USA > New York > Pioneer history of the Holland Purchase of western New York : embracing some account of the ancient remains > Part 63
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PETER B. PORTER.
So identified with, and merged in, the events of the war of 1812, was this early and prominent pioneer of Western New York and the Holland Purchase, that a portrait and brief biography of him, is an appropriate and fitting appendage to this portion of our local annals. Any history, or even historical sketch of the war upon this frontier, would be incomplete, if it did not embrace some notice of one, who so largely, bravely and honorably, participated in it. Locally, to borrow a dramatic illustration, he was the "Hamlet of the play."
Gen. Peter B. Porter, was a younger brother of the Hon. Augustus Porter. He was born in Salisbury, Litchfield Co., Conn., in 1773; graduated at Yale College, and studied the profession of law in the office of Judge Reeve, at Litchfield. His first advent to Western New York, was in 1793. The event is thus noticed, in an address that he prepared * for delivery before the Euglossian Society of Geneva College, in 1831 :- "It is now, if I do not mistake, thirty-eight years since I first traversed the shores of the beautiful lake on whose banks we are assembled, and set my feet upon the ground which had been marked out as the
* A severe domestic affliction, the illness and death of Mrs. Porter, prevented the attendance at Geneva and the delivery of the address. The author has been permitted to copy from the manuscript.
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site of this rich and flourishing town. I was then a youth, with a mind filled, as I hope and believe yours now are, with visions of future enterprise and exploit and usefulness to my country, when- ever I should be released from the restraints of a scholastic cduca- tion. I had heard of the far famed 'Genesee Country' -of its fertile soil, its genial climate, of its beautiful lakes and rivers-and resolved to visit it; with an intention, which was a few years after- wards realized, of making it the place of my future residence. Accordingly, accompanied by a friend, whose views and feelings accorded with my own, we entered the interminable forests of the west, at the German Flatts, on the Mohawk, which was then the extreme verge of civilized improvements, and plodded our weary way, day after day, to the Genesee river. The only evidences of civilization, at that time, consisted of some half a dozen log huts at Utica, as many more at this place, and the same again at Canandaigua. Beside these, there were a few miserable cabins, sprinkled along the road, at a distance of five to fifteen miles apart, where the traveler might look, not as now, for comfort or for rest, but for the sheer necessarics for continuing his journey."
As intimated in the above extract, he did not then determine upon a location in the region, the primitive condition of which, he so well portrayed. In 1794, he went to Plattsburg, in this state, was admitted to practice, remained there but a brief period, and returned to Connecticut. In 1795, he accompanied his brother Augustus, on his return to Canandaigua, and became a resident of Western New York, where he was destined to have a long and brilliant career, at the bar, in the social and conventional relations of the new country; and subsequently, in the councils of the state, in the defence of the frontiers, and in the councils and cabinet of the nation.
He was engaged as counsel, in 1795, at Canandaigua, in the first trial in a court of record in Western New York. He was appointed Clerk of Ontario county in 1797, elected a member of the Legislature in 1802. In 1810, he became a resident at Black Rock, then in Niagara county. He was twice elected to Congress; the first time, in 1810, and the second time, in 1814. In 1815, he filled the office of Secretary of State, of this state; in 1816, he was appointed by President Madison, one of the Commissioners to run the boundary line between the United States and the British Possessions; and in 1828 was appointed Secretary of War, by
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John Quincy Adams. These data indicate mainly, his varied and extended public services in military capacities.
He was an active and influential member of Congress, pending the war of 1812, and filled the important post of Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations. Had he consulted his own interests instead of the rights and honor of his country, he would have inclined to the peace party in Congress in that memorable crisis. His home, and his large property were upon the immediate frontier to be endangered in the event of a war with Great Britain; he could well have counted the cost to himself, of a war that was to array hostile forces upon the Niagara frontier; and well could he foresee the calamities it would inflict upon a large portion of his constituents. But, with a devotion to his country that could not vield to selfish or local considerations, he took a firm and decided stand in favor of the war. In the latter part of November, 1811, he reported a set of resolutions authorizing immediate and active preparations for war; and on the 11th of December, justified their propriety and necessity by a speech of great ability, firm and ener- getic in its tone, and yet temperate and judicious. He assumed that further negotiation was useless, and must be abandoned; recounted the wrongs that Great Britain had inflicted upon our country, its dogged refusal to make reparations; and announced that the committee of which he was chairman, only awaited the consummation of the measures they had recommended; and that then, if reparation continued to be withheld, the committee would recommend "open and decided war-a war as vigorous and effect- ive, as the resources of the country and the relative situation of ourselves and our enemies would enable us to prosecute." He said that "he was aware there were many gentlemen in the House who were dissatisfied that the committee had not gone further and recommended an immediate declaration of war, or the adoption of some measure which would instantly have precipitated us into it. But he confessed such was not his opinion. He had no idea of plunging ourselves headlong into a war with a powerful nation, or even a respectable province, when we had not three regiments of men to spare for that service. He hoped that he should not be influenced by the howlings of the newspapers, nor by a fear that the spirit of the Twelfth Congress would be questioned, to abandon the plainest dictates of common sense and common discretion. He was sensible that there were many good men out of Congress, as
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well as many of his best friends in it, whose appetites were prepared for a war feast. He was not surprised at it, for he knew the pro- vocation had been sufficiently great. But he hoped they would not insist on calling in the guests, at least, until the table had been spread. When this was done, he pledged himself on behalf of the Committee of Foreign Relations, that the gentlemen should not be disappointed of the entertainment for want of bidding; and he believed he might also pledge himself for many of the members of the committee, that they would not be among the last to partake personally, not only in the pleasures, if any there should be, but in all the dangers of the revelry."
And well did he redeem the pledge thus given. His duties dis- charged at the seat of government, he participated in the "dangers of the revelry," often with a bravery that commanded admiration, and an efficiency that helped to turn the tide of war in this quarter, and shed lustre upon arms that had been dimmed by a series of defeats and untoward events. To trace his military career from battle field to battle field; from his first unfurling of his country's standard upon this frontier, and appealing in glowing language of patriotism and deep concern for his country's welfare, to his fellow citizens to range under it, would be to write a history of a large portion of the war upon the Niagara frontier. Locally, his name was a tower of strength; when confidence in other men flagged- when a seemingly vascillating policy governed in our national councils-when the weight of war pressed heavily upon all the region of the Holland Purchase-hope revived, reliance was strengthened, by his voice, his pen, and his sword. No chieftain in the Highlands of Scotland, with bugle blast, ever drew clansmen from glen or heath, that came more readily and joyously to the foray, than did the ardent volunteers from the back-woods and log cabins of the Holland Purchase, when he appealed to their patri- otism and invited them to his standard. With those not familiar with the events of that period of peril-with the local exigencies that existed-this may be regarded as eulogy too highly colored; but its fidelity and truthfulness will not fail to be recognized by those who remember how universal was cotemporary public senti- ment in Western New York, in yielding praise and warm com- mendation to the military services of Peter B. Porter. It is but a transcript of the distinct recollections of the author, of those times, and the men who bore a conspicuous part in them; and he only
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regrets that the circumscribed limits of this portion of his work forbids a recognition of the names and brilliant services of other of the men of the Holland Purchase, and Western New York.
Gen. Napier, in his "Peninsular War," makes the sortie of Fort Erie a brilliant achievement; the only instance in history, where a besieging army was entirely broken up and routed by a single sortie. The conspicuous position that all historians of the war have assigned to Gen. Porter, upon that memorable occasion, would alone entitle him to a high rank as a military commander.
He was appointed Brigadier General of volunteers, by Governor Tompkins, in 1814, and brevet Major General soon after the battle of Lundy's Lane. In 1815, he was appointed by President Madison, Major General in the United States service, and was to have had command of the northern division of the army, had another campaign been necessary. Indeed, he had left Washing- ton, and arrived as far as Albany on his way west to prepare for the campaign, when the news of peace overtook him.
The active years of his life were mostly spent in the councils of his country, and in the field; had his destiny been differently shaped -had he been left to pursue the quiet walks of his profes- sion, of literature, of arts and science, he would have no less excelled; if less conspicuous, would no less have demonstrated extraordinary mental endowments. His, in the progress of litera- ture in our country, was an early school; yet in the records of legislation in state and nation, there are few better specimens of eloquence than he uttered, or of compositions, than those that came from his pen.
He was a statesman of enlarged mind, one of the most far- sighted and right-judging of his day. This is attested by all his views and services connected with the boundary commission, the War and Indian departments of our government, and the system of internal improvements of our state.
This early pioneer of Western New York, the early lawyer, legislator and prominent citizen; the leader of our volunteer citizen soldiery, in the war of 1812; the able defender of his country's rights and honor in our national councils; closed a long, useful and honorable career, at his residence at Niagara Falls, on the 20th day of March, 1844, aged 72 years. His funeral was at an inclement season, and yet there was assembled a large concourse of citizens of Niagara and Erie counties. Among them, was an
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aged chief of the Tuscaroras, the stoicism of his race yielding the tribute of tears, that coursed down his furrowed cheek, when he gazed upon the remains of one who had been his friend, and the early and constant guardian of the welfare and interests of his people. Gen. Porter married late in life, Mrs. Lætitia Grayson of Kentucky, the daughter of the late John Breckenridge, formerly Attorney General of the United States. She died at Black Rock, in July, 1831, aged 41 years. He left, as the inheritors of his good name, and a large estate, accumulated by early and judicious investments, a daughter and son; the latter of whom, has just reached his majority, and is entering upon the career of life with an ample fortune, and what is far better, if he justly appreciates it, he is endowed with a rich legacy of parental example.
NOTE .- In a notice of the death of Mrs. Porter, which appeared in the columns of the Buffalo Journal, the author of it renders a deserved tribute to her more than ordi- nary mental endowments, and thus speaks of her excellent example in the domestic and social sphere :- " Much of her time, her labor, and her solicitude were always her free- will offering at the command of those who desired the assistance of her ready hand. The poor and the distressed had their anguish and their wants mitigated by her allevia- ting attentions; but all that she affected was performed so much in the simplicity of her heart, and such were her lofty conceptions of the awful responsibilities of the Christian, that she shrunk from the thought of calling them acts of religion. In the spirit of the reply which the blessed shall make to the Almighty Judge, she would say in reference to her rewards, ' when saw I thee an hungered and fed thee; or thirsty and gave thee drink; naked and clothed thee; sick and in prison and came unto thee?' There was concealed in the recesses of her soul a richer fund, both of principle and feeling, than its owner estimated."
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CHAPTER II.
THE ERIE CANAL.
A long, uninterrupted enjoyment of individual as well as public blessings, their full fruition, a familiarity with their use, tends to make us unmindful of their magnitude. Especially is it so in the progressive age in which we live. Scarcely have we done won- dering at some new achievement, calculating its results, before another is projected and consummated to divert the attention. Now that canals and rail roads have been multiplied-steam has had its new and wonderful triumphs on land and water-the light- ·nings of Heaven, like the wild steed of the prairie, has been lassoed, tamed and fitted to the practical, familiar use of man-it is difficult to enable the younger portion of our readers to go back beyond all the important events that have been crowded into the last quarter of a century, and realize to its full extent, the magni- tude of the projection of the Erie Canal, how great was the triumph achieved in its construction, and how vast and diffusive were the local and general benefits that flowed from it. To enable them to judge of its local influences, the change for the better that followed its completion, upon the Holland Purchase, we must go back to the years pending its final consummation.
Here at the western extremity of the state, upon the Holland Purchase especially, new settlers had for several years failed to create a sufficient demand for the surplus produce that began to be realized. The early settlers had passed through all the vicissitudes that have been enumerated in the progress of our narrative; the privations of their forest advents; the diseases of a new country, its chills and agues; the war and its scourges; the cold seasons and their attendants, frosts and stinted crops, They had subdued
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a rugged soil, and it had given good earnests of productiveness and plenty; but the difficulty of reaching a market had begun seriously to be felt; its consequences were a low range of prices for all they had to dispose of, stagnation of business, and the slow progress of improvement. It will be remembered that the son of a pioneer settler of Orleans county, relates that his father sold his wheat for twenty-five cents per bushel, in 1818; in 1823, it was sold in most of the village markets upon the Holland Purchase, as low as thirty-seven and a half cents. The bulk of the original debt to the Holland Company remained unpaid, and interest was adding to principal. There were no remunerating prices for anything the settlers had to dispose of, save, perhaps, the lumber that was in near proximity to lake Ontario, and the articles of black salts and potash; the gloomy prospect before them was the holding on to their decaying log tenements, after they had hoped to supply their places with better ones, an increasing indebtedness for their lands and the liability of ultimate dispossession.
Such was the general condition of the Holland Purchase in the years immediately preceding the completion of the Erie canal, up to those points, where it began to be reached by the surplus pro- duce of this region.
All that relates to this great work - its projection and consum- mation -has a direct and important bearing upon progress and improvement upon the Holland Purchase; and yet it is a subject mainly belonging to the province of the general history of our state. In these local annals it can only form an incidental chapter; a brief chronological account of events that preceded it, are allied to its history, its advance westward, and its final completion.
The great "mother of invention" as well as founder of schemes of public utility - necessity - was the projector of the Erie canal. The progress of settlement in the western portion of the state; the absence of facilities for the transportation of the products of field and forest, and merchants' goods; the danger that the trade and commerce of a vast region bordering upon our western lakes, would find other avenues to a market upon the Atlantic, would be diverted from our own commercial emporium; were existing, stim- ulating exigencies. Let us briefly consider who were foremost - what events occurred to supply these existing exigencies - to con- summate what necessity so imperatively demanded.
By a reference to page 176 of this work, it will be seen that in
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a remote period of English colonization upon the Hudson, the Mohawk river, Wood ereek, Oneida lake, and Oswego (Onondaga) river, furnished an internal water communication for commerce with the Iroquois. With the exception of occasional allusions in the messages of the colonial Governors to some measures for the improvement of the navigation of some stream, the subject of internal improvement does not appear to have received much atten- tion until after the Revolution.
Christopher Colles, as early as 1772, delivered a course of public lectures in Philadelphia, on the subject of loek navigation. In 1785, he made proposals to the Legislature of New York, for im- proving the navigation of the Mohawk, but the Legislature did not give him sufficient encouragement to enable him to carry out his views. He renewed his application again in 1786 with little better practical effect. Discouraged and embarrassed, he gave up his plans, and relinquished all attempts to accomplish them. In 1791, his scheme for " connecting the northern and southern, and eastern and western waters, was revived," but he is not known to have had any ageney in it. In 1786, Jeffrey Smith, a member of the Legis- lature of this State, asked leave to introduce a bill for the improve- ment of this navigation, and "for extending the same, if practicable, to lake Erie;" a measure which must have been premature at the time, in view of the fact that the English had not yet surrendered the posts at Oswego and Niagara.
Before the Revolution, Washington had turned his attention to the subject of internal improvement, but that event suspended the prosecution of whatever plans he might have contemplated. But no sooner had he fought the last great battle of freedom, and secured to his country the inestimable blessings of peace, than he again renewed his favorite projects. He visited New England in 1784, and extended his journey in New York as far west as Fort Stanwix. In a letter addressed to the Marquis of Chastellux, a . French nobleman, distinguished as a traveler, writer, and soldier, he thus enthusiastically sketches the impressions which were made on his mind.
"I have lately made a tour through the lakes George and Champlain, as far as Crown point; then returning to Schenectady, I proceeded up the Mohawk river to Fort Schuyler, crossed over to Wood creek, which empties into the Oneida lake, and affords the water communications with Ontario. I then traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, and
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viewed lake Otsego, and the portage between that lake and the Mohawk river, at Canajoharie. Prompted by these actual obser- vations, I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it; and with the goodness of that Providence, which has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them. I shall not rest contented until I have explored the western country, and traversed those lines, (or a great part of them) which have since given bounds to a new empire."
George Clinton accompanied Gen. Bradstreet, in his expedition against Fort Frontenac, on lake Ontario, in 1756, as a Lieutenant in a company commanded by his brother, the afterwards Gen. James Clinton. The opportunity that was thus afforded to the young and aspiring soldier, to obtain information of his country, and its first commercial wants, seems to have been well improved in an after period, when the English Lieutenant had become Governor of the finest province that he had helped wrest from English dominion. In his message to the legislature, in 1791, he says: - "Our frontier settlements, freed from apprehensions of danger, are rapidly increasing, and must yield extensive resources for profitable commerce. This consideration forcibly recommends the policy of continuing to facilitate the means of communication with them, as well to strengthen the bonds of society, as to prevent the produce of those fertile districts from being diverted to other objects." Then followed this, in the same year. an act, authorizing a survey of the grounds between the Mohawk river and Wood creek. The survey was made and reported to the legislature.
Elkanah Watson was among the first to appreciate the impor- tance of a safe, easy, and expeditious channel of communication between the Hudson and the lakes. In 1788 he made a tour to the extreme settlements on the western frontiers of New York. In his journal of that tour he says :- "I left Fort Stanwix on my way down Wood creek to lake Ontario, and perhaps to Detroit, having a strong presentiment that a canal communication will be opened sooner or later, from the great lakes to the Hudson." Mr. Watson is justly ranked as one of the foremost to call public atten- tion to works of internal improvement; his propositions were bold, far-seeing, and marked with great ability and energy of purpose. When. however, in after years he claimed that to which he was
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well entitled, a large share in the primitive movements having reference to the internal commerce of this state, he conceded that his views were only " to follow the track of Nature's canal, and to remove natural and artificial obstructions;" but that he never entertained the most distant conceptions of a canal from lake Erie to the Hudson. We should not have considered it much more extravagant to have suggested the policy of a canal to the moon."
To Mr. Watson it may justly be conceded, that if he was not absolutely among the first, he was one of those who early enter- tained favorable views of the importance of such a work; but not only by his own admission, but by his generously attributing the conception of the overland route of the Erie Canal, having its western termination at the foot of lake Erie, to another, he cannot be named as one of its very earliest promulgators and friends, however favorable he may have been to its prosecution when its success became more apparent.
It will not be our intention to canvass all the conflicting and "disputed claims," to the honor of first suggesting the over- land route of the Erie Canal. Whether Gouverneur Morris expressed the idea of "tapping lake Erie," in 1777, or not; whether Joshua Forman had conceived it practicable without consulting any one before he introduced his celebrated resolutions, in the Assembly, in 1808, or not, there is every reason to conclude that the views contained in the essays written by Jesse Hawley, over the signature of Hercules, were entirely original with their author, who had, even before he commenced those celebrated canal papers, expressed the same opinions in his private corre- spondence. Mr. Hawley was the first to present this great subject seriously and intelligibly before the public, and urge its adoption as a work not only within the means of man to accomplish, but as of the greatest public importance and utility -- a work which would not only pay for the original cost of its construction, but be a reli- able and unfailing source of future revenue.
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