of the party in its war policy and its alliance with the standing order in ecclesiastical affairs fore- shadowed the sure approach of its complete and perma- nent failure as a political power.
The Anti-Federalists, then known as Republicans-the Jefferson party of that day-controlled the state govern- ment in whole or in part from 1804 to 1812, Jeremiah
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Smith having for a single term broken in on the succes- sion as governor in 1809.
The court system had remained without material change, as far as the court of last resort was concerned, both in the province and state from 1699 to 1813. In these later years the Federalists having recovered control of the legislature and re-elected John Taylor Gilman, abolished the existing judicial system and reorganized the courts. This added fuel- to the flames of opposition and added to the causes which were effectual in the final downfall of the party in 1816.
Many important institutions had been established in the state between the close of the Revolutionary War and the termination of the War of 1812. One hundred and forty- two library associations were incorporated; sixteen acad- emies, including Phillips or Exeter, were founded; the medical school at Hanover had its beginning in 1798; a Grand Lodge of Free Masons was organized in 1789 with General John Sullivan as Grand Master; the New Hamp- shire Medical Society had its inception in 1791; Concord became the permanent capital in 1807, and the State's Prison in that city was begun in 181I.
The same period was one in which a marked transition was to be observed in ecclesiastical affairs. Universalism was first preached in New Hampshire in 1773, and Meth- odism in the last decade of the same century. Baptists in their several divisions were of course of a much earlier sectarian development, but they did not develop consid- erable strength in New Hampshire until the period fol- lowing the Revolution.
In the colony and Province periods the Congregational order had maintained its ascendency as practically a state church, the town ministers having been elected by the people and supported by public taxation.
At the close of the period under consideration, all de- nominations had gathered increased members and influ-
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ence and were on the eve of a contest of great importance in the ecclesiastical history of the state.
THE WAR OF 1812.
The second war with England was not in accord with the political views of the Federalists. While its prosecu- tion was directed nationally by a Republican administra- tion, in New Hampshire a Federalist governor held office and administered its military affairs in the last two years in which hostilities were continued.
Governor Plumer was in full accord with the war pol- icy of the Madison administration. Portsmouth was fortified and garrisoned early in the war by troops under command of Major Bassett, and later by very large levies from time to time from the militia of the state. Captain Mahurin was posted at Stewarts- town with a company to protect the frontier. Major John McNeil of New Hampshire distinguished himself at the Battle of Chippewa. General Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, a native of Hanover, was prominent at the Battle of Niagara and in other important lines of duty in this war. It was to him that Miller, another illus- trious New Hampshire soldier, replied to the inquiry, "Can you storm that battery?" "I'll try, sir." At the Battle of Fort Erie, also, where McNeil and Miller added to their martial laurels, another New Hampshire soldier, Major John W. Weeks of Lancaster, was the peer of the others in courage and conduct. Moody Bedel was an- other conspicuous New Hampshire soldier of this war. Gen. John Chandler was a well-known officer of New Hampshire nativity. As has already been stated, Henry Dearborn, formerly a distinguished New Hampshire sol- dier of the Revolution, was in the early part of this war the senior Major-General. On the sea, moreover, New Hampshire sailors in many battles maintained the pres-
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tige which has always accompanied the seamen of the Granite State.
EVENTS FROM 1816 TO 1855.
The overthrow of the Federalist party in 1816 was an irretrievable disaster to that historic organization. With the exception of the temporary triumph resulting in the choice of Anthony Colby, Whig, as governor in 1846, the Jeffersonian Republicans, later to be known as Dem- ocrats, elected every governor until their power was over- thrown by the American party, more commonly styled "the know-nothing party," under a secret organization in 1855. It will be recalled that from 1824 to 1834 the principal factions in the Democratic party were desig- nated as Jackson men and Adams men.
The astute political managers who had compassed the defeat of the Federalists in 1816, built the party founda- tions for permanency as well as strength and utility.
Sectarian animosities when confused with party pol- itics are not easily eradicated.
The agitation for what is known in the history of this state as religious toleration was formally begun in the legislature in 1815. The so-called Toleration Act did not become a law until 1819. Meanwhile the conflict before the people and in the legislature was strenuous and often- times intensely acrimonious. The Rev. Dan Young, a minister of the Methodist denomination, who introduced the first bill looking towards this reform in the senate in 1815, was re-elected from term to term until the passage of the act was accomplished. He was a leading exponent of this cause. His life, written by W. P. Strickland, con- tains an interesting account of this controversy. In the house, Ichabod Bartlett of Portsmouth and Dr. Thomas Whipple of Wentworth were the champions of the Toler- ation Measures. Mr. Henry Hubbard of Charlestown
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was an advocate of the existing system. Mr. Barstow in his history of New Hampshire gives a very ample resume of the debates in the House.
Contrary to the predictions and convictions of the op- ponents of these changes in the law of the State relating to town taxation and town control in church affairs, the results were advantageous to the Congregationalists as well as to other denominations.
Contemporary with the occurrences already recounted was the attempt to amend the charter of Dartmouth col- lege by state authority for the purpose of reorganizing the government of the institution. This legislation was the result of the controversy between factions in the town and college at Hanover .*
Their petitions to the Legislature for interference in- volved far-reaching results.
The Dartmouth college case has become a landmark in federal jurisprudence.
Incidentally it served to make prominent and bring into the view of the whole country the fact that there was at the bar of New Hampshire and on the bench of her high- est court a. group of lawyers whose learning and forensic ability could not be surpassed at that day in the entire length and breadth of the Union.
The "era of good feeling," which intervened between the War of 1812 and the organization of the Whig party in 1832, was a period in which personal politics predom- inated in all directions. From that date the Whigs by de- grees developed strength sufficient at intervals seriously to threaten Democratic ascendancy in the state. Their activity and method were especially manifest in the cam- paigns of 1839 and 1840, when Gen. James Wilson made his phenomenal runs for the governorship.
The rapid declination of the Whig party after the Mex-
* Address of President Tucker before the N. H. State Board Association, John Marshall Day. Vol. I, Proceedings, p. 360.
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ican War resulted from causes in some respects similar to those which militated against the Federalists after the War of 1812-15.
In 1826 occurred the Anti-Masonic uprising. This affair drifted into politics, and, as a party issue for a time, commanded serious attention. The movement did not, however, acquire in this state the momentum which it had in Vermont, where a state government was elected on an Anti-Masonic platform.
The Democracy of New Hampshire for a long series of years was regarded as the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and Isaac Hill. The state was a Jacksonian Gibraltar. It is said that Gov. Hill was a potent member of the president's "kitchen cabinet."
However the fact may be on that point, the manage- ment of the New Hampshire leaders always successfully met the practical test that "nothing succeeds like success."
It is conceded that Gov. Hill exercised great influence in national affairs. The plan of a national convention to nominate candidates for president and vice-president to supersede the old method.of nominations by a congres- sional caucus is attributed to him. Another remarkable political fact related to Jackson's administration is the number and prominence of the New Hampshire stock in his cabinet. Lewis Cass, a native of Exeter, was Secre- tary of War from 1831 to 1833. Amos Kendall, a native of Nashua, was Postmaster-General from 1835 to 1837. Levi Woodbury, a native of Francestown, was Secre- tary of the Navy from 1831 to 1833, and Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1845, and at times was regarded as much more than a presidential possibility. He died in 1851. Nathan Clifford, a native of Rumney, another Jacksonian Democrat of the New Hampshire stock, Attorney- General under Polk in 1846, was appointed to the Supreme court in 1857. Gen. Cass, who had the
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Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 1848, closed his distinguished public career as Secretary of State under President Buchanan. In all this period to the time of his death in 1852, stood Webster, another son of New Hampshire, without an equal in his assem- blage of talents and attainments as a jurist, as an orator and as a statesman among his contemporaries. At the same time, moreover, a new generation of sons of the Granite state were coming to place, power and promi- nence in the national arena.
Of New Hampshire senators the names of Franklin Pierce, Samuel Bell, Levi Woodbury, Isaac Hill, Charles G. Atherton, John P. Hale, Henry Hubbard and John S. Wells are easily recalled as statesmen of national reputa- tion. As representatives from other states in the senate who were senators before 1855, and eventually were recognized as statesmen of the first class, were Wm. Pitt Fessenden and John A. Dix, both natives of Boscawen, and Salmon P. Chase, a native of Cornish. Horace Greeley, a native of Amherst, was already a controlling force in journalism which was moving the minds of men in every northern state.
Among the political diversions of this period which gave the Democracy of this state no little concern was the Independent Democracy in 1842, 1843, 1844. It made a division of the party forces on the question of the measure of power that was to be conceded to railroads and other corporations in their acts of incorporation. The party had righted itself from this jolt when another indepen- dent movement confronted the organization in 1846 and 1847. This was really important and far-reaching. It involved the slavery question and enabled the Whigs and Free Soilers to effect a successful coalition and choose a senator of the United States.
The contest of New Hampshire brought Franklin Pierce and John P. Hale more directly and more prom-
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inently than ever before into the light of national pub- licity, and from this time on both were recognized as na- tional leaders destined to assume the most important rolls in the great national drama that was impending.
There were in this period, however, important social and reformatory agitations in progress through which permanent and valuable results were evolved.
One of these movements was in the line of temperance reform, and the other was directed against the institution of slavery. The efforts in favor of the first of these causes was primarily by means of associations designed for the education of the people and reform by the forces of argument and reason, and later by organization of such societies as the Washingtonians and the Sons of Temperance. The anti-slavery movement found many in- tensely earnest and devoted adherents. They were so uncompromising in their propaganda that many of the best people in the State of a less aggressive cast of mind regarded them as genuine fanatics.
Doubtless the results of these agitations were more varied and far reaching than those who were the con- temporaries of the apostles of anti-slavery realized.
N. P. Rogers, Abby Kelley, Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury and others were co-workers whose efforts in the cause which they regarded as paramount over all other social and moral issues, are the subjects of Mr. Pillsbury's history, "The Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apos- tles." They were reinforced on the New Hampshire platforms by Garrison, Thompson, Fred Douglass and Harriet Martineau in public speeches and in newspaper arguments and by the Hutchinsons by their even more effective singing of anti-slavery songs.
"The Herald of Freedom" was an influential party newspaper which was maintained by the Abolitionists for many years. A political organization was effected after a few years of continuance of this agitation, but its lead-
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ers did not put the party to the test of such a radical declaration of principles as the unconditional Abolition- ists demanded.
The free soil vote first appeared in the candidacy of Daniel Hoit for Governor in 1841, and it continued to be a factor of more or less importance until 1856.
Attention has now been called to the existence of opin- ions and influences which were tending unmistakably towards a political revolution in New Hampshire.
In the latter part of this period the long continued discussion of the temperance question and the develop- ment of a conviction with the people that the subject must be treated in a more effectual way than had before been attempted and by a new system of liquor laws were what preceded and eventually took practical form in the prohibitory law of 1855.
The militia, which had formerly reached a high degree of efficiency and had been so maintained for more than one hundred years, had now fallen into decadence. In the time of the Indian wars, the war of the Revolution and the war of 1812, every citizen of New Hampshire was a trained soldier, and these were the men who fought the battles of their country and gave the world a new nation.
A new and greater struggle was impending. Webster saw it and foretold it in prophetic speech.
The military system of the state instead of being re- formed was abolished.
The Mexican War, 1846-1848, was prosecuted at a scene of operations so far distant that New Hampshire was less affected by it than it had been by any other. either of the colonies or of the republic. Nevertheless it responded with spirit to the calls of the president and promptly forwarded its quota. Franklin Pierce was made a brigadier general and participated in Scott's campaign. Several New Hampshire men who were afterwards prom- inent in the Union armies from 1861 to 1865, began
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a military career in Mexico. Among these may be mentioned George Bowers, Lieut .- Colonel of the 13th Regiment; Thomas J. Whipple, Colonel of the 4th; Joseph H. Potter, Colonel of the 12th and Brigadier- General of the regular army; Jesse A. Gove, Colonel of the 22d Massachusetts; John Bedel, Colonel of the 3d New Hampshire and Brevet Brigadier-General; John H. Jackson, Colonel of the 3d regiment; George Thom, Gen- eral in the same war; E. A. Kimball, Lieutenant-Colonel of Hawkins' Zouaves, and Thomas P. Pierce, who was appointed Colonel of the 2d New Hampshire, but de- clined the command. Major William Wallace Bliss was Assistant Adjutant General to Gen. Taylor. Charles F. Low of Concord, Theodore F. Rowe of Portsmouth, Daniel Batchelder of Benton and Noah E. Smith of Gil- manton served in various capacities in the Mexican War.
Lieut .- Col. Benj. K. Pierce, a brother of the president, was a very prominent officer in the Seminole War. He died in the regular army from the effects of disease in- curred in Florida.
No revision of the constitution through the instrumen- tality of a delegate convention was undertaken after 1791 until 1850. The convention then assembled was an ag- gregation of men distinguished in various walks of life, and Franklin Pierce was made the presiding officer. The changes accomplished were limited in number, but important, progressive and beneficial at the three points of amendment on which ratification by the people was secured.
The contemporary historical literature of this period comprises the periodical publications of the New Hamp- shire Historical Society (founded in 1823) ; the historical magazine of Farmer & Moore, begun in 1821; the New Hampshire Repository, edited by William Cogswell, 1845-1847, the Farmers' Monthly Visitor, 1852-1854,
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and the Granite Farmer and Monthly Visitor, 1854-1855, conducted by Chandler E. Potter.
Whiton's History of New Hampshire, published in 1834, supposedly to a certain extent in the interest of the Whig party, was followed by Barstow's in 1842, in which is disclosed a quite distinct Democratic predilection. Both, however, are very creditable works. John Farmer's revision of Belknap's History also appeared in 1831.
The debates in the convention of 1850 were reported in full, but there is no publication of them except in the contemporary files of the New Hampshire Patriot.
Industrial movements destined to be of vast importance to the state were taking form and resulting in local es- tablishments at various points in these years.
In 1835 the first railroads were chartered, less than seventy years ago.
The great cotton manufacturing industry which has now for so long a time been the backbone of the state's industrial stability and prosperity, was established in the first half of the century just ended.
When the Democracy entered into power in 1816 they imitated the precedent their opponents established in 1813, abolishing the existing system of courts and dis- persing the judges who held office under it. It is to their credit, however, that the court of which William M. Richardson was the chief justice and Samuel Bell and Levi Woodbury the associates, and those who succeeded them in regular sequence till the termination of the Demo- cratic regime in 1855, were of conspicuous learning, char- acter and judicial ability.
The chief justices from the beginning of the state gov- ernment of 1784 had been Samuel Livermore, Josiah Bartlett, John Pickering, Simeon Olcott, Jeremiah Smith, Arthur Livermore, William M. Richardson, Joel Parker, John J. Gilchrist and Andrew S. Woods.
The existing political parties were now (1854) honey-
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combed with disaffection and discordant opinions within the party lines by reason of the introduction of new issues, some of which, as for instance the temperance question and the subject of slavery, involved vital moral consider- ations.
The American party, which marked a sharp reaction from the anti-secret society ideas of the Anti-Masonry epoch, was organized under esoteric forms, and all of its successes were achieved under the black domino. The principal issue which it ostensibly presented was a fictitious one. The threatened danger of domination of American institutions and American affairs by the Pope of Rome was preposterous.
Nevertheless this party of mushroom growth and brief existence served the purpose of thousands of discontented partisans to rearrange their political alliances and to emerge from this great political chrysalis in an absolutely new political attire.
This was the end of the period of political ascendency accorded between 1816 and 1855 to the democracy of New Hampshire.
NEW HAMPSHIRE AND THE PRESIDENCY.
It was among the decrees of destiny that the presidency for once at least should come to New Hampshire. It was necessarily ordered, moreover, that this event should transpire before New York had become an indispensable factor in presidential contests; before Indiana had be- come pivotal; before Illinois had become an imperial com- monwealth; and before the stars of Ohio had preempted the zenith.
From 1848 to 1872 the sons of New Hampshire were to be reckoned with in every quadrennial disposal of the candidacies for this great office. Cass, nominated by
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the Democrats in 1848, was defeated only by a mischance, possibly an accident, possibly by means not justifiable.
As the campaign of 1852 approached, Webster's friends made an active canvass for him and for the first time his candidacy was openly and positively avowed. It is one of those unaccountable eccentricities of national politics, occasionally and too often recurring, that a party that might make a Webster president should be content with a William Henry Harrison, a Taylor, or a Scott.
Levi Woodbury was under serious consideration as a possible Democratic candidate, but his death in 1851 closed the book.
John P. Hale was chosen to lead the forlorn hope of the Free-soilers in 1852. This candidacy contained no ele- ment of personal retaliation upon either of the great par- ties, as did that of Van Buren in 1848. It cast a side- light upon the situation and tendencies in politics at that time, of which few of the contemporary politicians were wise enough to take advantage or warning.
Although Webster and Cass still stood at the forefront among the statesmen of their time, it was to be General Pierce's triumph and New Hampshire's opportunity. The president was to be one who was not only a son of the soil, but a life-long resident upon it. He was elected by an overwhelming majority. Only a few of the lead- ers in public thought and public action realized as did Webster the actual volcanic condition of the politics of that period. Mr. Pierce's administration was indeed to conduct national affairs very near to the end of that epoch. The portents of the coming conflict overshad- owed all the plans, devices and efforts of statecraft. President Pierce's official family-Marcy, Guthrie, Mc- Clelland, Davis, Dobbin, Campbell, and Cushing-was one of the ablest, best organized, most harmonious, and most homogeneous American cabinets ever assembled, and it had the unique distinction of unbroken continu-
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ance during a full presidential term. It was the policy of the party, of which this administration was of neces- sity the representative and exponent, and the conditions of its political environment from 1853 to 1857, and not any fault or failure of the president in adhering to that policy, however, unwise and impossible it may have ap- peared in the light of subsequent history, that rendered his re-nomination impossible. Franklin Pierce adminis- tered his great office with statesmanlike tact and acumen, with notable and unfailing dignity and courtesy, and with loyalty to the principles of the party by whose suffrages he had been elevated to the chief magistracy. It was in obedience to the dictates of party expediency, and not in exemplification of the courage of political faith and pur- pose, on the part of the Democracy of 1856, that James Buchanan was made the party nominee instead of Frank- lin Pierce.
In this period, Chase, Hale and Greeley had already become recognized as statesmen of presidential propor- tions. Chase's candidacy for the Republican nomination in 1860 and 1864, and for that of the Democracy in 1868, were, in each instance, so formidable that, though unsuc- cessful, they were of far-reaching influence in national politics.
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