History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 26

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340

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government, there was not a man here who would, under any con- ceivable circumstances, have offered Washington, or any other mortal, the crown. All had tasted the blessing of freedom, a free press, free speech, free religion, and the untrammeled right of going and coming when he pleased. Yet they divided on the question of a strong cen- tral government and a stronger central government. Equally earnest, honest and intelligent, they were arrayed in opposing ranks, but pelt- ing each other with nothing more dangerous than ballots, and the mu- tual lashings of tongue and pen. The mists of nearly a century have come between us and the times of the first social and political life of our people. None are now living to tell us what they then thought about the questions over which they were divided. This need not be regretted for the reason that one can not know their unreasonable prejudices, nor can we very easily be influenced by the passions that stirred them, no doubt deeply. Men then, much as they do now, went to the polls and voted in the implicit faith that the future welfare, at least of Americans, depended largely upon their being able to outvote their political opponents. The hate of Rebel and Tory was just dying out, but party fealty and distrust of political opponents may have been then as strong or even more bitter than it is now. The Tories had become peaceful Federalists, and were as full of wrath and hatred of the King of England, a feeling that they had been taught by bloody events, to extend to the wholepeople of England, as were the most radical Republicans, and yet they believed a sleepless vigilance necessary to prevent their oppo- nents from rushing the country into a mere headless mob, or to anarchy itself. Both parties looked to precedent as a guide in all government affairs. The authority of precedent was strong among all the people, pos- sibly less so among Republicans than their opponents, but practically this was the authority of highest resort, on the part of all ; in the church, the school and in state-craft, precedent was nearly supreme in all mooted subjects.

" Larger boats may venturemore, But little ones must keep near shore,"

was the philosophy of " Poor Richard," which, at the time Dr. Franklin gave it expression, contained much of the philosophy of the day. If, in an emergency, you could find no precedent to guide you, then stand still and await developments. Men were more cautious and conserva- tive in political opinions then than we find them now. Adam Smith's book on Political Economy was then just published, and was an un- known and unheard of thing to most Americans, especially on the frontiers. Our democracy was a new thing in the world, hardly yet more than a doubtful experiment. There were no radical Democrats, and there were many apparently unanswerable reasons for the faith of those who believe in a greater stability of government, that meant greater centralization of power.

The beginning of the second war with England and the civil form- ative steps of Bradford county were contemporaneous events. Madison was President. He was one of Jefferson's ablest lieutenants in the cause of the new democracy, and picked up the gauntlet of war offered so haughtily by England.

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

Political questions were now rapidly recast, and men were for or against the policy that had led to war. All were in favor of its vigorous prosecution-this is true even in the face of the calling of the notahle Hartford convention, yet there was a division of parties on the policies that had brought on actual hostilities. The war com- menced in June, 1812, and ended in February, 1815. Our country was invaded by a ruthless foreign foe, our cities burned and captured, and shocking cruelties inflicted, but our land, and especially our naval forces, had conducted some of the most brilliant campaigns then known to warfare. The infant nation met the proud mistress of the seas, and with her war-ships, that were little more than extemporized wooden tubs, blew up her armadas and brought her ships as rich prizes to our shores. The splendid victories of Perry and Jackson were the all-sufficient answers to those who opposed the war, as final victory and peace was the death of the anti-war element in the land,- a demonstration that Greeley was right when he said, "nothing suc- ceeds like success," and in war the opposite of this it seems would be, that "nothing fails like defeat."

We fortunately can know the prevalent thoughts and emotions of the people of Bradford county in these three stirring years of her young life, by carefully consulting the files of the Bradford Gazette that commenced publication the same year of the war, and of the organization of the county. A newspaper then was very different from one of this day and time. There was not a daily paper that then found its way into Bradford county and fewest of any kind that were then accessible to the people. The weekly local paper was their chief reliance. This was mostly distributed by private hands ; it was made up of extracts from other papers, published in the cities, and was without local or general editorials, but there is but little trouble in examining the ancient files of the Gazette in finding out the editor's opinions on all important questions. The advances in newspaperdom from that time to the present are immense; now there are many dailies to where there was one weekly formerly ; the great dailies come damp from the press by the fast-mail train; the telegraph has obliterated space and time in gathering the hourly news, and morning, noon and evening, night and day, year in and year out, the great per- fected presses are literally showering the land with papers like as the winter snowflakes fly. The rapid rise and growth of the newspaper is truly phenomenal, but you must not therefore conclude our people are so immensely favored over those of the day of the little weekly with- out a line of editorial comment. The editor's responsibility then was greater than now ; his paper was not only carefully read, but was studied and laid away- men met and read it over and discussed it, and families did the same. This was well understood by the publisher, and he governed himself accordingly ; he studied thoroughly his few exchanges and reprinted articles that were written in solemn earnest by men of vigorous intellects-men who treated the few subjects in hand exhaustivelv, elaborating to their heart's content. No difference what subject the writer had in hand, he proposed to probe to the very bottom of it. One of the little, old, yellow

John F gillette

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Gazettes, with but four columns to the page, and, of course, but four pages, is before me, and it has a communication clipped from the Democratic Press, on the subject of "The Washington Benevolent Society," that fills six columns. It is highly probable that article was copied in nearly every little four-column weekly paper then published in the land, and thus it became a national factor; it was carefully filed away, and fortunately preserved for our examination-a handy and unfailing index of the history of the times. There was more power and effect in the little, dingy four-column country weekly than there is to-day in the great 46-page daily ; and there is, after all, a question as to whether, so far as the people in general are concerned, the ancient country weeklies were not better in filling the demands of their time than is the modern metropolitan press. A man now is compelled to read his mammoth dailies in a few spare minutes, while waiting for his meal to be served; he gathers the news, all he has time to wait, by scanning the head-lines of the telegraphic dispatches. There are dailies issued that a man, to read them as our fathers read their papers, would require the entire twenty-four hours intervening between the issues. It is usual to count these changes as simply advances for the better, but whether they are or not is questionable ; as educators, there is no doubt but that the old style was far preferable to the new in newspapers, for the simple reason that thoroughness has been supplanted by skimming superficiality ; the average man read less and confined himself to fewer subjects, but he was thorough-at least far more so than now, so far as he attempted to go. The tele- graph was then hardly so much as a dream, and there was and has been nothing that so thoroughly diluted our literature, as it comes from the daily and weekly publications, as this. And the whole ten- dency now is sensational ; pandering in every column to the pruriency that has come of the possibilities of the harnessed thunderbolts. Who would now sit down to read six columns of his paper under such a caption as "The Washington Benevolent Society ?"" Bnt, on the other hand, who will skip a flaming headlight type announcing a " Rattling Prize Fight," or "A Brave Man Pounded to Death in the Ring?" There were more people who read, day by day, for months, page after page of the papers about the Beecher trial than there were living souls in America when Burr Ridgway was publishing his Weekly Gazette, except when the printer had unexpectedly migrated. One of the largest metropolitan dailies is now edited entirely by telegraph ; that is, it, like the old Gazette, has abandoned its editorial page, and boasts that it "gives all the news; " and as for opinions, its readers may " hustle and find each one for himself." Our fathers were content with column after column of " foreign news," that was generally three months old. It was a month after Commodore Perry's immortal vic- tory on Lake Erie before the full particulars were published in Brad- ford county. Its splendors were not fully comprehended for years.

Prompted by curiosity I read carefully " Consistency's" article in the Gazette, filling over six columns about the " Washington Benevo- lent Society." The writer starts out with a well-drawn contrast between the conditions of the rich and the poor; the rich man

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wallowing in the lap of luxury, while the poor must submit to the cruel decree, and grin and bear it. Then he plunges deeply into his subject by asking in big capitals the question " What is the form of government best calculated to ameliorate the condition of the poor ?" A very important question indeed. To give every one an equal chance in life; to allow everyone to enjoy "the fruits of the sweat of his brow ;" appealing , in capitals again, to "the constitution of nature," and to produce in the body politic justice and equity to all men. Summing up all these great and very practical suggestions he appeals to the members of the Association, to tell the people what form of government will best bring these blessings :

" Ye friends of truth, ye statesmen who survey The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land."

These are his broad premises, and they sound somewhat of the prophetic visions of the ancient fisherman. His premises are the greatest political problems that were ever presented to mankind- justice and liberty to all men-perfect equality of right, or, in other words, A good Government, something to be hoped for, even before a "splendid" one. The people to whom these grave words were addressed were then founding our government-free to shape it as they willed. Would they make it a good government rather than a splendid one? The writer had heard perhaps of the splendors of India, where the royal elephants fairly blazed with diamonds and rubies with which they were decorated, and the wealthy women were clothed in fabrics so rich and delicate that they were called " the woven weird ; " they toiled not, and yet in this land of gorgeous splendors more than six million people, the toilers and producers, starved to death in one season of famine. Whether he had or not, certain it is, he had thought profoundly and well on that supreme problem of the world, how to attain a good government. The article was surely written by a Republican Democrat, and he addressed his appeal to the opposition -- the Republican-Federals. The year 1816, at the very hour this article was given the readers of the Bradford Gazette, it should be remembered that our country was in its infancy of untried experiments, and it is now openly said by history that among some of the greatest men of that time there were divisions on the subject of a centralized government, or a greater power allowed to the people- an aristocracy of rulers, made rich and powerful by government-and that these were to be pampered by the powers and they in turn would care for and protect the people-those who hewed the wood and carried the water. It is not at all curious that this and similar questions should arise among our great ancestors; all were fresh from the very extreme of paternalism in government, when to question the divinity, the infallibility of any ruler in any country or government, was treason and deserved quick and ignominious death. An aristocracy of some kind, rich and powerful, and, if good, the necessary friends and protectors of the people, was deemed a thing of a matter of course ; the few superiors, the many subalterns; the wisdom

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and love of parents guiding and caring for their helpless and innocent brood; a lord fed, clothed and cared for in sickness his dependents or serfs

"_a few agree To call it freedom when themselves are free,"

exclaim "consistency!" The king and nobles always agree that when they are happy the country is blessed ; courtiers, minions, sycophants, and dependents bask in the favor of the ruler, and all scheme to secure the most money from the sweat and toil of the people. It was battling these chronic old ideas that the writer was going through so many columns of the paper-it was illuminating the Democratic ideas of Jefferson ; the greatest liberty to the greatest number.

It should be borne in mind that at that timeit was different from now, especially in the matter of the divine right of kings and rulers, and even though this country has destroyed the office of king, and substituted a constitutional government, yet all were agreed that the people must be protected-their liberties carefully guarded by those in control. In the matter of regulating, controlling, making laws to care for, and protect both the public and private affairs of community ; the country has gone on and on, as the years have rolled by, and customs, habits, and statute laws have been piled one upon another, mountain high. Jefferson's democracy readily joined hands in this work of regulating, even discovering pretexts, plausible and otherwise, for new laws and new and more officials ; protecting the dear people-mistaken good men and great patriots-were the labors day and night of all men. The people grew clamorous for more government, more, more! One regulating law would require two, three, or a dozen amendments or new laws, and each would require more officials, and they in turn required more and more taxes; but men felt they were happy, happy always when they could more and more feel the weight or actual presence of the law, and the government ever pressing closer and closer about their individual persons. In other words, there was little division among men on the vital question of the true conditions between subjects and rulers, but they parted lines in other directions.

For instance, when Bradford county was organized, as an evidence of what the people were contending about, is found some reference in the first issues of the Gazette to the subject of paper currency. The Federalists evidently were the men who were accounted as being in favor of government providing a supply of paper money for circulation, while their opponents, the Republican-Democrats, were for the more solid gold and silver.

Following this was the question of the intensity of everyone's ad- vocacy of the late, the present or perhaps the future or next war. They were divided in their sympathies between Great Britain and France, or Napoleon, in the wars then raging. The more liberal Democrats were heart and soul for Napoleon, while others were openly or secretly favor- ing England. The war of 1812 had emphasized the division between the two political parties. Monroe was president, and those opposed to the war vented their anger at him.

Chiefly in Bradford county, when it had become organized and offi- cered, the divisions were the Republicans, Democrats and the Federal-

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Republicans-the differences were far more in name than in fact; the former, though New Englanders, were severe in their criticism of the Puritan and his fanatic religious pretensions. Although the country had then recovered from the era of the abundant drowning of witches, no one party, it seems, had its skirts clean enough on this subject to taunt or abuse anyone else, for either mistakes or crimes in this direc- tion. The Gazette, during its first six months' existence, published a most remarkable ghost story, without a word of comment, as it was taken from some other paper. In that particular case the shadow was that of a man who had been murdered foully, of course, and the same story is now common stock in much of our light and vicious fic- tion, to harrow the souls of credulous children and weak-minded men. It is safe to assume that there was far more credulity, and a consequent much less disposition to doubt on the subject of supernatural extrava- ganzas among the first settlers in the county than there is now. The people read their Bibles with a faith and a literal belief in even its de- tached sentences, that the most thorough-going church members of to- day can hardly understand. No doubt entered their minds when listen- ing to the severe dogmatics of their doughty preachers, and the same was true as the head of the family or the school teacher read aloud the weekly issues of the Bradford Gazette. The greatness and goodness of the minister was measured mostly by the length of his sermons and his tireless lung power. There was a strong combination of supersti- tion in religious subjects, and on political subjects among those who built the framework of society in the Susquehanna valley-an import- ant item when we come, in this day, to weighing and estimating their lives ; in other words the true history of any people or time, lies, often, beneath the surface facts and incidents. You see a madman in irons, held by his strong guards while he raves and froths and would murder any living thing, and you ask his keepers the cause, and they would probably tell you that family trouble, death of wife or children, finan- cial difficulties, or that it was religion, excitement or any of the other commonly assigned reasons. This answer might be the true one, but as often it is not ; it all may have come from some ancestor generations ago-the cause is often the seed, planted deep from view, in long pre- ceding time of the hour that we gather the full and ripened fruit.

In 1813 the question of trade with England was laid before the people of Bradford county. The Gazette copied an article from the Baltimore Patriot, under the head of " The Embargo," at which the writer is overjoyed, and pronounces it a wise and good measure, "a law called for alike by national honor and national interest ;" and he proceeds to say that it will prove more hurtful to England than "even the thunder of a Hull or a Decatur"-a law which is to " nurture our infant into giant manufactures," shorten the war by years, and " rescue the souls of millions of neutral agents from the deep damnation of habitual perjury ; " and then proceeds to say : "We present the trib- ute of our humble applause to the men who wisely and resolutely spurned the thraldom of an abused name and passed a wise measure." This Republican continues in the vein of exultation, and is bold to say that the declaration of war was the wisest American measure since the

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Declaration of Independence, and the enforcement of the " Embargo" will prove to be the most cogent and prudent measure since the decla- ration of war, and the writer sincerely hopes the measure will not, like a former one, "become a mere perch for birds of prey." To the "speculators " who cried out against it, saying, "how are we to employ our capital now ?" he answers "establish manufactures " -- " fit out privateers."

As a war measure, it may be readily gleaned from the article referred to, that the Republicans warmly favored the embargo while the Federalists, it may be assumed, opposed it, at least indirectly, and the writer denounces " he who would sell his birth-right for a gay coat or any coat ought forever to be a slave in buff," and, in his judgment, the " meanest peasant in America, blessed with these sentiments is a happy man compared with a Tory."

About this time appeared in the Gazette a long article signed "Farmer," discussing the dangers of Americans suffering themselves to continue dependent on the use of foreign goods, and the urgency of securing domestic manufactures of every kind; he accuses merchants of exacting double prices, if not more, for every foreign article they have for sale. He shows that the tendency is upward in price for foreign goods ; and that merchants are rapidly making enormous for- tunes. "Farmer" lays down some rather striking propositions in economics, that is, they would be novel now, after seventy-five years of discussion of the subject of trade with foreign nations. "Such are the mournful results," he exclaims, "of your listening to the artful tales of merchants concerning the subserviency of commerce to agriculture, such the painful and mortifying issues of neglecting domestic manu- factures and encouraging those of foreign nations. No sort of com- merce favorable to agriculture is beneficial to the farmer, but exporta- tion alone; importation and foreign trade are ruinous. * * The war has no tendency to impoverish the nation ; it sends not a cent out of society, it merely occasions the transfer of property from one to another ; it takes from the central and conveys to the frontier ; taking from the mechanic and giving to the soldier. * * * Only push domestic manufactures and cease to frequent the stores of men who vend foreign goods and send your wealth abroad and then your impoverishment becomes impossible."

In December, 1813, the people read carefully, Madison's message addressed to Congress. This was a rapid review of what had transpired in the then war with England ; it was read and reread with infinite pleasure by, doubtless, nearly all the leading Republicans of the county, and, if read at all by the Federalists, it was not with pleasure, but largely for the purpose of finding fault with it.

The strongly Democratic-Republican paper of the county in 1813 laid before its readers nearly three columns of reading, that even told of now sounds curious, but is full of suggestions as to the public mind of that time. It is no less than an account, copied from the National Advocate, of a public dinner, given at Tammany Hall, New York, " under the direction and superintendence of the Republican General Committee of New York," to Maj .- Gen. William H. Harrison. This

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was the greatest social and, no doubt, political event of the time, and although it was twenty-seven years preceding the elevation of Harrison to the great office of President of the United States, it was, probably, the first round in the ladder that he eventually climbed to the top. The very curious thing about it is that Harrison was nominated and elected, and was always a self-proclaimed pro-slavery Democratic- Republican, yet his election was a Whig victory and a triumph of the memory, the shades, of the old Federalist party. Time unfolds curious conditions, even in politics.

While these old pioneer fathers were rigid and strong in every article of political faith, they were equally so, if not more, severe in matters of religion. In politics they quarreled fiercely about war measures, the proper defense of the flag, the building of domestic manufactories and like propositions; but in matters of religion they were unanimous in the deepest seated faith, the very savagery of " dogmas and the pitiless extirpation of heresy, however radically they might differ on points of doxy. Sternly and even severely religious were these American pioneers ; the representatives of the church militant, glorying in self-inflicted penances, and with the sword of Gideon smiting sin hip and thigh ; rare bundles of inconsistency, full of fight and religion ; shoulder to shoulder battling with an invading army ; two souls as one in hating England or fighting Satan and his imps, yet always ready in the fiercest of the struggle even to turn and rend each other on the flimsiest questions of polemics. So full of the spirit of dissent were they that the laymen were ever ready to quarrel with the shepherds, and without a qualm of conscience they split, divided and subdivided their church organizations.

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History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 26

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.) Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340