USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. III > Part 39
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In the meantime, his nephew, William, born in Cranston, in 1830, had started his career in the renowned Sprague establish- ment by entering the employ of his uncle at the age of fifteen. His father Amasa was murdered in Cranston near the Sprague mills in 1844, and the story of that tragedy, and the results of the murder trial that followed, constitute a shocking chapter in the annals of local nineteenth century history.
At the age of twenty-six, William, grandson of the first calico printer in Rhode Island, and one of the first in America, and nephew of Governor William Sprague, occupied the leading place in the control of the vast interests of the A. & W. Sprague Co. The business activities of the firm were then greatly enlarged, and included manufacturing units in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine and Georgia, so that it soon became the largest calico printing company in the world. In the conduct of this vast inter- prise, young William Sprague showed great ability, and the heavy responsibility appeared to be an easy burden for the youthful manufacturer and financier. He became interested in military activities and found time to belong to the Marine Artillery of Providence, in which unit he rose by gradual promotion to the rank of colonel. In 1859, he made a tour of Europe, where he found special interests in the military establishments of the Continent. He returned to Providence in the Spring of 1860, on the eve of an impending na- tional crisis that was to involve him in a way that he did not, in the least, suspect.
Prior to Sprague's return from his grand tour of the Old World, the Republicans had met in Rhode Island and nominated the Hon. Seth Padelford for Governor. Some of the younger Republicans of that time objected to the Padelford nomina- tion, claiming that the candidate had been forced upon the party. In the midst of this
political dissension, William Sprague, described as wealthy, successful, popular, a good soldier, a born leader, and socially prominent, returned from Europe; and he was welcomed home as the man of the hour. The whole State turned out to hail the young idol, and he soon found himself the key man in a bitter political squabble. The Rhode Island Democrats, taking advantage of the popular outburst for Sprague, and sensing the opposition to the head of the Republican ticket, hastily nominated William Sprague for Gov- ernor, and for the next sixty days Rhode Island was the scene of a gubernatorial contest that virtually rocked the shores of Narragansett Bay. To make a long story short, the young manufacturer, soldier and socialite was elected Governor in the largest vote ever cast in Rhode Island, and, too, in spite of the national and local campaign speech made in Providence by Abraham Lincoln, who was elected Presi- dent of the United States in November of that same year.
One of the first indications of Governor Sprague's abilities as a statesman was his prophecy of strife between the North and the South. Convinced that the South was sincere in its threats to secede, and that the North would take militant measures to prevent secession, Governor Sprague lost no time in preparing the military forces of Rhode Island to aid in the defence of the Union. He was right in this presentiment. Hardly had President Lincoln's proclamation for 75,000 volun- teers, for three months' service, been made on April 15, 1861, before Rhode Islanders were on their way to the scene of expected action.
The local Governor immediately or- ganized a regiment of infantry, twenty- five hundred volunteering, fifteen hundred more than was necessary, or required to fill up a regiment in those days. These men came from all over the State, and from all stations in its social and business life. Competition for membership in the unit was keen, and the Governor and his assistants had great difficulty in making selections so that all sections of the State were properly and fairly represented. The first regiment was finally made up of six companies from Providence, one from
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Newport, one from Pawtucket, one from Westerly, and one from Woonsocket. Ambrose E. Burnside, at the time treas- urer of the Illinois Central Railroad, was hastily summoned from New York, where he maintained an office, and he was placed in command of the regiment. It is evident that Governor Sprague had prepared well, and that he conducted his military organ- izing in an efficient and inspiring fashion because, within five days after the call for volunteers, the first half of the regiment under the command of Colonel Burnside left Providence for Washington, and four days later, the second half, under Lieu- tenant Colonel Joseph S. Pitman, de- parted for the theatre of war in the South. All this hasty response to the call for arms required money, and since no warning had been given, the Legislature was not in session; nor was there time to call a session to authorize the expenditure of money which the emergency required. Governor Sprague met the crisis. He and his firm, the A. & W. Sprague Company, guaranteed that the expense incurred would be paid, and thus, the Rhode Island troops were enabled to move more speedily to the front.
Meanwhile, the national situation had reached a point where it was plainly apparent that a greater force was needed, and that short term enlistments were inadequate. President Lincoln issued a second proclamation for troops, and this time enlistments were for three years, or the duration of the war. Therefore, on June 18th, Governor Sprague issued an order for the organization of a second regiment of infantry and a battery of artillery, and a camp for the purpose of organization was established on Dexter Training Ground in Providence. Major John S. Slocum was appointed Colonel. On June 19th, the Second Rhode Island Regiment struck their tents and marched to Exchange Place, where appropriate exercises were held, and then resumed the march to Fox Point, where the men em- barked for Washington on the Steamer "State of Maine." The regiment arrived in Washington four days later, accom- panied by Governor Sprague.
From then on, the story of the Second Rhode Island Regiment's service in the
war of the rebellion is a narrative of brave, honorable, enviable and efficient performance in the thick of the fighting in most all of the major engagements of the war from the First Battle of Bull Run to the surrender at Appomattox. It was mustered out of service May 24, 1865, and arrived back on Rhode Island soil on the 17th of July.
The first regiment which was enlisted for three months, the one that Governor Sprague organized so rapidly and sent to the front after Lincoln's first call for volunteers, was in only one engagement, the First Battle of Bull Run, fought on Sunday, July 21, 1861, at Manassas, Virginia, about thirty miles southwest of Washington. Governor Sprague took part in this battle, serving as an aid to one of the Union commanders. During the fighting he had his horse shot beneath him, and for his bravery under fire, he was commissioned a Brigadier General, although he was not mustered into Gov- ernment service. Under the leadership of this youthful War Governor, Rhode Island won first rank for the number, character and fighting efficiency of her volunteers, sending to the defense of the Union, 10,832 infantry; 4394 cavalry; 2979 light artillery; 5644 heavy artillery; 645 navy - and spent for war purposes six and one-half million dollars.
Governor Sprague resigned March 3, 1863, to accept the office of United States Senator, and he served the State in that capacity until March 4, 1875.
Disaster followed William Sprague's whirlwind flight to fortune and fame as a fighting, battle-tried leader of the people. Financial ruin came quickly upon the heels of political downfall; the failure of the house of A. & W. Sprague involving thousands of people in what amounted to a statewide, almost national, calamity. He died in Paris on September 11, 1915, and is buried in Swan Point Cemetery, Providence. Somewhere else in a well- known history of the Civil War can be found a passage that reads somewhat as follows: "The Regiment from Rhode Island was assigned quarters in the De- partment of Interior Building. Governor Sprague in full uniform accompanied his troops when they marched into the edifice
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as the national banner was raised above and the spectators cheered. Southern sympathizers looked on sullenly, flashing
their teeth. As the heroic little band of Rhode Island volunteers entered their quarters they sang: "Our flag still waves."
JOHN HAY
THE first-known John Hay, son of a
- Scotch soldier of fortune, emigrated to America and settled in Virginia, in 1750. Of four sons, two rendered dis- tinguished service in the Revolutionary War. After the War, one of these, Adam, left Virginia and settled in Lexington, Kentucky. His son, John, at the age of fifty-five, became convinced that a slave state was not the place to bring up a family, and accordingly removed to Springfield, Illinois, assisted in making the river trip by Abraham Lincoln. Another John, his son, went to Salem, Indiana. He was graduated from Transylvania College and later received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Settling in the little town of eight hundred inhabitants, about 1830, he practised there for ten years. He married Helen Leonard, at one time a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, daughter of Reverend David A. Leonard, a man of high scholastic attainment, a graduate of Brown University, and the poet of his class. Dr. John and Helen Leonard Hay had five children, Edward, Augustus, Mary, Charles and John, the subject of this account, who was born October 8, 1838. A few years after John's birth Doctor Hay moved his family to Warsaw, Illinois.
The quaint little town of Warsaw be- came the home and school home of John Hay's boyhood, and this second home, statelier than the cabin where he was born, stood on a bluff of the Illinois bank of the Mississippi River, half way up the State, commanding a broad view of the River and the Missouri country beyond. Those were the days of river boats and river men with ways of their own, later vividly pic- tured in verse by a lad who, as his sister once remarked, "had the habit of string- ing his words together into rhymes."
John Hay's education began in a little brick schoolhouse, where he learned what
was to be acquired from Schoolmaster Holmes and his successors. When his grammar school days were over, at about the age of thirteen, John entered a private school, this opportunity being afforded by his uncle, Colonel Milton Hay, living in Pittsfield, the county seat. Later he pursued his studies in a Springfield school, known at a later date as Lutheran Con- cordia College. But, Western colleges had not yet attained the standards of excel- lence which they have since reached and Eastern institutions were sought by those who could afford the expense. Accord- ingly, his patron uncle determined to send John to Brown University. Being him- self a Baptist, he may have cherished hopes of directing his nephew's inclina- tions toward the ministry. Other reasons may have been found in the fact that John's grandfather had graduated from Brown in 1792, and that Providence had been his mother's early home. At any rate, John came East, and entered the College on the Hill as a sophomore in the Fall of 1855, in the class of 1858.
Men who made academic history were then members of Brown's faculty, includ- ing Professors Caswell, Gamwell, Angell and Harkness, and at their feet sat this young student from the West who was destined to attain signal success as a poet, novelist, historian, journalist, politician and diplomat.
As to his college career, it seems suffi- cient to note that he had an excellent memory, but that in creative work, as distinct from memorizing and applying fact and formulas outlined in textbooks or propounded in lectures, John Hay excelled. His twenty-eight classmates recognized his literary tastes and promise, and therefore chose him as the poet of the class. One undergraduate associate after- wards recalled John Hay's "singularly modest and retiring disposition, but
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withal of so winning a manner that no one could be in his presence, even for a few moments, without falling under the spell which his conversation and companion- ship invariably cast upon all who came within its influence. He was indeed, to his little circle of intimates, a young Dr. Johnson without his boorishness, or a Dr. Goldsmith without his frivolity."
As to his public career after graduation from Brown - that is a long exciting story. But, what are the highlights ? First, and most important, John Hay returned West after graduation and took up the study of law with his uncle, then living in Springfield, Illinois. He was admitted to the bar in 1861. It just hap- pened that Milton Hay's law office ad- joined that of the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. Lincoln had not yet attained eminence in his legal career and there was plenty of time for visiting and talking over things between the offices. In fact, Abraham Lincoln gave up many evenings to instructing the youthful law student. Suddenly, the hand of destiny led Lincoln into his debates with Douglas ; then came campaigning, the nomination and, finally, the election to the Presidency. No one supported Lincoln more enthusiastically or efficiently than did the twenty-two year old lawyer - he knew Lincoln and he saw in him qualities which had not yet been revealed to the party leaders. And when Lincoln was elected to the highest position of responsibility in a time of complete uncertainty, the Great Eman- cipator took with him, as one of the two who should be his most intimate and confidential associates and private sec- retaries, the young friend and office neighbor of three previous years. The other was John G. Nicolay, proprietor and editor of the Pittsfield Free Press, who had also rendered important political services in the campaign. Picture the experiences of a secretary to Lincoln dur- ing the laborious days in the early years of the War - think of the behind-the- scenes meetings, the midnight confer- ences with political and military leaders, the hurried dispatches, the secret missions.
Soon John Hay received the title of Colonel on General Hunter's staff and spent much time in the field on special
service, although he remained secretary to the President until the assassination. Thus, it may be said he came to have an intimate acquaintance with the entire situation at the Capital, and in every part of the country, probably better than any other person of his times. With the change in administration Hay relin- quished his position, but his career in public life had only begun. In steady suc- cession came his appointment as first secretary of legation at Paris, higher dip- lomatic responsibilities at Vienna, and then secretary of legation at Madrid. From 1870 to 1875, he was on the editorial staff of the New York Tribune, and from '79 to '81 first assistant Secretary of State under President Hayes. In collaboration with his fellow secretary John Nicolay, the "History of the Administration of Abraham Lincoln" was written and pub- lished, and this work stands today as a monument of fact concerning some of the darkest days in the history of this nation. In 1897, John Hay was appointed minister to England, and in the autumn of 1898 President Mckinley summoned Hay from the Court of St. James to accept the office of Secretary of State.
As Secretary of State, Hay's chief claim to fame came with his sponsorship of the Open Door in China, a policy strangely enough brought into light with parallel events at the hundredth anniversary of his birth. China was then threatened with a war of conquest, and the breaking-up of the empire into partitions, but Hay's masterly intervention averted both war and land grabbing and the whole nation acclaimed his achievement.
Following the assassination of President McKinley, he remained as Secretary of State under President Roosevelt, but his health soon failed and he died on July 1, 1905. This must be but a mere touching of the highspots since Hay's life, from the Halls of Brown to the Chambers of State, was a long career of splendid service in the moving affairs of the nations. And, he found time to pen some of the immortal verses of the past century. He liked poetry, he enjoyed the company of poets, and of men and women endowed with creative genius. He mingled with the great minds of Rhode Island during the
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course of his undergraduate days on the Hill, and his letters to a distinguished acquaintance in Providence, written after he had returned West, plainly disclose that he found great pleasure in the hours spent with the talented ones, the brilliant
women and clever men, here at that time. He missed the delightful moments once spent in the drawing room of Sarah Helen Whitman, who came so near to linking her fortunes with those of Edgar Allan Poe.
THE WRECK AT RICHMOND SWITCH
EA ARLY Saturday morning, April 19, 1873, Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, was the scene of a frightful dis- aster concerning which the present genera- tion knows nothing, and it is doubtful if anyone who was living at the time can now recall the tragedy that was there- after discussed for many months, and which a famous writer referred to in verses shortly after the occurrence. Where the old Providence and Stonington Rail- road crossed a little stream called "Meadow Brook," or "New Brook," near Richmond Switch, so-called then, and not far from the point where the tracks crossed the Pawcatuck or Charles River, was a small bridge, with abutments about twenty feet apart. Above this railroad bridge was a dam surmounted by a small road bridge. Sometime between midnight and three o'clock on the morning of April 19, 1873, this dam gave way, releasing water from a mill pond beside a grist mill owned by a Mr. G. N. Ennis. The rush- ing, tumbling waters filled with logs and debris struck the railroad bridge and carried it away, along with the abutments, leaving a chasm between the shores of more than forty feet. A switchman on the road afterwards claimed that he had crossed the dam at six o'clock the night before, and had noted that the water was high, although he had often seen it higher. A mail train passed safely over the stream at midnight, and it was reported that a person walked across the dam at two o'clock in the morning when everything must have been in proper order.
Back in Stonington, Connecticut, the so-called "Steamboat Train" was about to make its daily early morning run to Providence and Boston, carrying the first group of passengers to leave the steam-
boat that plied regularly between New York City and Stonington. This train was made up of an engine, three flat cars, a second class car, three first class pas- senger cars and a smoking car, and started off with ninety-one passengers, nine train- men and six railroad men, making a total of one hundred and six persons. Just as the train was about to pull out of Stoning- ton, the "Shore Line Train " arrived, also eastbound, and the conductors argued over which train should have the right of way. The "Steamboat Train " was finally allowed a start of a few minutes, and away it clattered into the gloom of the night, through Wequetequock, across the old bridge into Westerly, where the first stop was made. Off again into the darkness, it thundered on at a speed of thirty to forty miles an hour, nearly forty minutes behind schedule; the whistle screeching at dangerous crossings; the bell ringing ; and Engineer Guile, his hand on the throttle, probably thinking of the happy moment in his daily program when he could give two low whistles, quaint and clear, the signal to his wife that all was well. The Guiles lived on the out- skirts of Providence, near the tracks, and Mrs. Guile never failed to be wakeful in the early hours, hearkening for her hus- band's cheerful salutation.
The on-rushing train raced down the grade approaching the Meadow Brook bridge. Whether or not Engineer Guile and Fireman Eldred could see the awful chasm left by the disappearance of the bridge; whether they could catch a fleet- ing glimpse of the rushing waters and the tossing logs and timbers that suddenly loomed before them, will never be known. But, into space hurtled the speeding train, like a projectile fired from some monster
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cannon. Words cannot describe the scene; the screams of the dying and wounded rent the air mingled with con- fused shouts of those who managed to crawl through the broken windows or drag themselves out of the splintered coaches.
So strong was the momentum that the engine dragging the veering cars, jumped the forty foot chasm and buried itself in the opposite bank. The head-light and forward part of the locomotive were pushed up as high as the road bed while the rear rested on the embankment; in fact, the engine rested on the hill-side with the coal tender turned over upon it, the two parts forming a V. The freight cars followed, and the second class car, both going down into the river bed. The first class car telescoped into the rear of the second class car, and rested on the embankment on the opposite side of the chasm. The second first class car re- mained on the track, but was telescoped about half its length into the forward car. The other passenger cars and the smoking car followed, striking the end of the first car, but were not wrecked. Immediately the train caught fire, either from the engine or from the stove in the second class or emigrant car, and the flames spread rapidly. The water in the brook was not deep enough to cover the top of the crates of freight on the flat cars, so the fire spread into and through the emigrant and passenger cars before all of the pas- sengers could extricate themselves. In the first class car that went down the embankment there was but one person, Thomas Nolan, the baggagemaster who was badly injured but managed to escape. In the next car there were several pas- sengers, many of whom were pinned into their seats. Efforts were made to rescue them with partial success for several pas- sengers were burned to death in that car, one of them being Mr. Albert Allen, a prominent Providence citizen, a Civil War veteran and manufacturer of fire department supplies. In the emigrant car were many passengers, the most of whom were injured and some were burned be- yond recognition as human bodies. The cars and engine were entirely destroyed, the woodwork being burned to ashes, only the iron remaining.
A few moments after the disaster, parties crossed the river over the broken dam and found both the engineer William D. Guile and the fireman George Eldred dead at their posts, the former with his hand stretched out toward the throttle, the latter holding the brake and the en- gine a complete wreck in the position previously described. Later, after the flames had subsided, the bodies of these two were found "burned to a crisp" (as the headlines of the press of that day reported). A watch belonging to Mr. Guile and presented to him for faithful service as an engineer was found melted by the heat into a misshapen mass. To show the force with which the engine struck, it was said that a rail which lay in its place on the road bed pierced en- tirely through the locomotive boiler.
Just as the crash came, the conductor, Mr. Orrin S. Gardiner, was stooping down in the rear of the smoking car, where the rest of the railroad men had gathered, to get some signal lights for the rear of his train to warn the "Shore Line " to keep proper distance. The crash threw him to the floor, and, as he fell, it was reported that he shouted "Carry the red light to the rear as quick as possible." This order was carried out in spite of the confusion that ensued, and in a few minutes along came the express, stopping at a safe dis- tance when the engineer observed the danger signals.
Rescue trains were dispatched from Providence and Westerly and many local surgeons were rushed to the scene to care for those who escaped alive. Some of the bodies were brought into the city later in the day and were taken to the Swarts undertaking establishment at the corner of Pine and Dorrance Streets. Crowds assembled at this point, many entering to try and identify the dead, while throngs gathered at the Railroad Station hoping for additional news of the catastrophe. Hundreds of others journeyed to Wood River Junction to view the smoldering ruins, and to watch the railroad wrecking crews clear the roadbed and erect a tem- porary bridge across the chasm.
Naturally, this tragedy was the chief topic of conversation hereabouts for many months, and it resulted in considerable
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agitation in the papers for some sort of systematic inspection of all bridges, and for approved standards of bridge con- struction. The record that suggested this account was found with a long-forgotten poem written by the distinguished writer and poet, Bret Harte, famed for his "Luck of Roaring Camp" and countless other literary masterpieces. The following poem that tells of Engineer Guile's tragic death, was composed by Bret Harte and published in the New York Tribune shortly after the wreck at Wood River Junction : -
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