USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Lyndeborough > The history of the town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, Vol. II > Part 9
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Yet some things are unchanged. "The common " here where your chairman and I used " to train," almost half a century ago, in the then celebrated " Lyndeboro Light Infantry," is scarcely changed in a single feature. I regret that the old " Meeting House" is gone. I can see in my " mind's eye" at this moment its dingy yellow outside, its two rows of small windows; in the interior its square pews, its wide gallery, its high pulpit and its wonderful "sounding board " suspended above the
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minister's head. The old house deserved to be spared and preserved as a relic of the olden times, and on account of the associations which had, in the lapse of years, gathered about it. "The mountain" yonder is the same; the hills which I used to climb are the same. The rocks are still here, as many and as huge as ever. I find the same narrow valleys and winding roads. From the hilltops are the same wide views and charming prospects of nature.
One may be allowed, to exclaim, in borrowed words:
" Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again ! O sacred forms, how proud you look ! How high you lift your heads into the sky ! How huge you are, how mighty and how free ! "
An anniversary such as has gathered us together to-day naturally turns the thoughts of those who have reached or passed the mid-day point of life, backward. The traveler, who climbs with toilsome steps up one of our native hills, pauses now and then and turns to measure over with his eye the path along which he has been struggling, following all its windings and numbering all its mile-stones.
We have come from our homes and our wanderings to greet one. another as we rest for a few moments round about the hundred and fiftieth mile-stone which marks the age of our municipal life. Looking backward from this height I see with tolerable distinctness three score of these annual way-marks. Five others are partially obscured from view by the haze which covers early childhood. Some of you can see as many ; a few can count a larger number; most of you stop reckoning before you reach a score and a half.
In addressing you under these circumstances I find myself impelled to speak briefly of some of the things which have been crowded into the space of five and sixty years, to note a few of the changes which have taken place, and to inquire whether, on the whole, real, healthful and hopeful progress has been made. Our starting point is the year 1824. The second term of the fifth President of the United States was drawing towards its close. Only forty-eight years had passed since the Declara- tion of Independence and only thirty-five since the organization of the government under the constitution. Many of the younger actors in the great Revolution, and in the events which immediately followed, were still vigorous and influential in public affairs. Two years later, on the fourth of July, just fifty years from the day when the Declaration of Independence was promulgated, the second and third presidents of the republic passed away.
During the years which have intervened the territory of the country has been enlarged at least three-fold; the states have increased from twenty-four to forty-two, and the population has grown from ten millions to more than sixty millions.
The progress in inventions, in sciences and arts in machinery, in means of travel and transportation, indeed in everything which has to do with civilization and with the comforts and conveniences of life, has been simply marvelous. The wildest dreams of imagination have been more than realized. In my early boyhood the stage-coach afforded the most
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rapid means of conveyance, and goods were transported into the interior of the country by huge, lumbering wagons drawn by four, six, or eight horses. The Erie canal was opened in 1825, and the first railroad in the United States was put in operation in 1826. This was the Quincy road, less than four miles in length, operated by horse-power, and used to transport the granite from the quarries to tidewater. Locomotives were first employed for railroad transportation in 1829 or 1830. These were crude in form and construction, weighing scarcely more than a ton. The first telegraph line was erected and the first message transmitted over the wires-in 1844. The first really successful Atlantic cable was laid in 1866. Time does not permit me to speak of the sewing-machine, of mowers and reapers, of the telephone and of the thousand other wonders of the last half of this nineteenth century.
Our progress in the directions to which I have thus hastily referred is so obvious and so gratifying to the natural vanity of the human mind that we never tire in boasting of it. It would be worse than folly to be- little this progress even if one were so disposed.
But widening territory, increasing population, accumulating wealth of material resources are not the sole, or even the most important indica- tions of real advancement either in a nation or in a limited, local com- munity. We can judge more correctly and wisely in respect to the prog- ress when we know how this territory is occupied, improved and governed ; when we know of what sort and character this swelling popu- lation is, and when we have learned in what ways these resources are used. The present must be compared with the past if we would be sure in respect to the character of the changes which have taken place, and would determine whether, on the whole, the condition of things is better than it was half a century ago.
It will be impossible to make any general comparison, beyond that already indicated, that of the New England of today with the New England of the times of Andrew Jackson or of the grandfather of the present President of the United States ; or of the Lyndeborough of 1889 with the Lyndeborough of 1839, the Lyndeborough of my youth. But it may be of service to us, especially to the younger of us, to institute such a comparison in a few particulars.
It may be frankly admitted that a sort of halo seems, at times, to gather about the heads of the men and women of our childhood. Dis- tance obscures roughness of character as it does roughness of the land- scape. It hides many a sharp angle and uncouth feature of the form and face as it does those of the hills and mountains. In remembrance, time mellows dispositions as it does unripe fruits. In our comparisons we shall strive to guard against the influence of this weakness of nature.
It is natural to commence with the population itself. How does the general character of the population of to-day compare with that of fifty years ago? At that time the population of the rural New England towns was, in the main, homogeneous. Within the range of my immediate personal acquaintance in boyhood I can recall but a single family of foreign birth. The families were all of essentially the same stock, de- scendants of the original settlers. In some cases nearly half the families of a neighborhood bore the same surname. There were no race
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separations, distinctions or prejudices. The people spoke the same lan- guage, had the same traditions, and were animated by the same prin- ciples. They were, in some cases, narrow, provincial, an unfriendly critic would probably say, bigoted. They clung with great tenacity to inherited peculiarities, and without doubt overestimated the value and importance of some religious and political dogmas. But they were Americans, and Americans only, without prefix or suffix. They were neither Irish-Americans, nor German-Americans, nor French-Americans, nor any other qualified sort of Americans, but Americans pure and simple.
It is hardly necessary to say that to day the population of New England is far less homogeneous. Not only the great cities and large villages but, in some sections, the country districts are becoming filled with men and women of foreign birth. According to a recent writer, in one of our periodicals, in Massachusetts "Out of a population of 1,942,142, the foreign-born number 526,867, not including such children of alien parent- age as have been born in the United States. The foreign-born represent one-fifth of the people employed in agriculture, one-half of those em- ployed in the fisheries, two-fifths of those employed in the manufactures, and two-thirds of those employed in mining and as laborers."
The mass of the foreign population of New England has come from Ireland and Canada. The great influx of immigration from Ireland began about 1847. The Canadian French began to come in large numbers about 1867. The inflow still continues in undiminished volume. " Two successive steamers of one line brought to the port of Boston in April last, 2,100 steerage passengers from Ireland, eleven-twelfths of whom intended settling in New England, and almost every train from Canada brings from one to three cars filled with French Canadians seeking new homes in Massachusetts and her sister states."
The rapidity with which the French population has increased in New England is almost beyond belief. " In Manchester, out of a population of 40,000, 12,000 are of this nationality. In Nashua, out of a population of 17,500, 5,500 are French, a gain of fully one-half in five years. In Lowell they constitute one-third of the population.". Many other large towns and cities show a like condition of affairs.
It is not necessary to make further quotations of statistics. The facts are doubtless familiar to you, and you can sum up for yourselves the results of our comparison. Even the most hopeful will hesitate to declare the new condition of things better than the old in respect to population.
I am conscious of no prejudice against men born in other lands and bred under the influence of institutions different from our own. I count among such some of my warmest personal friends and most esteemed associates.
But have we not flung our doors open too wide? Can we afford to admit and welcome without discrimination? We have barred our West- ern gates against the "heathen Chinee," but our Northern and Eastern gates are practically unguarded. Let intelligence and virtue come, but we have no room for more of ignorance, and vice and crime. Of these we have more than enough of native production. The paupers and anarchists of Europe are as much to be dreaded as the coolies of Asia.
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The ignorance and illiteracy of the North are as dangerous to the purity of the ballot-box and the permanency of our institutions as those of the South.
A comparison of social and political conditions naturally follows the comparison of population.
A hundred or even fifty years ago, the New England towns afforded the best known example of a pure democracy. This was true not only in respect to affairs of government, but also in respect to social conditions. There were no fixed and recognized lines dividing the people into classes or casts. There were then, as there always have been and always will be, differences in intelligence, in education, in refinement, in wealth, in in- fluence, indeed in everything in which men can differ. But such differ- ences were incidental, individual, and temporary. There were no classes of capitalists and laborers; of employers and employees. No young man regarded himself as born into a caste, and as belonging to a particular class of society. No young woman thought of herself as predestined, by the accident of birth, to be a servant or a mistress, an employer or a drudge. The boy worked on the farm or in the shop of his neighbor. But he worked with his employer as well as for him. The girl did ser- vice in the kitchen of her mother's neighbor and friend, but her social position was not thereby changed. The next year the boy became owner of a farm, and very likely employed the son of his former employer. The girl became mistress of her own house, and in turn employed the daughters of her neighbors. The employed and the employers were of the same stock and often of kindred blood, and were constantly chang- ing places and relations. Social equality was not disturbed.
Even where large numbers of persons were employed the conditions were essentially the same. In my early boyhood the newly-erected cot- ton mills of Nashua and Lowell were filled with the self-respecting and respected sons and daughters of New England farmers and mechanics. The "overseers " and the "hands" were often old acquaintances and friends, frequently from the same neighborhoods and the same families. Outside the work-rooms they met and associated on terms of perfect equality.
While doubtless something of this old condition of equality still sur- vives in towns like our own, and in communities which have retained their original homogeneous character, it has almost entirely disappeared in the large cities and in all the great manufacturing establishments. During the last quarter of a century there has been a constantly increas- ing tendency towards the creation of permanent classes in society and towards the formation of sharp and clearly defined lines of separation between these classes. These lines run through social life and social organizations ; in some quarters they appear in religious life and relig- ious organizations ; and they are beginning to make their way into the dangerous domain of politics, and threaten to become the basis of politi- cal organizations and political action.
It will have to be admitted, I think, that our present social and politi- cal conditions do not, on the whole, compare favorably with those which existed half a century ago. Some real dangers threaten us. These are serious enough to cause apprehension if not alarm. Some tendencies
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must be checked, and some acknowledged evils must be corrected if our institutions are to be maintained in their purity and integrity. The right of suffrage must be so guarded that the reported result of an elec- tion shall indicate the will of the majority of the actual voters. If in a -, sharply contested election voters can be sold and bought like cattle, at so much a head ; if votes can be bargained for like any other marketable commodity; if the tricks of petty ward politicians and the manipula- tions of self-constituted leaders are to determine candidates and control the policies of great parties then our boasted right of suffrage is a worth- less form, a mocker and a delusion, and our elections are a costly and solemn farce.
If, in addition to all this, men are to bring over from the old countries the prejudices of race, and the political and sectarian animosities of by- gone ages, and are to nourish their barbarous hates and to fight out their senseless quarrels on our soil, in our streets, and about our ballot boxes, then indeed have our politics become degraded, and danger has become really alarming. America has need of only American citizens and American voters, and of American questions and issues in our politics and at our polls.
Time does not permit further comparisons in these directions. The conclusions thus far reached are not calculated to flatter our vanity or to foster our pride. If our examinations were to be closed just here the outlook for the future would not be encouraging. We should enter upon the next half century with gloomy forebodings. I do not, however, share very largely in the excessive fears of the timid, or in the terrible prognostications of evil uttered by the pessimistic prophets of the day.
Allusion has already been made to the great influx of emigrants of different nationalities ; many of them ignorant of the nature of our in- stitutions and of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship; not a few of them imbued with socialistic and anarchic ideas, with confused notions of the distinction between regulated liberty and unbridled license, impatient of necessary restraint and destitute of sympathy witlı many of the social and religious customs and the political traditions of the native population.
Reference has also been made to the tendency towards the formation of opposing and hostile classes ; to the disposition to create antagonism between labor and capital ; to array the employed against the employers ; to engender hatred in the poor against the rich, and even to deny the right to hold private property, and to make the possession of individual accumulations a crime against humanity. The teaching of these social- istic theories and leveling doctrines derives its chief force from some unfortunate and alarming conditions of our times.
It cannot be denied that there is danger, not only to our political in- stitutions, but even to the stability of our present social organization, in the rapidly growing tendency to the accumulation of colossal fortunes in the hands of a few men and a few families, if the laws are to be so framed and so administered as to render such fortunes permanent in these families. At the present day intelligent aud benevolent men, as much as the ignorant and selfish, instinctively revolt against any social or political system which allows a concentration of power or of wealth
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in the hands of a small minority. There is peril when the few become very rich and the many become very poor, and more especially if there are indications that such a state of affairs is to become a permanent con- dition.
It is easy to delude ourselves with the idea that, in some way, things will settle themselves ; that the laws of supply and demand, the laws of business and of the "survival of the fittest" will solve all these per- plexing and dangerous problems. We shall do well to remember that natural laws are slow in their operation, and that human nature is rest- less and impatient when constantly excited by crafty and plausible appeals of artful demagogues and irritated by real or fancied wrongs. It is better economy to guard against an explosion than to expend means in gathering up and caring for broken fragments. It is wiser to prevent a conflagration than to show energy and skill in putting out the fire after it gets under good headway ; better, if possible, to allay rising dis- content than to risk the action of a brutal mob.
Freely conceding the existence of real dangers and of serious and growing evils, I sse no reason for despairing of the republic, or for ap- prehending some overwhelming disaster to our social, religious, and political institutions. I do not believe that, on the whole, the former days were better than the present, that the fathers were essentially wiser, more virtuous, and more patriotic than their children. On the contrary, in many directions, real, genuine progress has been made. While it must be readily granted that in some things we are worse than the men of fifty years ago, it may be safely claimed that in other things we have improved upon their teachings, examples and methods.
While our times have less of certain types of religion, they have more of practical Christianity. They are without doubt less tenacious of theological dogmas; less militant in the defense and propagation of iron-clad creeds; less positive in claiming to possess and to hold all re- vealed truth ; less harsh and denunciatory in dealing with those who differ from accepted standards. But the sweet graces of divine love and charity and beneficence are more cultivated and exhibit a richer growth. The gospel of "good will to men " is more earnestly preached and more constantly and consistently practiced. In spite of the tendency to the formation of classes, in spite of the prejudice arising from the accidents of race and color, simple manhood, without reference to birth or to past or present conditions and circumstances, is held in higher esteem and treated with more respect than in former times.
Call to mind the radical change of sentiment and action touching the questions of human bondage, and the education of the negro race. I have no reference to the positions and teachings of political parties or religious organizations, but to the general tone of public opinion and to the conduct of men irrespective of party or sect.
Happily to many of you slavery and the heated and bitter controver- sies growing out of it are only matters of history, like the discovery of America and the battle of Bunker Hill. To us, whose memories easily traverse the period of fifty years, they are not so much history as living and terrible realities. Our fathers had solemnly affirmed that all men have an inalienable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
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By a strange inconsistency they denied to a whole race, guilty of only a darker skin and thicker lips than their own, every right which renders life desirable or existence tolerable. Men, women, children were bought and sold like horses and sheep. No ties of blood or family were re- garded as sacred. To teach a slave to read was a crime punishable by long and hard imprisonment. A public meeting of intelligent citizens and respectable members of Christian churches, held not in South Caro- lina but in Connecticut, resolved that it is "Highly inexpedient and even dangerous to the peace of the community to teach the negroes to read and write." The city of New Haven, at a meeting held with the mayor as chairman, voted by a majority of 700 to 4, "That the founding of colleges for educating colored people is an unwarrantable and danger- ous interference with the internal concerns of other States, and ought to be discouraged." "That the establishment in New Haven of such a college is incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence, of the present institutions of learning and will be destructive of the best in- terests of the city."
In some places in the Northern States mobs tore down school build- ings erected for the education of free colored children, and compelled the teachers to flee for their lives.
Statesmen defended slavery on constitutional grounds in the Senate, and learned divines defended it on Bible grounds in the church. The honored president of Dartmouth College, whose name and memory I hold in highest reverence, while I was a student in that institution, affirmed, with strong emphasis, that prophecy and history, the will of God and the interests of humanity, united in declaring that bondage was the natural and proper condition of the African race.
Since those days, slavery, though protected by constitutions and laws, by compromises and resolutions, has been swept away by a terrible deluge of human blood. The hot flames of Civil War have burned away the barriers which barred the progress of the colored race and closed against them the schoolhouse and the college. The logic of events and the mighty workings of an over ruling Providence have con- verted both statesmen and divines to a new gospel of universal freedom. It is no longer considered dangerous to teach negro children to read and write. The good citizens of New Haven do not tremble lest the estab- lisliment of colleges for colored young men and women will shake the solid foundations of Yale university. The various religious denomina- tions emulate each other in contributions of men and means for opening and supporting institutions of learning for the emancipated slaves and their children. The South is not much behind the North in this benefi- cent and Christian work. A recent document states that since 1862 there have been expended the following sums for the education of the colored people of the South :
By the American Missionary Association, $10,000,000
Methodists,
2,250,000
Baptists, 2,000,000
Presbyterians,
1,600,000
Others,
1,000,000
Making a total of
$16,850,000
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The Southern States have expended since 1868 for common and normal schools for the colored race, $37,000,000.
Will anyone venture to assert that the former days of slavery and oppression were better than these latter days of freedom and education?
There are serious problems yet unsolved touching the emancipated race. But in view of what has already been accomplished, we may face the perplexities and dangers of the future without overmuch apprehen- sion or fear.
Time forbids an extension of these comparisons. But it could easily be shown that real and healthful advance has been made in general edu- cation and in many departments of moral reform. Genuine progress has been made in the temperance work, and in moral and legal efforts for the suppression of the traffic in intoxicating liquors. "Evil men and seducers may have waxed worse and worse," but public sentiment in most of our communities and in the nation at large, in spite of many drawbacks, has steadily improved.
And whatever provisions may be put in or left out of the constitution of a State, whatever laws may be enacted or repealed, this remains true always and everywhere : that all permanent progress, either in political or moral reform, must have its basis and support in an intelligent public sentiment. What the majority of the people demand in respect to temperance, or civil service reform, or emigration, or the public lands, they will ultimately get. Vexatious delays may be met, but the final result is sure. The waiting may be long and tiresome, but patient and persevering effort finally has its reward. Right and truth will conquer in the end.
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