Vol. II      No. 5
THE
MAGAZINE OF HISTORY
WITH
NOTES AND QUERIES
NOVEMBER, 1905

Entered as a second-class matter, March 1, 1905, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

MONUMENT MARKING SITE OF GEN. CLINTON’S DAM

COOPERSTOWN, N. Y.

PREFACE

Two great flank attacks on the British forces were made by the Americans during the war of the Revolution. One, in winter, against Quebec, in 1775–76, failed nobly; the other, in summer, into the Iroquois country, against Tories and Indians, in 1779, was superbly successful. Yet while Montgomery and Arnold have had their meed of fame, but scant and tardy justice has been done to Sullivan.

Twelve years’ residence in the lake country of the Empire State, amid the scenes of the march that destroyed savagery and opened the forests to civilization, has made its story a most fascinating study. After repeated examination, on the ground, of the camps, battlefields, scenes of bridge-building and road-making, of topographical and engineering difficulties, of marchings and of rest, and even of feasting, along nearly the whole of the routes of the main army and right wing, I have learned to appreciate more the magnitude of Sullivan’s task and the completeness of his successful enterprise. One can more readily understand why Congress and Washington first ordered the campaign, and then realized the importance and value of its victories and happy issue.

Critical analysis and comparison of local legends, study of the mythology—that grows around picturesque scenery and striking names as naturally as moss on a damp stone—and, most of all, of the original journals and documents of the men of 1779, have but added to the pleasure of the narrator. A knowledge of the march of Sullivan’s Continentals in 1779 makes the landscape between Easton and the Genesee Valley glow, kindling at once memory, imagination and patriotism.

May art glorify history and the tablet, boulder, and memorial line the pathway of the Revolutionary patriots with beacon lights of grateful remembrance.

After the awful massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley in 1778, Congress passed a vote on the 27th of February, 1779, authorizing Washington to break the power of the Iroquois Indians by desolating their country. Only thus could the American frontiers be protected from Tories and Indians and the rear and flank attacks be stopped.

Until the Revolutionary War the Iroquois had been friends of our fathers against the French in Canada, with whom the Algonquin Indians had acted as allies. How did it come to pass that the Iroquois turned to be our enemies? Lifting up the hatchet and scalping knife against us, they left at Cherry Valley, and Wyoming, great blood spots, and along the frontier a line of fire and death. To answer this question, we must go back more than a century and a half. At that time the North American continent was divided between two quite different sorts of Indians, the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were united in a confederacy, and the much more numerous Algonquins, who lived all around them.

In 1609, two men, each representing a different civilization, penetrated the inland waters of America. Henry Hudson, an English captain in a Dutch ship and with a Dutch crew, sailed up the river that now bears his name and made the friendly acquaintance of the tribes of Northern New York. Samuel Champlain, from France, came down the lake that bears his name, acting not only as friend, but as ally to the Algonquins, who were ever at war with the Iroquois. The boundary line between these two kinds of Indians was drawn at Rock Regio, in Lake Champlain, near Burlington, Vermont.

It happened at this time that hostile parties from the North and South were out seeking each other. Dressed in bark armor, with bows and arrows, and stone hatchets, they met in combat, not in ambush, but in the open field. The Frenchmen, taking sides with the Algonquins, killed several Iroquois with their firearms. Forthwith, vowing vengeance against these white men who had interfered, the Indians of the South resolved to seek Dutch aid. A few years later they appeared at Fort Orange, near Albany, bringing their beaver and other skins in exchange for arms and ammunition. Thus armed, they were able to go forth on 297equal terms with the Algonquins to the slaughter of the French and their allies. With them the age of stone was over and the new era of iron and gunpowder had come.

Arendt Van Curler, whom the red men call “Corlaer,” a well-educated Hollander, who lived in America from 1630 to 1667, was superintendent of the Dutch settlement where Albany now stands and later became the founder of the city of Schenectady. He saw at once the value of a league of peace with the Iroquois. He traveled among them, learned their language, won their friendship and held them ever faithful, first to the Dutch, and then after 1664 to the English. “The covenant of Corlaer” became with the Iroquois a holy sacrament, and the policy of all English governors was to “brighten the silver chain” of mutual friendship. Van Curler was drowned near Rock Regio in Lake Champlain in 1667. Sir William Johnson from 1738 to 1774 continued, expanded and strengthened the work of Van Curler. On the other hand the Five Nations became the Six Nations, when in 1722 the Tuscaroras, driven from the Carolinas in 1713, were formally admitted into the confederacy.

For a century and a half the Indian was a political factor in determining the question whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin civilization should dominate North America. This question was settled on the heights of Quebec, in 1763, when England became mistress of the Continent. During all this time the French were never able, in war or in peace, by their money or other gifts, by threats or smiles, by political envoys or religious emissaries, to break the “silver chain” or to shake the loyalty of the Iroquois to English-speaking men. To this day the Indians call the governor of New York “Corlaer,” and Queen Victoria, their ruler, “Kora Kowa,” or the Great Corlaer.

When, under King George, the colonists in America and the corrupt British parliament and court quarreled and began war, Congress hoped to keep the friendship or neutrality of the red men. In August, 1775, the first conference and treaty was made at Albany. Later General Schuyler was sent into the Mohawk Valley to treat with the Iroquois and met a council of chiefs at German Flats. “This is a family quarrel,” he said, “and we want you to keep out of it,” and the red men promised to do so. General Herkimer also met a great gathering of warriors from the Six Nations at Unadilla.

On the other side, the British agents at Oswego tried to win over the 298savages, and succeeded. The Tories and British were able to present much more convincing arguments in the shape of abundance of rum, hatchets, beads, mirrors and guns and powder. Moreover the Indian is always a conservative. He holds fast to tradition. Hence he was most deeply touched by the adroit appeal to “the covenant of Corlaer,” and, being told that the Americans were “rebels,” he sided with the British. The Iroquois expected, in making this new alliance, that King George would govern all the whites, while they should conquer and rule all the red men in North America. It was a great day when General Burgoyne and his officers in their glittering uniforms confirmed with splendid presents the decision of the Iroquois to side with the King.

Active in the campaign of 1777, these confederate red men fought with the Tories and British soldiers against the Americans, especially at the battle of Oriskany. For a while they were broken and demoralized by Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, when the whole British army surrendered.

When in 1778, the red men were rallied by Brant, Butler, McDonald and Sir John Johnson, they made the head of Seneca Lake, where Geneva now stands, their headquarters. Here they planned to attack Wyoming, a settlement, chiefly of Connecticut people, from which most of the able bodied men were absent in Washington’s army, only old men, boys, women and children being at home. After the battle and massacre of July 3 another skillfully planned attack on Cherry Valley in New York was made, and on the 11th of October this settlement was reduced to ashes and the people murdered or taken prisoners to Canada.

These atrocities decided Congress and Washington to chastise the savages, desolate their country and paralyze the activity of the Tories. It was especially necessary to do this, because the British were encouraging their white and red allies to make the great maize lands of Central and Western New York a granary from which they could feed their very mixed army, made up of English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Hessians, Canadians and Iroquois, besides keeping up a continual fire in the rear upon the American forces.

But they had Washington, Sullivan, and the American riflemen to reckon with.

Whom should Washington select for so difficult and doubtful a task? The chosen leader must make an expedition, as into a foreign country, through the unmapped and unsurveyed wilderness of Western New York, against a foe ever ready by wiles and cunning to ambuscade the invader. It might be, as in many a dismal case before, that his men would be shot by invisible marksmen. Who would dare to try to feed an army of regular troops with no base of supplies? With the precedent of Braddock’s failure and bloody Oriskany before him, who aspired to lead? It is no wonder that when Gates was offered the command he declined it at once, much to Washington’s vexation. The commander-in-chief then summoned General Sullivan. This descendant of Irish heroes was born at Durham, in New Hampshire, and grew up to be a stalwart American, a vigorous and far-seeing patriot. Just as soon, in 1774, as Great Britain forbade the importation of military stores to America, Sullivan knew there would be war.

Collecting a body of eager young men, he drilled them in military tactics. In December, 1774, he attacked Fort William and Mary, at Newcastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua river, and took the place in daylight. In spite of the fire of the garrison, he entered without losing a man, and pulled down the British flag. This was the first hostile act of the kind in the war of the Revolution. He carried the cannon and powder to Durham, where it was stored partly in a barn and partly in the cellar of the Congregational church edifice, on the site of which the monument reared to his honor now stands. The powder reached Bunker Hill in time to fill the horns of the militia. Indeed, this was about the only supply that our men behind the breastworks and rail fence had. Sullivan commanded at Boston and on Long Island, and fought at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and in Rhode Island.

Up to this time, 1779, the French Alliance had not amounted to anything, and there were but fifteen thousand regular Continental soldiers fit for duty. Yet so important did Washington consider this expedition to destroy the Iroquois power that he detached one-third of his whole force, or 5000 picked Continentals. In its organization the army of 300chastisement consisted of four brigades, a regiment of artillery and eight companies of riflemen, making about five thousand men, with about two thousand pack horses and twenty-five hundred cattle and two fleets of boats for river service, with stores and ammunition. The New Hampshire brigade, then encamped at Redding, Conn., and the New Jersey brigade at Elizabeth, N. J., with the Pennsylvania regiments, were ordered to march to Easton, and thence to move on to Wyoming, from which point the stores and cannon were to follow the army until they should reach Tioga Point, where is now Athens. Here they were to be joined by the New York brigade from Schenectady.

The Chemung and the Susquehanna, flowing from the east and the west out of the heart of the Indian country, approach very near to each other at Tioga Point, enclosing a pretty peninsula shaped like an arrow head. Further down they meet and unite in one stream, the lordly Susquehanna, on which canoes could reach the cities on the Chesapeake Bay or any of the rivers flowing into it. Tioga Point was the Southern Door of the Long House of the Iroquois confederacy, and here, as a base of supplies, a diamond-shaped fort with a block house at each corner, with hospital and barracks, was to be built. Upon this the army could fall back in case of defeat, and here be re-victualed on their return march.

In the rivers, nature provided the only highways, though the Iroquois during centuries of war, trade and travel had made many trails. From Tioga Point the Continentals were to march up the Chemung Valley and thence into the wonderfully fertile lake country of Central New York. Along the ridge overlooking Seneca Lake they would pass, in order to strike the Tory headquarters and center of supplies at the lake’s northern end, where then stood a big Indian village, and now not far away is the city of Geneva. Thence westwardly they were to move to Canandaigua and along the great trail at the southern end of the smaller lakes, Canadice, Hemlock and Conesus, into the valley of the Genesee. Possibly they might be able to reach the British fort at Niagara.

Indeed, in the great virgin wilderness of Central and Western New York there was no other way of advance, save through the river valleys and along Indian trails. When leaving the former and advancing through the forests, it would be necessary for the axemen to chop their way. In miry places the pioneers must cut down trees, lay the logs and make corduroy roads. Swamps must be filled and the smaller streams 301bridged. In many parts of the country to be traversed there were indeed large open spaces where the cornfields of the Indians furnished stores of food, while their gardens yielded, as our men discovered, twelve kinds of vegetables. Yet in the main, the army would have to march through a country covered with timber and brush wood.

A large force of axemen, pioneers, surveyors and road-makers would be necessary, especially as the artillery must be carried along, for Washington, being himself a backwoodsman and an Indian fighter, knew the persuasive power of cannon with the Indians. Brave as the painted warriors undoubtedly were, they preferred fighting behind logs and trees under cover. They objected, most decidedly, to stand up in ranks and coolly keep their places in the presence of howitzers that could tear them to pieces, not only by a frontal attack, but by sending shells to burst among and behind them. The Indian had physical stamina, but he lacked moral courage. Washington knowing this, ordered Colonel Proctor to take nine pieces of artillery and his regiment of three hundred artillerists.

Of the guns, two were howitzers of five and a half inch caliber that could throw bombs, two were six, and four were three pounders. Then there was a Coehorn mortar, so light that it could be borne by four men. This diminutive implement of war proved to be very effective, being usually posted in the advance and easily carried over hill and valley. Mounted on an iron frame, with hickory legs, it could easily be “laid” or aimed at any angle. After a discharge it always kicked itself over, and, because of its long spindle-like limbs, the soldiers called it “the grasshopper.” Along with Proctor’s (now the Second United States) Artillery went “a band of music,” that is, a fife and drum corps. In all, there were about two hundred musicians with their drum and fife majors. The lively tunes, such as “The White Cockade,” “The Tall Grenadier,” and “Derry Down,” greatly inspirited our men, while at the solemn burials in the forest, “Roslin Castle” was the usual dirge.

Each regiment had its chaplain, and until the advance from Tioga Point in battle array there were frequent services for worship and preaching at the camps.

Washington’s plan was to have a right and a left wing to the main body. While Sullivan advanced through the Susquehanna country, Clinton’s New Yorkers, with part of the Sixth Massachusetts, were to move up the Mohawk river and valley with two field pieces and a fleet of two hundred 302boats. At Canajoharie he was to load his stores and boats on wagons, each drawn by eight horses, and march over the hills to Otsego Lake, thence to descend the outlet and enter the Susquehanna at Chenango Point where Binghamton now stands. Floating past Owego, he was to join Sullivan at Tioga Point, where the Chemung and Susquehanna unite. This programme was very successfully carried out.

The left wing, at Pittsburg, was led by Colonel Daniel Brodhead, a Continental veteran, afterwards Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania. He had assembled about six hundred men, including some friendly Delawares and Cherokees, with one month’s provisions, and started August 11, transporting his cattle and pack horses to Mahoning. Entering the country of the Mingoes and the Muncey tribes in Western Pennsylvania, and the Seneca towns in Southwestern New York, he desolated their houses and corn fields.

“The parings of scalps and the hair of our countrymen at every warrior’s camp on the path,” wrote Colonel Brodhead to Washington, “are new inducements to revenge.” Although his men on their return, September 14, were bare-footed and in rags, and had had no pay for nine months, he offered to lead an expedition to Detroit. Of two soldiers whom he sent to General Sullivan, he heard nothing. “I apprehend,” he wrote, “they have fallen into the enemy’s hands.” Dressing many of his men like Indians, he sent out various parties that devastated the region, and made it for a time uninhabitable by the savages. Very few men on our side were lost, and not a soldier but these two fell into the enemy’s hands.

Although Brodhead’s “Allegheny expedition,” or “Diversion in favor of General Sullivan’s expedition,” failed to make direct communication with the main body of Continentals, yet his was a vital part of the great expedition of 1779. It aided powerfully in that series of blows which shattered the Iroquois confederacy. By keeping probably five hundred Senecas from Sullivan’s front, Brodhead helped to toll the death knell of savagery on the North American continent.

The Indian country to be invaded by Sullivan stretched from the Hudson to Niagara Falls, and was called by the Iroquois “The Long House.” To this long house there were four “doors,” the northern at Oswego, the southern at Tioga Point, the eastern at Schenectady, and the western at Niagara.

In 1779 there were only a few settlements of the white man outside of a thin line in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. The Six Nations of Iroquois, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras, were federated together and usually acted as a whole. Many of the Mohawks living near the settlements were friendly to the American cause, and almost the entire Oneida tribe had been won over to loyalty to the Continental Congress through the efforts of Dominie Kirkland, afterwards a chaplain in Sullivan’s army and the founder of Hamilton College. He was one of the few white men who had been as far west as the great “castle” of the Senecas, on Seneca Lake.

The Tuscaroras lived east of Cayuga Lake, the Cayugas between the largest two of the “finger lakes,” Cayuga and Seneca. The Onondagas dwelt around the lake which takes their name, and the Senecas, in the region between the lake named after them and the Genesee river. Roughly speaking, we may think of Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Elmira, Geneva and Ithaca as being the centers of the six tribes mentioned in their order, the central council-fire being with the Onondagas, near Syracuse.

The Senecas were, in 1779, the largest and most active of the tribes, and “the Seneca country” was a general name for the great region which Sullivan was to traverse. Our soldiers were to enter the Long House through the southern door, at Tioga Point, near which, on the fertile slope of the valley, was Esthertown, or the Indian Queen Esther’s country and castle. One of their hardest marches would be through the swampy valley stretching from the town of Chemung west of Esthertown to the castle of Queen Catherine Montour, her sister, at Montour Falls, N. Y.

The mention of Queen Esther’s name recalls the fact that the savages 304were not entirely alone in their schemes of hostility, but that the brain and hands of white men assisted them in their bloody forays. Indeed, it was one of the counts in the Declaration of Independence that the colonies were justified in their war of independence, because George III. “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” There were several hundred white men aiding and abetting the Indians in the arts of war and in methods of fortification. Besides the British regulars, Johnson’s Greens, loyalists, Canadians and half-breeds, two of the most eminent Iroquois women called “Queens” had white blood in their veins. Both boasted descent from the French Count Frontenac, and were married to powerful chiefs. Esther, at Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, and Catherine, at Montour Falls, near the modern Watkins Glen, were the owners of large and well-worked corn fields and of fenced gardens, of horses, cattle, hogs, and other live stock and of houses made of sawed and carved timber and spoken of as “palaces.”

It must not be forgotten that from the missionaries of France, who had at various times lived among the Indians for over a hundred years, and from the traders, gunsmiths, and friendly whites of various disposition and ability, supported by the British government, the Iroquois Indians had reached a comparatively high point of progress. Even when the white men first met them these federated warriors were the most advanced of all others within the limits of the United States. They had their own myths and legends. They met in council and had orators to argue both sides of a question or proposal. They sent embassies from one tribe to another, and these envoys were very ceremonious and careful in dress and etiquette. When they made a treaty of peace they solemnly buried the hatchet and smoked the calumet, or pipe of friendship. To dig up the same weapon meant war. Instead of our letters, seals, and documents of paper and parchment, they used wampum made of shells drilled and laced together, which in belts or strings served as money, as messages, as historical records. Some of the Indian orators, Logan, Red Jacket and others, were very famous. To become such these men practiced elocution and rhetoric very much the same as do our public speakers. As the Iroquois raised and stored corn and other vegetable foods, they were able to wage systematic war and go on long campaigns. Thus they excelled and conquered the other savages. When they left the stone age, by obtaining guns from Europeans, their lust of conquest was fired more than ever. 305When the white men of Pennsylvania and Virginia paid the Indians for lands, the avarice of the Iroquois was still further excited. Many tribes, even as far as Canada and the Mississippi Valley, were vassals of the confederacy. In the Iroquois we see the highest type of pagan man.

Our debt to the Indian is very great. He taught our fathers the use of tobacco, maple sugar, corn, succotash and various methods of getting food, besides the use of the birch bark canoe, the moccasin, and the snow shoe.

The Iroquois method of raising corn was very ingenious. On the lands in river valleys this was easy enough, yet they could win crops even in the forest. This they did by “girdling.” They cut round the tree trunk near the ground, and again about ten feet higher, and then stripped off the bark between the spaces girdled by the knife or hatchet. This caused the tree to wither and the leaves to fall, quickly letting in the sunshine on the ground. Thus, the Indian without the trouble of chopping down the trees and clearing the land got at once the benefit of the soil. In the autumn, by burning the underbrush and trees, the ground was enriched and the space easily cleared for next year’s crop. In almost every Iroquois village there were store houses made of bark or timber, in which the grain was saved.

The dwellings or long houses were made of wooden framework covered with bark and built in the form of a modern compartment house. Each had a long hall or passageway through the middle, with rooms on either side, one for each family, with a fireplace in the center and the sleeping bunks against the wall. The walls of these rooms were decorated with bows and arrows, guns and equipments, and the prizes of the chase, which all hunters love, and of war, over which warriors gloat. They had also more horrible ornaments in the scalps of their enemies, both white and red. These, stretched and dried on hoops, were often painted and decorated with feathers and strings dyed in bright colors which had symbolic significance.

Many of Sullivan’s soldiers, who enlisted hoping to rescue white captives, often their own relatives, were able to recognize in the Iroquois houses the hair and scalps of fathers, brothers, wives, children, neighbors or friends. In the case of women, it was especially easy to do this.

At several places where hill and ravine, or the situation of the rivers and the inclosed land made natural fortresses, the Iroquois had “castles.” 306These were made by driving three rows of young trees, sharpened at the ends, into the ground to form a palisade which was fastened at the top. Inside of these were platforms, on which warriors could stand and shoot arrows or balls against besiegers. Besides barring the gate tightly, they had heaps of stones ready to throw on the heads of near assailants and tubs of water prepared to put out fires. It was expected that the artillery would have to be used against these. The orders were to burn all the Indian houses and utterly destroy the crops so that the country would be left uninhabitable. There was no mistake about the orders of Washington on this point.

While the army was assembling and the stores, boats and horses were in preparation, other expeditions on a smaller scale had been attempted. The State of New York, in the autumn of 1778, attempted to send an expedition among the Mohawks and Onondagas, but on account of the lateness of the season it was abandoned. In the following year, however, on April 19, Colonel Van Schaick leading, 558 men of the First New York regiment made a forced march of 180 miles in six days against the Onondagas. He burned three of their towns with their storehouses of food, slew twelve and took prisoners thirty-three of the savages. With the Onondagas was the hearthstone of the confederacy, and a terrible humbling done to the Iroquois pride was the extinguishing of the council fire.

Pennsylvania was also active in clearing the path for Sullivan. In September, 1778, Colonel Thomas Hartley with about two hundred soldiers of the Eleventh Pennsylvania regiment, with seventeen horses, advanced northward from Sunbury up the Lycoming river and into a region of swamps, mountains, defiles and rocks. His especial object was to destroy the power of Queen Esther. This squaw had made herself very active in the massacre at Wyoming. She compelled the prisoners of war to kneel in a circle around a boulder, still called “Queen Esther’s Rock,” and tomahawked them one after another. This was in revenge for her son killed in a skirmish. At Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, Hartley destroyed, by the torch, her castle and everything else that could be turned to ashes. Advancing up the Chemung Valley, towards Newtown, the big Indian town on the flats, near modern Elmira, he found the enemy in force and was obliged to return. On his way he cleverly defeated the Indians and Tories who had tried to surround him. He and his men waded or swam the Lycoming river no fewer than twenty times. 307He reached Sunbury again, October 5, having marched nearly three hundred miles, capturing among other spoil fifty head of cattle and twenty-eight canoes. In his various battles and skirmishes he lost four men, but killed eleven of the enemy and took fifteen prisoners. His regiment was reorganized and became “the new Eleventh regiment,” under Colonel Adam Hubley, which formed part of Sullivan’s army and ranked among his most effective troops.

One has but to study the map of Eastern Pennsylvania, a region rich in swamps, rocks, hills and mountain ranges, to see what difficulties awaited the general who was to move a large body of troops, with artillery and wagon trains, from Easton to Wyoming. To go up the Lehigh Valley was impossible, for between its headwaters and the Susquehanna were hills insurmountable. On the steel tracks of to-day a double force of engine power is required. So from Easton, through the Blue Mountains and Wind Gap, a road was cut through the forest, the stones taken out, the boulders stacked, the miry hollows corduroyed and the swamps filled.

Marvelous to relate, this military road, about seventy miles long, was built within ten days. It was indeed one of the wonders of the Revolution. Several hundred road builders, mostly Continental soldiers, under Colonels Spencer and Van Cortlandt, did the work in parties, while guarded by outlying scouts and riflemen. To-day the turnpike road and the iron rails and bridges of the great railway companies traverse the region in which “The Sullivan Road” once was, but the achievements of the modern engineers are in no way more wonderful. In five days the three brigades of Poor’s New Hampshire men, Hand’s Pennsylvania Light Corps and Maxwell’s New Jerseymen, with Proctor’s artillery and the wagon trains, made the march over the new road. Their camps were at Wind Gap, Larner’s on the Pocono, “Chowder Camp,” near the Tobyhanna, on the creek near the “Shades of Death,” and at “Great Meadows,” or Bullock’s. Some of the relics of the road builders, including the section of a tree carved with the camp name of “Hell’s Kitchen,” are still preserved.

By the building of the military road from Easton to Wyoming, and through Hartley’s and Van Schaick’s raids, the enemy was now fully convinced that an invading army was being made ready for their chastisement. Rousing the whole confederacy of the Six Nations, Brant, the Mohawk, and Butler, the Tory, sent their warriors to make a series of 308attacks on the American settlements, hoping thus to distract and scatter the coming avengers. Sullivan, however, understood these tactics. He refused to detach any pursuing parties, and pressed right on. In April he had sent his advance guard of two hundred of the Eleventh Pennsylvania under Major Powell to strengthen the garrison at Wyoming. On the 23d, when not far from the site of Wilkes-Barre, the party having reached, as they thought, nearly the end of their journey, were desirous of entering the settlement in good order and in fine personal appearance. They halted, therefore, to brush and clean themselves, while the officers put on their coats and ruffles. Then marching forward, but having their attention called from possible present danger by the presence of a deer crossing their path, they were led into an Indian ambuscade, in which several of them were killed. In 1896 a monument was reared to their memory by the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution.

Another incident previous to the movement of Sullivan’s force was in the attack, by one hundred British and two hundred Indians under command of Captain McDonald, fifteen miles above Northumberland, Pa., on Freeland’s Fort. This they surrounded on the 28th of July, 1779, and compelled the garrison of thirty-two men to surrender. They also ambuscaded Captain Boon’s party, which had marched to their relief, killing fourteen of his men.

During the same week Brant with a party of warriors moved down the Wallkill valley, destroying the Minisink settlements in Orange county, New York, killing many and making many prisoners. They decoyed into an ambush more than 150 militia from Goshen, of whom over 100 were slain. Brant then moved on to the destruction of the settlement of Lackawaxen, which was laid in ashes and the inhabitants slain.

All this was done to distract and scatter the avenging army, but every effort failed, and the Continentals moved steadily on.

General Sullivan was implored, by messengers who brought him the terrible news, to march to the relief of the burned settlements. Wisely and firmly he refused to detach a single soldier from his column. He knew full well that advance into the enemy’s country would compel both red and white foes to draw away their forces and concentrate. This policy was really the best means of protecting the settlements. He therefore hastened his preparations, so as to move on at the first moment possible. On July 31, at 1 P. M., he broke camp at Wyoming. Determined 309not to be led into ambush or to be “Braddocked,” he threw out the riflemen in advance, to guard against surprise, and moved in line of battle. The flotilla of boats, the line of twelve hundred pack horses and seven hundred cattle, the park of artillery and the brigades of infantry being all ready, the signal was given by firing a cannon on the Adventurer, Proctor’s flagboat lying in the Susquehanna. The march from Wyoming to Tioga Point, through swamps and over frightful precipices, was safely made in good order. The procession of boats on the water and of soldiers on land were each several miles long. Reaching Sheshequin on the Susquehanna, the soldiers faced the flood, locked arms and forded the swiftly flowing river at where Milan, Pa., now stands, and then again crossed the stream to reach the peninsula at Tioga Point, where they encamped, awaiting the arrival of their right wing, Clinton’s New York brigade.

CHAPTER IV
THE MOVEMENT OF THE RIGHT WING

The right wing of the expedition, consisting of the 3rd, 4th and 5th New York, the 6th Massachusetts, and 4th Pennsylvania, with four companies of riflemen and two pieces of artillery, was under the command of General James Clinton. This veteran officer gathered his forces at Schenectady. He encamped his regiments around this little palisaded frontier town, while his flotilla of over 215 boats was building in the boat yards that then lined the Mohawk river, between the stream and the town’s wooden walls on its north and west sides.

When all was ready, about June 15, the boats were pushed, poled or rowed up the river to Canajoharie. Then both the stores and the boats were loaded on wagons drawn by four yokes of oxen, carried over the hills and unloaded on the beach at Otsego Lake. This very toilsome work was over by July 3, and on the “Glorious Fourth” was celebrated by a parade, salute of cannon, divine service and a banquet with thirteen patriotic toasts. Herds of cattle had been driven from Kingston, N. Y., by the great western route through the Catskill mountains, to furnish fresh beef. The soldiers enjoyed their camp life in the fragrant woods, though eager to move against the enemy.

An engineer and the father of the “father of the Erie Canal,” General 310Clinton’s first object was to provide enough water to float his boats down out of the lake and into and along the shallow Susquehanna, in order to make junction with Sullivan at Tioga Point. To secure this, in the dry mid-summer a reservoir was made by damming up the little lake at its source near the present Cooperstown. The flow of rain not only in this, but also in the adjoining Schuyler Lake, during four weeks of waiting to hear from Sullivan, was thus secured. The gain of one month’s water from sky and earth was apparent. It is uncertain from extant journals and diaries how high a level was reached, some saying that three feet, but one declaring that only one foot of water was gained. At any rate, the rise was sufficient to send the flotilla down into the valley, as if moving on a toboggan slide.

Monday, August 9, was fixed as the date of movement. On the previous Saturday, the chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Gano, inquired of the general whether he could break the news to the army. Being forbidden, he asked whether he might make choice of any text he pleased. To this full liberty was granted. When the preacher stood up before his audience he pronounced the words in Acts xx. 7, “Ready to depart on the morrow”; at which the faces of all the troops lightened.

The glad work of chopping away the dam was begun on Sunday night when the water rushed out, so filling the lower channels of the river as to afford easy passage for the boats. The Tuscaroras dwelling in the valley looking upon the swollen stream and their inundated cornfields, deemed themselves under the wrath of the Great Spirit, and fled in alarm. After every defeat the savages, according to their custom, hung up white dogs to avert the anger and beg for the pity of their gods. Our men found these tokens of primitive religion all along the route. As the army marched overland the various settlements of Indians and Tories were destroyed by fire and axe.

Ithaca, N. Y.

During the early summer of 1776 the American forces were actively engaged upon a work of great magnitude, which it was hoped would prevent the British vessels ascending the Hudson.

The project was the blocking, by means of sunken vessels filled with stone,^[1] of the narrowest portion of the deep channel of the river.

This was, and still is, the waterway extending between what is now known as Fort Washington Point, about 178th street, then called Jeffrey’s Hook, and the foreshore below the Palisades about due west of the Point, under Fort Lee.

Both sides were more or less protected by guns mounted in the earthworks of Fort Washington and Fort Constitution, the extent and character of which were not well known to the British commanders, though they seem to have been kept pretty well informed by treacherous informers of the progress of the work of obstructing the channel with the sunken vessels, from the decks of which protruded masts or sharpened poles, forming a rough “chevaux-de-frise,” a dangerous form of obstruction for wooden vessels propelled by tide and wind.

During all the spring and early summer the British naval force in the waters around New York was represented by two very active vessels, the sixty-four-gun man-of-war Asia, Captain George Vandeput, and the forty-four-gun frigate Phœnix, commanded by an able and energetic officer, Sir Hyde Parker, Jr., son of a well-known commander of the same name, who had already done good service for his king.

On June 30, the advance guard of the British fleet under Vice-Admiral Molyneux Shuldham, Rear-Admiral of the White, arrived at New York from Halifax. His flagship was the Chatham, of fifty guns and with her was her consort, the Centurion, also of fifty, and the twenty gun frigate Rose, which took a very active part in later affairs. By the 312first week of July the force under Shuldham had increased to fifty-four armed vessels of all ratings, aggregating about 1200 guns in broadside, with fully eighty supply vessels and transports laden with troops under the command of General Howe, who had made the journey from Halifax in the frigate Greyhound, of thirty guns.

On the 7th of July, while messengers from Philadelphia were bearing the news of the Declaration of Independence to New York, Governor Tryon and Howe were consulting aboard the Greyhound as to the expediency of sending a naval force up the North River in order to obstruct the supplies of the Americans. Action on this scheme was evidently deferred pending the expected arrival of Admiral Lord Howe, the general’s brother, with a powerful addition to the fleet.

No sooner was the arrival of this force announced by its advance guard than a squadron was ordered up the North River in a bold attempt to force their way past the obstructions at Fort Washington.

The vessels selected were the Phœnix and Rose, with the armed schooner Tryal, and two bomb-ketches, tenders of the two frigates, respectively the Shuldham and Charlotta.

It will be remembered that on passing the town of New York these vessels opened a bombardment, which it has been claimed was unprovoked by firing from the defences, and that a distressing bloodshed and panic among the inhabitants resulted.

The log or journal of Captain Hyde Parker relates the events as follows:

“Saturday 13th. Wind. S. W. Moderate breeze and fair weather. At 3 made the signal and weigh’d and came to sail in company with the Rose, Tryal Schooner with the Shuldham and Charlotta Tenders, at ¾ past 3 the Battery at Red Hook on Long Island began fireing on us, on our standing on, the Batterys on Governors Isl^d and on Powle’s Hook commenced a heavy fireing at us. At 5 minutes past 4 being then between the last mentioned batterys we began fireing upon them at ½ past 5 we pass’d the Batterys near Town and at 7 anchor’d in Tapon Bay abrest of TarryTown in 7 fathom.... In passing the Batterys Rece’d two shott in the Hull, one on the Bowsprit and several through the Sails, and had one Seaman and two marines wounded.”

The log of Mr. Savage Landor,^[2] sailing master of the Rose, gives further details, as follows:

314The journal of the Captain, Sir James Wallace, is nearly identical in the main features recorded; repeating that “the Rebels began to fire upon us and the Phenix,” and confirming the material damage done to the ship. As to this it may be remembered that Anthony Glean, who fired the first gun at the squadron from the guns at the Battery, claimed that his shot took effect on the hull of the Rose, and the good gunnery of the Americans is evident from the general damage inflicted.

New York City.

IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO CONDITIONS IN THE ROYAL COLONY OF NEW YORK.

CHAPTER IV (Concluded)
THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS IN NEW YORK

In the fall of 1767 a pamphlet of which a few copies were reprinted from a London edition, appeared in New York and created considerable excitement. It was entitled “The Conduct of Cadwallader Colden, Esq. Lieutenant-Governor of New York, relating to the judges’ commissions:—Appeals to the King; and Stamp Duty.” It had been presented by the grand jury in October as a libellous reflection on the Council, the Assembly and the Courts of Justice in the province of New York, and, as its sub-title would indicate, was a defense of Colden’s conduct, when acting as Governor. In the course of the argument reference was made to the action of the two branches of the Assembly in these matters, and both bodies took umbrage and appointed a joint committee to investigate, and if possible discover, the author and the person responsible for the republication in New York.^[3]

The committee carried on its work with vigor, summoning among others the printers of the province and also Colden’s son and son-in-law,^[4] and the matter finally ended in a report by the committee to the General Assembly and the adoption of the following resolutions.^[5]

“Resolved, ... That the said pamphlet highly reflects upon the honor, justice and dignity of his Majesty’s Council, the General Assembly, and the Judges of the Supreme Court; and contains the most malignant aspersions, upon the inhabitants of this colony in general.

316Resolved, That the said pamphlet tends to destroy the confidence of the people, in two of the branches of the legislature, and the officers concerned in the due administration of justice; to render the government odious and contemptible, to abate that due respect to authority, so necessary to peace and good order, to excite disadvantageous suspicions and jealousies in the minds of the people of Great Britain, against his Majesty’s subjects in this colony, and to expose the colony in general, to the resentments of the crown and both houses of Parliament.

Resolved, That as the House has not been able to discover the author of the said pamphlet, a dissolution of the general assembly is speedily expected; his Excellency the Governor be humbly requested, in case the author should hereafter be discovered, to order a prosecution to be issued against him, that such punishment may be inflicted on so great an offender as the law directs.”

This is an instance where neither branch of the Assembly can force an avowal of authorship from those who are suspected; a little later we shall find in the Parker-McDougall case that the Governor and Council did not consider it beneath their dignity to resort to very questionable actions when they were trying to find the person responsible for a pamphlet which displeased them.

It is not necessary to enter here on the details of the circumstances which finally led to the repeal of the Stamp Act and the passage of the Mutiny Act.^[6] The more extreme party had viewed with great disquietude the passage of the latter act, and the way in which the Assembly had yielded in the matter of meeting its provisions. When the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, died on Sept. 11th, 1769 and Lieutenant-Governor Colden once more took up the reins of government, the feeling was intensified, and on Dec. 16th, two printed papers appeared, the first signed “A Son of Liberty,” and the second “Legion” in which “the betrayed inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York” were invited to meet on the following Monday at the House of De La Montayne in the Fields near the City, and there take steps to set forth their rights and vindicate the privileges which the Assembly seemed unable to successfully assert.

At this meeting which was largely attended a speech was made by John Lamb a prosperous merchant of the city.

317Meanwhile the Assembly had had its attention called to the papers and had declared the first to be “false, seditious and infamous,” and had branded the second as “an infamous libel,” and had requested the Lieutenant-Governor to issue his proclamation, offering a reward of £100 for the discovery of the author.^[7] After the meeting in the Fields the Assembly ordered Lamb to appear before it, and examined him as to “his conduct about the two libels” but as it did not appear that his actions at the Fields had been in consequence of the two libels he was allowed to depart.^[8] But the Assembly had not given up all hope of finding and prosecuting the author of the two pamphlets. One of Parker’s journeymen for the sake of the reward, gave information against him, and on Feb. 7th Parker was arrested and examined by the Governor and Council. While the latter was detained in a room off the Council Chamber, his apprentices were arrested, and brought before the Council, and although for a long time they stoutly refused to admit any knowledge of the papers, one of them by gross intimidation was finally brought to admit that the papers had been printed in his master’s office.

Parker was then brought back before the Council, told that his apprentice had admitted that it had been printed by him, and threatened, in case he refused to name the author, with the loss of his position as Secretary of the Post Office. Finally Parker, being promised indemnity, gave information which resulted in the arrest on a bench warrant of Alexander McDougall, who was taken before the Chief Justice, and on refusal to admit the fact of authorship, committed to prison.

Some seven years before this, in 1763, John Wilkes, member of Parliament, and editor of the “North Briton” had been arrested on a general warrant for having attacked in No. 45 of his journal the Bute administration and abused the King, charging the latter with falsehood. Wilkes was discharged on the ground of parliamentary privilege, and the question being carried before the Chief Justice, Lord Camden, the latter declared general warrants to be illegal. Wilkes was expelled by a subservient Parliament, but was regarded by great numbers in the nation as a martyr to the cause of liberty and freedom of discussion.

Now it happened that the vote of the Assembly declaring the hand bills libellous had been printed on the forty-fifth page of the journal. For either this reason, or more probably because of No. 45 of the “North 318Briton” (which number was often used as a party-cry in England), “Forty-five” became the watchword of the Sons of Liberty, at this time a numerous body. McDougall was overrun with visitors at the jail and was forced to issue in the “New York Weekly Journal” for Feb. 15th, a card to his friends in which he appointed the hours from three to six in the afternoon to receive them.

In the same number of the Journal appears an account of one of these receptions:

“Yesterday, the forty-fifth day of the year, forty-five gentlemen, real enemies to internal taxation, by, or in obedience to external authority, and cordial friends to Capt. McDougall, and the glorious cause of American liberty, went in decent procession to the New Gaol; and dined with him on forty-five pounds of beef, cut from a bullock of forty-five months old, and with a number of other friends who joined them in the afternoon, drank a variety of toasts, expressive not only of the most undissembled loyalty, but of the warmest attachment to Liberty, its renowned advocates in Great Britain and America, and the freedom of the press. Before the evening the whole company, who conducted themselves with great decency, separated in the most cordial manner, but not without the firmest resolution to continue united in the glorious cause.” In April he was indicted by the Grand Jury for libel, and being brought to the bar pleaded not guilty and was admitted to bail.

While matters were in this condition the Assembly again took the matter up. On Dec. 13, 1770, the Speaker was directed to order McDougall to attend at the Bar of the House to answer a complaint made against him by Mr. De Noyellis for being the supposed author or publisher of the paper signed “A Son of Liberty.”^[9] On his attending, McDougall was asked whether he was or was not the author of the paper. He replied “That as the grand jury and house of Assembly had declared the paper in question to be a libel, he could not answer the question. Secondly, that as he was under prosecution in the Supreme Court, he conceived it would be an infraction of the laws of Justice to punish a British subject twice for one offense, for that no line could be run, that he might be punished without end; but he would not be understood to deny the authority of the house to punish for a breach of privilege, when no cognizance is taken of it in another Court.”

319The Assembly decided that this was a contempt of the authority of the house, and, since he refused to ask pardon of the house, he was ordered into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, and placed in the county jail.

A writ of Habeas Corpus was sued out before the Court of Justice, whereupon the sheriff notified the house and asked what he should do. A committee was appointed on Jan. 22d, 1771, “to search the journals of the house of Commons, for precedents in cases where writs of habeas corpus have been issued, to bring persons committed by the Commons before other Courts.” The committee reported on Feb. 16, that several precedents had been found, which precedents were ordered printed in the Journal of the House. It was also determined that the sheriff should be indemnified for his action in not obeying the order of the Court.

The Assembly was prorogued on March 4, 1771, and did not come together till Jan. 7, 1772, and we hear no more of the McDougall affair. About this time Parker died and as he was the principal witness in the case it was probably considered useless to bring up the indictment before the Court.

From this time on, pamphlets, opposing the Crown and its policy of repression, continued to appear in ever increasing number, but the government made no serious sign of opposition, and seemed to have given up in despair the attempt to control a press which the majority of the people warmly supported.

CHAPTER V
THE PRESS IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

In the Southern colonies we find, as we should expect, an absence of any very important cases bearing on the subject under consideration.

The ideas of Sir Wm. Berkeley, (for thirty-eight years Governor of Virginia), in regard to the dissemination of information, may be gathered from a reply made by him to some enquiries of the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations.

The question being “What course is taken about the instructing the people, within your government in the Christian religion; and what provision 320is there made for the paying of your minister?” his answer is: “The same course that is taken in England out of towns: every man according to his ability instructing his children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministers are well paid, and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But of all other commodities, so of this, the worst is sent us, and we had few that we could boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell’s tiranny drove divers worthy men hither. But, I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.”^[10]

At the beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century Virginia suffered from internal disorders (as Bacon’s Rebellion), due to political disturbances having their origin in the English Civil War. Lord Culpepper, the Governor, was inclined to stretch the royal prerogative to its furthest limit and met the murmurings of the Assembly with a cold and gloomy dignity.^[11]

The Assembly insisting on its rights as given in the charters, Lord Culpepper dissolved the body and endeavored to stamp out all remembrance of past freedom. In the Bland MS. p. 498,^[12] we find the following entry: “Feb. 21, 1682, John Buckner called before the Lord Culpepper and his Council for printing the laws of 1680, without his Excellency’s license, and he and the printer ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything thereafter, until his majesty’s pleasure should be known.” Thus, the press was strangled at its birth, since we have no record or copy of any other work, and that the government continued to watch carefully lest it should appear again is proven by the Instructions of Lord Effingham, the next Governor, in which he is ordered “to allow no person to use a printing press on any occasion whatsoever.”^[13]

In the period between 1733, when Wm. Parks established his press at Williamsburg, and 1765 when Wm. Rind began to issue a paper at Williamsburg, there was but the single press in Virginia, and being the 321organ of the government it may be easily imagined that it had no great temptation to struggle for the liberty of the press.

With the exception of libel suits against Wm. Parks about the year 1740 (by which the House of Burgesses sought to punish him for publishing an article reflecting on one of the members), and the presentment in 1766 of Rind, and of Purdie and Dixon, the publishers of the two Virginia Gazettes (for referring in a way considered improper, to the bailment of Colonel Chiswell), in both of which instances the prosecution failed utterly in its attempt,—there is nothing on the subject which claims our attention.

In South Carolina the press was encouraged, liberal inducements being held out to any printer who would settle in the colony. As a result of this policy we find the printing press in operation from the year 1730, a newspaper being published in 1731. In the early period of the history of the press in the colony the only cause of serious trouble that we find was one involving Peter Timothy, of the Gazette, who had published a letter by one Hugh Bryan in which occurred the statement that “the clergy of South Carolina broke their Canons daily.” With Timothy were also arrested Bryan and George Whitefield, the Evangelist, who had corrected the manuscript. All three were admitted to bail, and the matter was dropped.

In 1773 one of the most important cases that ever occurred in the colonies came about through the publication in the South Carolina Gazette, then owned by Timothy and a partner whom he had lately taken, named Thomas Powell, but managed entirely by the latter, of a portion of the proceedings of the Council on the previous day. Being summoned to attend the body, he admitted that he was the publisher of the Gazette, and that he had printed the proceedings, which on being asked he said had been brought to him by the Hon. Wm. Henry Drayton, a member of the Council. The Council then adjudged him “guilty of a high breach of the privileges, and a contempt of the house.”

Powell refused to ask pardon of the Council which then,

“Resolved, That Thomas Powell, who hath this day been adjudged by this house, to have been guilty of a high breach of privilege, and a contempt of this house, be for his said offense committed to the Common 322Gaol of Charleston; and that his Honor, the President of this house, do issue his warrant accordingly.”

Mr. Drayton, who was present, and had acknowledged his share in the affair, protested strongly, but without avail, and Powell was placed in prison. Two days later, on Sept. 2d, the Hon. Rawlins Lowndes, and Mr. George Gabriel Powell, the former being Speaker of the Assembly, and the latter one of the members of the body, and both being justices of the peace, had Powell brought before them on a writ of Habeas Corpus and discharged him. The Council then took action in these resolutions:

“Resolved, That the power of commitment is so necessarily incident to each house of Assembly, that without it neither their authority nor dignity can in any degree whatsoever be maintained or supported.

Resolved, That Rawlins Lowndes, Esqr., Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly, and George Gabriel Powell, Esqr. member of the said house, being two justices of the peace, unus quorum, lately assistant judges and justices of his majesty’s court of Common Pleas, have, by virtue of habeas corpus by them issued, caused the body of T. Powell to be brought before them, on the second of this instant September, and the said justices, disregarding the commitment of this house, did presumptuously discharge T. Powell out of the custody of the sheriff under the commitment of this house.

Resolved, That the said justices have been guilty of the most atrocious contempt of this house.”

The resolution which follows calls upon the Assembly to disavow the action of these men and give them up to receive proper punishment. This the Assembly refused to do, and then both houses carried the matter on petition to the Crown, and it had not been settled when the breaking out of the Revolutionary War put an end to the affair.

In this case the attempt of the upper house to destroy the liberty of the press, was opposed by the desire of the lower house to uphold it, and the fact that this occurred on the eve of the Revolution is significant, teaching us that even to the last the principle that the press must be free had not been established in the American colonies.

We have had brought before us all the instances of any importance, throughout the American colonies of efforts on the part of the government to control the liberty of the press. Let us now attempt to deduce from them the general principles which governed the matter.

In the first place it is clear that, as the several colonies differed the one from another in their relations with and dependence upon the home government and their Governor, who represented that government, so too the press was in some colonies far more free from control than in others. In Massachusetts, where interference from outside was always resisted, control by the Governor was seldom attempted. Before the administration of Governor Andros the Crown made no attempt to interfere; Andros himself appointed Edward Randolph (vide p. 9) as licenser, and Bartholomew Green, the Boston publisher testifies (vide p. 10) to the fact that in his time (the end of the seventeenth century), Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton took a keen interest in the productions of the press, and refused to allow any publications without a previous application to him, with a copy of the matter to be published. After this period the control by the Crown again was lost in that as also in political matters.

In Pennsylvania we have an instance of a Governor representing an individual proprietor. Here the struggle between the people and Penn’s representative in political matters was carried over into the field occupied by the press, and so we find in the early period of the existence of the press a dual authority exercised, the Crown and the Quarterly Meeting, both claiming the right of censorship (vide p. 23). In the first half of the eighteenth century the power of the Quakers passed away as far as our subject is concerned, but the control exercised by the Crown continued, although more and more questioned, until the breaking out of the Revolutionary struggle.

In New York the Governor himself was responsible for the introduction of the press and for forty years (1692–1734), it took no active part in political agitations, maintaining a cautious neutrality under Bradford. In this colony it was rather a question of the right to freedom of speech, a question raised in the prosecution of Col. Nicholas Bayard. 324From the period of the Zenger trial newspapers continued to increase and the twenty-five years before 1775 witnessed a continuous production of pamphlets in which the Crown and its representative were attacked, the efforts to punish by the government being in almost every case entirely futile. The press divides itself into two groups, the supporters and opponents of the Governor, and the party newspaper becomes a reality.

In the Southern colonies the press never attained any liberty, the government being ever on the watch to repress the smallest attempt at freedom of discussion and criticism.

In the second place we find that the attitude assumed by the inhabitants of the colonies, as expressed by the actions of their representatives, varied in the different colonies. We do find this general similarity, that in all there was a very jealous upholding of the rights of the legislative body as against criticism. That can be easily established by a perusal of the Minutes of any of the Assemblies. But in Massachusetts a distinction seems to have been early established between a criticism of the proceedings of the General Court as such, and a criticism of the policy of the government. In Pennsylvania this view was only in the latter period arrived at; in New York the General Assembly was constantly taking offense at writings appearing in the newspapers or distributed in the form of pamphlets; while in Virginia the question never arose because there was no criticism.

Everywhere we find that there was, as time goes on, a general advance towards freedom of discussion. But this is best seen in nonpolitical matters. With the failure by Parliament in 1695 to renew the Licensing Act all publication became at least theoretically free except in so far as it was restrained by the law of libel. To just what extent this law could be stretched was always a matter of dispute. The maxim “the greater the truth, the greater the libel” must certainly have exercised an influence to deter the publications of the time from the discussion of private affairs. In fact in many instances the news contained in an issue of a newspaper was practically nothing, the few columns being occupied with a very bald statement of Indian affairs, or the relations with France or perhaps a short account of something which had taken place in England or on the Continent. The needs of the community, as better roads or the impounding of wandering cattle, were lightly touched on, but there was but slight evidence of any conception of the idea that the press could lead and direct public opinion as to municipal affairs.

325In political matters not directly affecting the Crown there was also a slight advance towards freedom of discussion, which, as the time of the Revolution approached, became very much extended. But here again no general rule can be established for the more radical colonies, as Massachusetts, would naturally be far in advance of the more conservative, while between would stand New York.

Of one thing we may be confident. In no colony would the Governor, as representing the Crown, permit a criticism of its actions to pass without censure, and, if possible, punishment. When the Evening Post of Boston (vide p. 14) published in 1741 the paragraph in regard to the expected overthrow of the Walpole Ministry, the Attorney-General was at once ordered to file an Information against the printer, Thomas Fleet, and although no further proceedings were ever taken, the omission was due rather to want of confidence in the Massachusetts jury than to any leniency on the part of the Governor. In the case of McDougall (vide p. 65), we find the writer of a pamphlet obnoxious to the Crown kept in prison even against a writ of Habeas Corpus, and only released when the death of the principal witness in the case made his conviction impossible.

The liberty of the press was still further curtailed by the influence exerted by certain classes in the community. There was always a strong feeling among those who had grants of land (either directly from the Crown or by the Crown as confirmatory of purchases already made from the Indians), against any discussion of their rights over those who were their tenants. This influence would of course be of importance only in the colonies where grants were numerous, as in the colony of New York. But another class influence, that of the Clergy, was far stronger at all times and universal in its extent. In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania it is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of this influence, and in none of the colonies can it be neglected if we desire to properly appreciate the difficulties that faced the printer in his struggle for the right of free discussion. The troubles of Wm. Bradford, the elder in Pennsylvania (vide p. 26), and of James Franklin in Massachusetts (vide p. 11), give us a pretty clear idea of the troubles that would beset the man who did not keep himself out of controversy. Just as the New England Election Sermons give us perhaps the best means of understanding the influence of the Clergy in the field of politics, so these quarrels between printer and Quarterly Meeting or Presbytery show us the feeling toward freedom of discussion.

New York City.

Among the relics of Robert Fulton in possession of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at their house in New York City is a manuscript (hitherto unpublished, it is believed), in which in 1859 the only surviving associate of the inventor recorded his recollections. These simple and obviously honest reminiscences from the hand of a plain man become of interest, however deficient in literary art. He was J. B. Calhoun of Brooklyn, and told his story thus:

“In 1807 Mr. Fulton’s first boat, the North River, of Clermont, commenced running on the Hudson River to Albany. Between 1809 and 1811, he had two more, the Car of Neptune and the Paragon. Each steamer had two masts—on the foremast was a square sail, two topsails, and a jib. On the mainmast was a spanker and topsail. The foremast had at the heel trunnions by which the mast could be lowered when the wind was ahead. When the wind was fair, all hands, passengers too, were called to raise the mast and set sail.

These steamers had high or poop decks some four feet above the main deck; the entrance to the cabin was by the old-fashioned ship companionway—not a house on deck. These steamers, being on the bottom as flat as a house floor, each had two heavy side lee boards, to prevent making leeway when sail was set. In those days neither the pilot nor engineer had an assistant, nor the captain any clerk. In leaving New York at five, the pilot would take the wheel until supper; after supper he would again take the wheel and keep it till next morning; he had no fine pilot-house, not even an awning to protect him from the hot sun nor the most severe weather. When coming to landings, instead of a bell to ring, the pilot blew a tin horn some five feet long; the bell was used only for meal times....

Mr. Fulton had at North Point, Jersey City, four large shops, and a dry-dock some 200 feet long, 36 feet wide, and 16 feet deep to repair his boats in; the first dry-dock in this country. In those days such a thing as a cut-off, a throttle-valve, or an eccentric was not known by the engineer.

To make the trip to Albany took from twenty-six to thirty hours, 327burning in that time about thirty cords of firewood. None of Mr. Fulton’s steamers made the trip in less than twenty-five hours. In 1813 Mr. Louis Rhoda, Mr. Fulton’s chief engineer, was killed on the trial trip of the ferry-steamboat on the East River, the Nassau, by being caught in the engine when in motion. He had his entire right shoulder taken from his body by the crank. Mr. Rhoda was the first engineer killed in this country.”

Then follows a paragraph descriptive of Fulton’s personal appearance and manners. The sketch adds:

“His death was rather sudden; so much so that many attributed it to suicide. This was not so; he died a calm, natural death in the bosom of his family, at No. 5 Broadway, opposite the Bowling Green. In attending court at Trenton, N. J., he had taken a cold, and on returning home to New York the ferryboat on which he was was caught in the ice, and was thus delayed some three hours. It was a cold, stormy day in January; this confirmed and increased his illness, which finally sent him to his grave.”

In 1811 Mr. Fulton built at Pittsburgh, Pa., a boat for the New Orleans trade; she was called the New Orleans, the first steamer on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

In 1810–11 a company was formed—they built two boats to run in opposition to Mr. Fulton’s. One was called Perseverance, Captain Bunker, and the other The Hope, Captain Sherman, afterwards well known on Lake Champlain. These steamers were some faster than Mr. Fulton’s. After a long contest in courts of law, the two Albany boats were confiscated to Mr. Fulton, and he had them soon broken up at Albany, in sight of their former owners.

In 1812–13 some gentlemen in New York built a steamer called the Fulton, to run to Albany, by Mr. Fulton’s consent, under the following terms: The new boat was to charge $10 for each passenger, paying Mr. Fulton $3 out of every $10 paid by the passengers; this did not prove profitable, and the next season the Fulton was placed on the East River and the Sound, being the first steamer ever before on the Sound.... It was expected that the steamer Fulton would make the trip to Albany in thirteen or fourteen hours’ time, but I think she never made the trip in less than sixteen or seventeen hours.

The first steamer on the Potomac River, Va., was built by Mr. Fulton 328in the last days of his life; she was called the Washington; she was intended to run between Washington City and Norfolk; she went there in May, 1815; the writer of these lines went out with her and stayed long enough to teach a black man, a slave, how to start and how to manage the engine.

The first steamer for the great Western Lakes was built at Black Rock on the Niagara River by Mr. Noah Brown of New York, in 1818. She was a handsome vessel of 360 tons’ burden, full brig-rigged. She was called the Walk-in-the-Water. She was owned by Dr. J. B. Stewart, then of Albany. The writer put up her engine. She was totally lost in a terrible gale on Lake Erie, in October, 1820. In these years from 1818 to 1820, no dividends were made from the earnings of the steamer. Such was the little travel on those lakes at these times that if the steamer carried thirty or forty passengers, it was doing pretty well. The strength of the Black Rock Rapids was so strong that besides the power of the engine, it required the use of eight pairs of oxen to get the steamer up the rapids on to the lake, a distance of two miles.

The first steamer that made the trip to Albany in twelve hours was the steamer Sun, of which the writer was the engineer. She was a double engine, called the Woolf engine, high and low pressure—had six high-pressure boilers, 24 feet long, and 30 inches in diameter, intended to carry 120 pounds of steam—cylinder, four feet stroke.

The first attempt to use hard coal on a steamer on the Hudson River was made by the Messrs. Mowatt on the steamer Sun and the Henry Eckford in 1825. Wood and coal were tried together; then coal alone. The trial was not successful, but it was soon seen that what was wanted was a strong draft or the use of some kind of a blower. The writer received $50 for making the trial. In those days, blowers were unknown. The first blower was introduced by the late Robert L. Stevens, on board the North America in 1826.

About the year 1827 the steam chimney was introduced by the late J. P. Allaire. He claimed he had a patent for the same, but I think he had not.

In 1825 the steam towing business was commenced by the late Mowatts on the Hudson River, with the steamboat Henry Eckford and six barges. About the same year Mr. William C. Redfield introduced the 329passenger-barge, towing, with the steamers Swift-sure and Abe Commerce and the barges Lady Clinton and Lady Van Rensselaer; it was an aristocratic [venture]—got up to catch the support of the rich and powerful, but it did not succeed well, and in two years it went down.

All the fixtures about the ferry landings, the bridges, the floating box underneath, the chains and pulleys, were all invented by Mr. Fulton.

I have many things in my memory in regard to him. All of the above was written wholly from memory; not one word or a line of reference have I had before me while writing this historical record of old times. When I get in good health I have much to say on these subjects.

Apparently he never “got in good health,” for no other record of his than this is known.

No region in the vicinity of New York has more natural beauty or historic interest than that lying west of the Palisades. Until a few years ago it was to most people an almost unknown land. Hackensack, Englewood, Paterson, and Passaic were familiar names; but the country north of these was seldom visited. Recently the valleys of the Ramapo, Pascack, Saddle, and Hackensack Rivers have attracted many suburban homeseekers, and their character is rapidly changing. Yet their charm still centers in the ancient stone farmhouses that speak of a civilization that has lasted for two hundred and fifty years. In some of the villages are churches built in early colonial times, and about these cluster the graves of the forefathers. New names have been given to many of the hamlets, and the present residents know little and care less for their past history. Only in musty records, and fading memories, do the ancient Indian and Dutch names survive. Ka Keat, Mahakemack, Minesing, Aquackanock, are some of these. From Tappan on the north to English Neighborhood on the south, a distance of thirty miles, this country, except in the four chief towns, was until a generation ago stagnant; its population was no greater than at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A few years since, the writer journeyed with a friend to one of its ancient churchyards, to commit to its grave the body of an aged lady. There it rests with those of ten generations of the Bogarts, Brinkerhoffs, Demarests, Zabriskies, and other historic families.

A number of natives had gathered at the porch of the church on the capstone of whose arch was engraved “Nisi Dominus Frustra.” As this is the motto of the Reformed Church of America I, as one of its ministers, felt at home. The day was stormy, and I asked that the building might be opened for a funeral service. The gentleman addressed said he feared that this was impossible, as the pastor was opposed to such a proceeding. The parsonage was next to the church, and I sent word to the minister asking him to assist me in the burial office. My card was returned with a curt refusal. The old sexton was more communicative, and from him I learned the story of this “True Reformed Dutch Church”; could this 331have been reported word for word it would rival in interest the best of Miss Wilkins’ or Mrs. Wiggin’s tales.

Two facts remain in my memory; first, that Dr. Solomon Froeligh was to this peculiar people all that Knox had been to those who sat under the Scotch Reformer; and, second, that the True Reformed Dutch Church was the remnant of God’s elect; for the rest of Christendom had irrevocably passed under condemnation.

With these experiences in mind I have as far as possible gathered the facts that outline the story of a schism which, nearly a hundred years ago, threatened to disrupt the Reformed Dutch Church, then relatively among the largest of Protestant denominations. Dr. Chambers, in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia, has stated: “The True Reformed Dutch Church is the result of a secession led by the Rev. Solomon Froeligh, a learned man. The reasons assigned for the separation were that the Dutch Church had become erroneous in doctrine, lax in discipline, and corrupt in practice. The secession, however, did not adopt any new standards. At one time it was very formidable, numbering over one hundred churches and as many ministers. But it now numbers hardly a dozen churches. It was a great injury to the church from which it seceded, but it is hard to see what service it has been to its own members, or to anybody else.” This statement, while judicious, is hardly comprehensive. The cause of the disruption was perverse human nature; pride, envy, and jealousy had much to do with it, and the effect was that a people who might have led in the moral and material growth of the State retrograded. The evil it caused brought disaster to upwards of a thousand families who had possessed every advantage of birth, property, and intelligence.

The beginning of the settlement of the region I have described was almost coeval with that of New Amsterdam. Later the occupation of New York by the English led to a large emigration thither of Dutch families from Manhattan and Long Island. Slowly and painfully these early settlers removed the forests, drained the swamps, and established their homes. The organization of Dutch churches in the neighborhoods of this section began immediately. The people were intelligent and devout as well as thrifty. Godly and learned clergymen, among whom were Taschmaker, Varick, Bertholf, Schuyler, and Van Benschoten, soon gathered large congregations. The story of the labors of these men is one of a heroism and devotion hardly equalled in colonial history. The 332minutes of the synod of 1778 reported seventeen strong churches in the district. In 1818 the classes of Bergen and Paramus, into which it was divided, reported 2,400 communicant members, and more than 15,000 persons in the congregations. At this later date some of these churches were larger than those in the cities of New York and Albany.

For many years the most influential man in the region, and in the estimation of his admirers in the Dutch Church, was Dr. Solomon Froeligh, minister of the Collegiate Churches of Hackensack and Schraalenburgh. Born near Albany in 1750, he had spent his boyhood in Walkill valley. There, and in the adjacent Catskill district, the venerable Schuneman ruled for fifty years like a bishop of mediæval times. He was the lawyer, physician, pastor, and friend of a large and scattered flock, among whom his wisdom and authority were unquestioned. A narrative of his life and labors is told in a story of some sixty years ago called “The Dutch Dominie of the Catskills.” Through his guidance Froeligh was led to dedicate himself to the ministry. For ten years he studied under Dr. Dirck Romeyn of Schenectady—the founder of Union College—and Dr. Peter Wilson of Hackensack, for many years a leading professor in Kings College. Although he never visited Princeton, the College of New Jersey conferred on Froeligh at eighteen years of age the degree of master of arts, because of his profound attainments. He became a favorite of Dr. John Livingston, whom Mrs. Jay, the wife of the chief justice, named to Washington as the first citizen of New York. This great man, long the unquestioned leader of the Dutch Church, was accustomed to make progresses through the various congregations; on two at least of these, and the time occupied was frequently several months, Froeligh accompanied him. Upon his licensure in 1775 he received four calls, of which he accepted that of the Collegiate Churches of Queens County, Jamaica, Newtown, Success, and Oyster Bay. In 1776 his house near Newtown, containing his valuable library, and all his earthly possessions, was burned by the British, and he barely escaped death at their hands. For the eight succeeding years he went up and down New York and New Jersey as a missionary and fearless patriot. At the close of the war for independence he accepted a call to become the colleague of the Rev. Warmardus Kuypers in the pastorate of the Collegiate Churches of Hackensack and Schraalenburgh. Shortly after this, he was named by the General Synod of the Church together with Drs. Livingston and Romeyn, a professor of theology. For thirty years he held this office, and trained for the ministry nearly one hundred young men.

333By inheritance Dr. Froeligh was a strong, self-sufficient man. His education and life accentuated these traits. His intercourse during the impressionable years of youth with such masters as Schuneman, Romeyn and Livingston must have developed in him an aptitude to command. In scholarship he was in a narrow sense profound. His early possession of the seat of authority led to a certain dogmatism. He was pronounced hyper-Calvinist, and ever ready to defend his extreme views. The synods of the Church were in that day the great events of each year, not only for clergymen but laymen. In these Dr. Froeligh was ever the leading controversialist. Both tradition and records show that he was strenuous to harshness in manner, unyielding, and exacting in statement, and always ready to estrange a friend rather than bend in the least. Combined with these traits there was in him a vein of mysticism. He dreamed dreams and saw visions that were to him authoritative communications of the Most High. Naturally such a man gathered about him devoted and obedient followers, and at the same time offended and antagonized many. Religion and politics were then, far more than in our day, issues of intense personal moment to all thoughtful persons. Party spirit blazed fiercely in every community. In the memorable Presidential contest of 1800, when the Federalist party was defeated, Dr. Froeligh was an elector and voted for Jefferson. What this meant to most of the ministers and influential laymen of the Church, who were devoted to Hamilton, can be surmised.

As years passed his character did not soften, nor could he accept defeat gracefully. Gradually, new and younger leaders in the Church came to the front. Men like Milldoler, Brownlee, Broadhead, and Fonda, whom he would not treat as his equals, paid him less and less deference. But his chief antipathy was his neighbor of Paramus, once his own scholar, Dr. Wilhelm Eltinge. They were men much alike in character, who invariably stood on opposite sides of every question.

Now the churches of Hackensack and Schraalenburgh, while ruled by one Consistory, were far from friendly to each other. They were rich in property, having inherited thousands of acres of farm land, and their members were noted for their wealth. Even before Froeligh’s day there was bitter rivalry between the two. Mr. Kuypers, Froeligh’s colleague, was a gentle and infirm man, who, above all things, hated discord. He readily yielded to his energetic associate. As the years passed the friction between the communities and factions in each church grew. Questions as to the sale of property, the rebuilding of churches, assessments of costs, 334and the like were constantly rising. On these friends parted and even families divided. At length four separate consistories and congregations were established, one for each minister in each place, but all in one corporation. During the earlier years of his settlement Dr. Froeligh sought to act the part of peacemaker. Not understanding the grounds for the fierce disputes, he diligently set himself to enforce agreement, and by the exercise of his masterful will partially succeeded.

In 1799 Mr. Kuypers died, and the question of his successor became a burning one. The dominie was, of course, intensely interested, and took a decided stand against a majority. During a summer storm a bolt of lightning split the tablet over the door of the largest church, on which was engraved “Endraacht maakt macht”—union makes strength. Taking this as a sign from heaven, Dr. Froeligh proclaimed in his sermon on the following Sunday, “It is our belief founded on what we have seen and know of this people that, according to the sign given on July 10, the Triune God has made them two. The fire of divine grace is on one side, and the fire of discord and rage is on the other.” Even under such conditions the dominie was master of the situation, and held the reins tightly. He was sole minister of four rich churches, and by ecclesiastical law each meeting of the consistory was subject to his call. By the civil law he was president of the corporation, and no business could be transacted without his presence. At last, in 1800, the General Synod of the Church intervened, and by the exercise of its supreme authority placed Dr. J. V. C. Romeyn in Mr. Kuypers’ stead. It also divided the old Classis of Hackensack into two, with Dr. Froeligh’s two churches in that of Paramus, and Dr. Romeyn’s in that of Bergen. Dr. Froeligh entered a solemn protest against this action, and began a course of systematic effort to undo the arrangement. For eighteen years the controversy continued. It is needless to particularize the phases of this unhappy church quarrel. At last, in 1818, the crisis came. Proceedings under church law were instituted against Dr. Froeligh on the question whether the ministry or spiritual consistory composed of the elders of a church, was the responsible party in the matter of receiving or dismissing members. The Classis of Paramus sided with Dr. Froeligh, the next higher court, the Particular Synod, sustained Dr. Romeyn, and then, in 1822, the General Synod, in perhaps the most memorable trial in her history, decided against Dr. Froeligh. Thereupon, he and the ministers and elders of nine churches, signed their names to a document declaring that they had formed themselves 335into a separate body by the name and title of “The True Reformed Dutch Church in America.”

Those who recall Mrs. Stowe’s story, “The Minister’s Wooing,” need not be told of the great controversy in New England caused by the sermons of Dr. Hopkins of Newport. In the light of to-day, few if any in the ministry accept his theology because of its narrowness. But a hundred years ago men like Froeligh regarded Hopkins as a dangerous heretic, and sought to cast out of the church as Pelagians those who sided with him. So long as the dominie could rule the Classis of Paramus he was reasonably content, but when Dr. Eltinge and a majority of its members approved of the Hopkins position, the Dutch Church seemed without the pale. Doubtless his greatest sorrow was that the old leaders he most admired, like Dr. Livingston, refused to join in the controversy. The younger men who were shaping the missionary activities of the church, and planning the constitution that was adopted in 1832, ignored him. No wonder he became embittered. But he had a large following of sincere, earnest, though narrow men. They had been in their early years his students and he was still their oracle. So the schism became formidable. After taking this final step he made a proselyting tour among the churches in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. A score of these joined his new communion. As many more were completely disrupted, and soon ceased to exist. Side by side in fifty hitherto peaceful, united, and prosperous villages rival congregations began a bitter warfare. Accusations against the teaching character and morals of ministers and laymen were published. In the church courts notable trials were held. In some cases the peace of the State was broken, and the civil authorities invoked. Indeed, the actions at law caused by this secession in New York and New Jersey led to the establishment of principles as to the rights of members in church property that are to-day the basis of the ecclesiastical law in both States. Probably the most famous case was that of the Church of the English Neighborhood in New Jersey. It was argued before the Supreme Court by Messrs. Wood and Hornblower on one side, and Van Arsdale and Theodore Frelinghuysen on the other. Chief Justice Ewing delivered the opinion of the court. These five named leaders are probably the most prominent in the history of the New Jersey bar.

As I have gathered from many sources the facts herein set forth, the most interesting and impressive feature of the controversy is the sane and dignified manner with which the church met the issue. Every lawful 336means was adopted to first reunite and then recover the seceding churches, and, so far as the records show, this was ever in the spirit of the Christian rule of kindness. When these efforts failed all loyal members were urged to live in charity with their neighbors.

Until 1850 the “True Reformed Dutch Church” grew in strength. It concentrated all its powers on the one aim of proselyting adherents from the mother Church. Wherever possible it effected discord in congregations and families. It took no part in the missionary or philanthropic movements of the day. Its members gloried in being a “peculiar people,” whose “good works” consisted in nursing pride and standing apart from all others.

I have hardly touched on the pathetic side of this history. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Dutch Reformed Church in America stood in a unique position. In the center of the country she was the oldest Protestant communion, and relatively the strongest. More nearly than any other her policy coincided with that of the United States. In temper and trend she was highly irenic. Her liturgy and confessions were simply Christian; and her genius made her one with true Christians of every name. No wonder that the hopes of a great multitude, both within and without her communion, for a homogeneous body that should do away with the multitude of ecclesiastical divisions centered in her. It was largely due to the schism Dr. Froeligh led that these hopes were shattered. The natural growth of the Church was checked at the most important period of the country’s development. Beginning at the close of the Revolution, wise and devoted leaders had planted a large number of Dutch churches on the then frontiers; these were everywhere prospering. In Central and Western New York, in Upper Canada, in West New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania new congregations were constantly being organized. Then came the disruption. Fully two-thirds of these newer churches were broken up. In North Jersey, and Rockland County, New York, an unwholesome emigration of embittered people began. Families were broken up, neighbors estranged, and the material as well as moral growth of the section was checked.

Possibly other communities as well as churches gained large accessions through this secession. But people of this description are too selfish and disputatious to foster the peace of any neighborhood. It is well that their children should ignore and forget the ways of their fathers.

Now all that is left of the True Dutch Church are some ten dying 337congregations. Each year or so one of these is disrupted. Civil and sometimes criminal actions at law follow, and the costs of the proceedings absorb the remainders of the property. But the remnant still cling to their name and glory in their history; for they still invoke the shades of Doctor Solomon Froeligh.

Evening Post, N. Y.

[Dominie Freligh was an ardent patriot, as is shown by the letter herewith, which presents an odd mixture of piety, patriotism and butter.

The original is in the possession of Mr. William Nelson, Secretary of the N. J. Historical Society, to whom we are indebted for permission to reproduce it.

The reference in its closing lines to “ladies’ headdress” is easily understood by a glance at the Mischianza coiffure of the period, as sketched by Major André—who at the date of this letter had been dead less than four months.—Ed.]

I Acknowledge herewith the Recept of Yours by M^r. Braket. It Affords me Singular Pleasure that a Protecting Providence has hitherto favoured you in your Present Precarious Situation—Hackinsack is often to me a Subject of Admiration; a Vilage Contiguous to the Enimies Lines & Accessible from all Quarters Abounding with Whigs, warmly attached to their Country’s Interest, & a Larger Number according to its Dimensions than Perhaps any town in the State Could produce, to be Preserved, is indeed a Striking Instance of Divine Protection and Seems to indicate, that Notwithstanding your Complaint of religious Defection there is Still a Remnant—As far as I am Capable I shall take pleasure in Satisfying Your Curiosity Respecting the State of religion here—I Can Assure You Sir it wears a Pleasing Aspect; Several Make Profession of their faith & Confidence in Christ & Corroborate it with a Corresponding Practice, Several have been Awakened Since my last & Some who had degenerated from their former Exemplary piety, Seem to revive, & much regret their Backsliding: The Exercises of one in particular are very remarkable; a man formerly of a most Abandoned Profligate life; now Under the Severest Conviction. Discourses on their own Experiences; Efforts to Obtain knowledge of the Sacred truths, & family Devotion Prevails much Among them, and as Little Enthusiasm I think as I ever knew at a Similar Juncture—I much approve of Your Observation that the End of a thing is better than its beginning and when I add to this the Numerous Instances of Dfection, I cannot fear that there will be a 338Lot’s wife among them however I fondly hope the Whole Will not proove to be Wild-fire. Such is their taste for the Gospel, that they Would exact from me more Preaching than is Consistent in itself or my Circumstances of body & mind Would Admit of ——

I am Pleased with the mode in which the late Mutiny in the Jersey Line was Suppressed & Could Wish the Same Steps had been taken with the Pensylvanians—The Soldiers in Our Army have Doubtless many Causes of Complaint, but a spirit of insurrection Should never be indulged in an Army, They Marched thro this place in remarkable good Order; The fate of Sir Harry’s Wretched Emisaries Which, I presume you have heard Prooves Your Conjecture Respecting the Enemy’s Joy on the Occasion to have been Judicious—Recruiting Business we hear goes on in Pensylvania With Unexpected Success—If M^r Bracket tarrys with us till Thursday I shall Probably have it in my Power to Send you The paper;

I had Engaged a Quantity of butter, but from the bad Prospect of any Conveyance this winter I declined, should a proper Conveyance Occur I shall Endeavour to Procure Some for you: The Rev^d M^r. Leydt is recovered from his illness that had nearly Prooved the Cause of his Death, & is hammering away at the Ladies’ headdress with as much Vehemence As ever—M^r. Hardenbergh it is reported will move in the Spring:

I have the honour to be With Sincere

[The stories and legends associated with the Swamp are many. The most authentic and pathetic of all, and the one which Thomas Moore has made the theme of a poem, is to this effect: a young man who lost his mind on the death of the girl he loved, disappeared, and was never heard from. As he had frequently said, in his delirium, that she was not dead, but gone in a canoe to the Swamp, it is supposed that he wandered there in search of her, and died from exposure.

It seemed as if we had hardly been asleep an hour when a knock resounded on our door, and a voice from the outside said: “Six o’clock, ladies; breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes, and the carriage will be here at half-past six.”

With half-shut eyes we made our toilet, and we were even too sleepy to enjoy the well-cooked breakfast which was spread for us in the dining-room of the little Suffolk inn where we had taken lodging for the night on our arrival by train from Norfolk.

We were not thoroughly awake and interested in the adventure we were about to undertake, until we found ourselves with guide books and lunch box on the back seat of a springless carriage, the front seat of which was occupied by a fat negro, with a good-natured grin, who answered to the name of “Moses.” We had a three-mile drive before us to the entrance of the Swamp, where we were to meet our guide and take the boat.

The first stage of our journey lay through the main street of a sleepy little Virginia town. The sun had not yet dried the dewdrops, and the old white, pillared houses on either side of the highway, where the great elms overlapped their branches, were still wrapped in the quiet of the early morning. Farther along the street, when we reached the shops, there were more signs of life. Men, who looked like planters of antebellum days, were taking possession of the chairs which occupied the sidewalk and the porch of a small hotel. Negroes and mules and great bunches 340of bananas were seen on every hand. But we soon left all these behind and were out in the open country. Level, green fields lay on either side of us. It was a lonely road, in spite of the greenness and the sunshine round about us. Occasionally we passed a weather-beaten negro cabin, and once we saw, looming in the distance, a white plantation mansion, stately still, in spite of years of neglect.

It seemed to us that this monotonous road might run on indefinitely, when, suddenly, Moses halted his horses, without apparent cause.

“He’ah we is, I reckon, missus,” said he.

“It can’t be,” returned my traveling companion. “I see nothing like a swamp.” And then we both of us looked closely at the only object in the landscape—a clump of willow bushes, seeming to cover the beginning of a brook that led nowhere in particular.

“Yes’m, he’ah we be su’ah,” reiterated Moses. “An’ he’ah’s Massa Alphonso now,” and he pointed to a light-haired, lank Virginian, who, at that moment, appeared from behind the bushes, and stood leaning on an oar.

The man combined the stateliness of a courtier with the roughness of a hunter, and the grace of his attitude and his blonde beauty led the Spinster to christen him “The Lohengrin of the Swamp.”

The object of this unspoken christening now came forward and introduced himself as our guide. “An’ now, I reckon we might as well be a-startin’, ladies,” said he. “Wait, ma’am, I’ll help you down the bank. It’s mighty steep right here, but there wasn’t no other place nigh so good for hitchin’ the boat. You, Mose, you be back to-night at six o’clock sharp for the ladies. D’ye understand?”

“Yes, sah’, yes, sah’, su’ah,” and Moses clattered away.

Once settled in the boat, the scene changed. We seemed to have entered the beginning of an indefinitely long arbor, covered with grapevines. Of course, there were, in reality, no grapevines, but the willows and the short, bushy trees which completely overhung the four-foot wide channel in which our boat rode made the illusion perfect.

“This is beautiful,” said the Spinster, as she watched the sunshine glinting through the pale-green leaves, still dew-covered, and falling in bright reflections on the face of the dark water beneath.

341“It’s fine!” I echoed; “but when do we enter the swamp, guide?”

“We’re in the swamp now, ma’am. It’ll be just like this for ten miles, and then we’ll come to the lake.”

“Why—why,” I almost stammered in my amazement, “I thought the swamp was dark and gloomy, with moss hanging from tall, mournful pine trees, and not a sound to be heard in the wilderness. If it’s like this, with bird-calls and sunshine and bright green leaves, why do they call it ‘dismal’?”

Alphonso smiled at my eagerness. “There’s more to it than shows just at first, ma’am,” he answered. “There are more sad stories about this swamp than all the sunshine can make bright. In the first place this channel we’re riding in right now was dug by chain-gangs of slaves. They say the poor creatures died here in heaps from swamp fever. But that didn’t make any difference to their owners. They was made to dig right into the heart of the swamp to get at the juniper trees. You see they are very valuable—the most valuable wood, I guess, that grows; and they are only to be found here in this swamp. I’ll show you some of them when we come to them. They are tall and slim and straight. No, we shan’t get to any until we are a good bit farther along. I told you the swamp was all alike, but I didn’t mean that exactly. There’s a good bit of difference, the deeper in we get, though you might not notice the difference unless I pointed it out. The trees will be larger and taller, and the bird-calls will be different—more wild, like, and there’ll be owls and herons to be seen, and maybe a stork or two. I hope on account o’ you ladies we shan’t meet no bears, but you see I’ve brought my gun along. There’s always a chance.”

I was more interested in his story of the slave gangs than in the bears. “Do you actually mean,” I asked, “that in former times slaves dug this channel ten miles long to Lake Drummond?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s an actual fact; but they got some advantages from it, too, for while they was digging they got to know the swamp pretty well, and they discovered there was islands hidden away in the center of the swamp, though miles distant from this channel. The slaves kept their discovery to themselves, and later on fugitive slaves made use of it. If they could only reach these islands they were safe from their pursuers, and it’s said that children and even grandchildren of the first runaways were born, and lived, and died on these islands.”

342“I don’t see what they had to eat,” suggested the prosaic Spinster.

“You don’t understand, ma’am. These islands are just as dry and nice as any land about here, and the swamp soil is mighty rich, so of course they could just grow anything they had a mind to. Of course they were helped also by friendly slaves on the plantations ’round here, and then they had their cattle and honey to help out.”

“Cattle and honey!” exclaimed the Spinster.

“Yes, ma’am; and they’re here yet. I get all the honey maw and I want to eat from the hives of wild bees here, and most of my beef comes from here, too. Besides, many a quarter I’ve sold. There’s no better eatin’ than the swamp cattle. But a cur’us thing about ’em is that their horns is polished just like ivory. It comes from pickin’ up their livin’ in the swamp and brushin’ constant against tree trunks and reeds and the like.”

“I don’t see how they came here in the first place, and I don’t see what they live on in the second place,” continued the Spinster, glancing at the edges of the swamp on either side of our narrow channel, which seemingly consisted only of masses of dead leaves, dank moss, and reeds.

“Oh, I suppose they was tame cattle in the first place that strayed in here an’ then stayed an’ multiplied just as the slaves did. An’ as for eatin’, you ain’t seen the swamp grass, ma’am; it’s mighty rich.”

“I should think it would be unhealthy here,” said I. “I don’t see how those fugitive slaves flourished to the third generation.”

“Well, no; that’s the queer part of it. It ain’t unhealthy. Those niggers who dug this ditch died of fever, but the swamp itself ain’t unhealthy. On the contrary, the medical folks say it’s a good place for consumptives, and that this swamp water you see here, just as brown as coffee, is good for ’em to drink. There’s been some talk of puttin’ up a hotel on the shore of Lake Drummond for a health resort, and cuttin’ a channel wide enough for a steamboat to run regular, but I hope they won’t get to it in my time. I can’t hope that the Swamp’ll last much longer,” he continued, with a sigh. “You see how black and rich the ground is, and if it was drained and cleared it would be mighty productive. Some capitalists are already talking of doing that and dividing it off into farms.”

This was a plan that pleased the Spinster, and she kept our guide talking 343on this and kindred topics until the sun, creeping on, stood directly overhead, and it was noon, and we had reached the limit of our journey.

We forgot our prosaic talk of so short a time before when we stood on the shores of Lake Drummond. There lay the magic lake, boldly gray, even in brightest sunshine. Waves which were born from the winds of the wilderness lapped the pebbles at our feet. Although the sun shone warm upon us, it could not overcome the feeling of awe-struck loneliness.

“Do you notice,” said my companion softly, “that even the bird-calls of the swamp have ceased?”

I nodded without speaking. It seemed unfitting to break by words the ghostlike silence that brooded over this water so far from the life and ways of men.

A moment later the guide joined us and brought us down from this high plane by his unconcerned talk.

“Yes,” he said, “this lake’s just on the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. We came through ten miles of Virginia swamp this morning to get to it, and we’d have to pole through ten miles of North Carolina swamp if we tried to get out through the other side across the lake there.”

“What sources feed Lake Drummond?” asked the Spinster, shaking herself free from the abstraction that had preceded Alphonso’s entrance upon the scene.

“Nobody knows,” returned the guide, shaking his head. “Nobody knows where it comes from nor where it goes. The black folks around here say that the lake belongs to the devil and the scientific people say it’s of volcanic origin. Perhaps that amounts to the same thing.” Then he changed the subject by briskly demanding if we were ready for lunch.

We ate our luncheon in the rough wooden house, which, with its shake-down beds and pine board tables, served as quarters for the hunters and scientists, sometimes for weeks at a time. Perhaps its limited accommodations satisfied them. We should not have been contented.

We were not sorry to find ourselves once more in our comfortable boat and started on our homeward journey.

344“I reckon we don’t get any bears this trip,” remarked Alphonso, after we had progressed a considerable distance.

“Do you often get them?” asked the Spinster.

“Sure, though it’s kind o’ between seasons for them now. They ain’t out lookin’ after berries or honey. I might say that I bag ’em mighty frequent,” he continued. “That is, when I’m hunting by myself. When I’m guidin’ other folks they do more missin’ than hittin’, I’m bound to say,” he added with a laugh.

We had heard the evening before that Alphonso was considered the best shot in Nansemond County, so that we did not doubt his personal prowess, but the humorous twinkle in his eye encouraged us to ask for stories of the misadventures of other people, and we heard various seriocomic tales of grave professors who could draw a trigger and yet miss a bear within six feet of them, or let a bear-cub crawl away unhurt, not from a sense of pity, but from absent-mindedness.

“But I don’t mind so much their missin’ of the game,” said Alphonso, “as I do their wanderin’ off by themselves an’ gettin’ lost in this ’ere swamp. It takes me such a pile o’ walkin’ before I can round ’em up again. I remember once I was fool enough to let a party of three go off huntin’ by themselves. It took me two days before I found ’em again, an’ I can tell you I was gettin’ mighty anxious. My! didn’t they enjoy the wild-cow beefsteak I cooked for ’em that night!”

As he spun his yarns, we hoped to beguile Alphonso into a more personal strain and get him to tell about his own life and his mother to whom he had more than once alluded. Although evidently unwilling to do so, he did tell us enough of his life so that we could piece together his story and account for his opposing characteristics. It seemed that his mother had been an heiress and a belle in the days before the war. She had married a colonel who was killed in one of the first battles, and her only child, Alphonso, had at the age of eleven been thrust out into the world to gain a living for himself and his mother. This he had succeeded in doing, but there had been no time for education—that is, for book-knowledge. Chivalry of manner he had learned from his lady-mother. The wiles of Cupid he had likewise shunned. As he told us, he was an “old bach,” and lived alone with “maw,” and reckoned he’d continue so to do, When we tried to gather more details of his life, he showed himself shy, 345as well as modest, and parried our most skillful questions. His last evasion led to an incident which proved much to our advantage.

“Look-a-there,” he cried, not answering the Spinster’s last quiz. “Do you see that owl, ma’am, perched on that dead branch in the top of that pine tree? He’s the largest I’ve seen this year. Would you like him? He’d make a mighty nice specimen in case you’re collectin’.”

The Spinster’s eye and mine met in consultation. The decision was unanimous, and an instant later the guide’s unerring rifle rang out and the owl was fluttering in the water dead. He was picked up and his plumage smoothed, and he was carefully bestowed under one of the boat seats. The small remaining portion of our journey was given up to talk about our new possession and how he should ultimately be disposed of, and in this manner our day with Alphonso, “the Lohengrin of the Swamp,” drew to a close. We were met at the appointed time and place by fat Moses with the springless carriage. Alphonso bade us a courteous adieu, again leaning against his oar in the attitude of the morning.

Moses drove us back to the station at a rapid pace, chuckling the while at our owl which lay on the seat beside him and which he said “looked just like de debbil.” We arrived at the station in time to procure a box for our owl, and then boarding the train arrived safely in Norfolk that night.

Evening Post, N. Y.

The short list following is partly supplemental to Larned’s Literature of American History; its regular A. L. A. continuations; the various cumulative indexes to periodicals and Miss Kroeger’s Guide to reference books (q. v.). This little collection, which may be extended, is intended merely ta present some clews to additional means of historical research.

KEY:—

 

010

Bibliography (general).

017

Catalogs (sale).

580

Botany (ancient America).

913

Antiquities.

920

Biography.

929

Genealogy.

973

History (U. S.).

010 BIBLIOGRAPHY (general).

Cole, George Watson. Compiling a bibliography. Practical hints with illustrative examples concerning the collection, recording and arrangement of bibliographical materials, by George Watson Cole. An address delivered before the Pratt Institute School of Library Training, March 15, 1901; reprinted, with additions, from the Library Journal [26:791,–859]; New York, The Library Journal, 1902. 21 pp. 23½ x 19 cm. [“Two hundred and fifty copies printed for private distribution.”]

Cole, George Watson. American bibliography, general and local. (In the Library Journal, 19, No. 1 [Jan., 1904]:—5–9.)

017 CATALOGS (sale).

Bibliotheca Americana. Being a collection of books ... for sale by George Harding, 64, Gt. Russel St., Bloomsbury, London, W. C., England. New series, No. 112 (1905). 36 pp.

347Edwards’s American catalogue. Parts 1–3 (1904–1905). Books for sale by Francis Edwards, 83, High Street, Marylebone, London, W., England. Partially annotated.

Contents: Part 1 (Oct., 1904). The American continent; voyages of discovery, general histories, collections, atlases, and maps (pp. 1–35); natural history; geology, botany, zoölogy (pp. 36–53); North American Indians and prehistoric remains of man in North America (pp. 54–69); languages of North American Indians (pp. 70–72). Part 2 (1904–1905?) relates to Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland, Alaska and Yukon territory. Part 3 (June, 1905), The United States; Colonial period 1606–1764 (pp. 137–169); Revolution, 1765–83 (pp. 170–202); Constitution, 1784–1811 (pp. 203–216); War of 1812 (pp. 217–221); Settling of Great West, 1816–60 (pp. 222–240); Civil War, 1860–65 (pp. 241–248); Reconstruction, 1866–date (pp. 249–254); Texas (pp. 255–256).

Gray’s international bulletin. Books for sale by Henry Gray, Goldsmith’s Estate, East Acton, London, W., England. Monthly, Foreign series, No. 1 (1904–5?) pp. 32. Contents: Americana and Coloniana.

580 BOTANY (ancient America).

Cook, O. F. Food plants of ancient America. (In annual report of the ... Smithsonian Institution ... for the year ending June 30, 1903, Washington: Government printing office, 1904; see pp. 481–497.)

“Revision of article on The American Origin of Agriculture, in Popular Science Monthly, October, 1902.” Sets forth some inferences to be drawn from evidences of ancient trans-Pacific communication; distribution of food-plants, etc.

913 ANTIQUITIES

Butterworth, Hezekiah, ed. The Mysterious Races. (See his Young Folks’ History of America, chap. 1, 13–28, Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1881, illustrated.)

Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. List and prices of publications issued by Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, U. S. A. [1904.] 12^o. 9 pp.

See serial Nos. 8, 16, 23, 28, relating to archæology of Mexico, Peru and Yucatan.

Hewett, Edgar L. Antiquities of the southwest and their preservation. By Edgar L. Hewett [of the] National Museum, Washington. (In The Magazine of History, ... New York, 1, No. 5 [May, 1905]: 291–300.)

348Holmes, W. H. Report ... on the Congress of Americanists, held at Stuttgart, Germany, Aug. 18–23, 1904. (In Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, quarterly issue, vol. 47, No. 1558, pp. 391–395.)

Contains programme of the congress, with titles of addresses; also a list of publications, “a set of 75 bound volumes relating mainly to American Archæology and Ethnology, published by the Smithsonian Institution and its two bureaus—the National Museum and the Bureau of American Ethnology.”

McAdam, William. Records of ancient races in the Mississippi Valley; being an account of some of the pictographs, sculptured hieroglyphs, symbolic devices, emblems and traditions of the prehistoric races of America, with some suggestions as to their origin. With cuts and views illustrating over three hundred objects and symbolic devices. St. Louis: C. R. Barnes Publishing Co., 1887. 120 pp., 8vo.

Based on much personal research by the author, who died about April 16, 1895, on which date the Alton (Illinois) Daily Republican printed a two-column obituary notice, he having been a resident of that city.

The “Old Mill” at Newport: A new study of an old puzzle. Scribner’s Monthly, 17, No. 5 (March, 1879): 632–641.

Makes some architectural comparisons of the tower with other similar ancient structures, in an attempt thus to solve the problem of the former’s origin.

Prescott, William H. Origin of the Mexican civilization—analogies with the Old World. (See his Conquest of Mexico, 3, appendix, part 1: 309–352, Philadelphia: David McKay, 1892. [‘Preliminary notice,’ pp. 309–310].)

“The civilization of Anahuac was, in some degree, influenced by that of Eastern Asia; ... the discrepancies are such as to carry back the communication to a very remote period,” extract, p. 352. Accompanied by very extensive notes and citations of authorities.

Thomas, Cyrus. Central American hieroglyphic writing. (In annual report of the ... Smithsonian Institution ... for the year ending June 30, 1903, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904; see pp. 705–721, illustrated.)

U. S. Smithsonian Institution. Classified list of Smithsonian publications, available for distribution, April, 1904. Washington: published by the Institution, 1904. (No. 1461.) 29 pp. 8^o. See pp. 6–8, Archæology.

349U. S. Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. List of publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, with index to authors and titles. Extract from the twentieth annual report of the Bureau. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903. 26 pp. [paged cxcix-ccxxiv], 29½ cm.

920 BIOGRAPHY.

Twelve contemporary estimates of Washington. (In Self Culture, 2, No. 6 [March, 1896]: 851–857.)

Accounts quoted (presumably) verbatim.

Elliott, Agnes M. Comp. Contemporary biography. References to books and magazine articles on prominent men and women of the time. Compiled by Agnes M. Elliott. [Pittsburgh]: Carnegie Library, 1903, pp. 171, 23 cm.

929 GENEALOGY.

Allaben, Frank. Concerning genealogies; being suggestions of value for all interested in family history. New York: The Grafton Press, 1904 (?) 12mo. 75 cts. Not examined.

American genealogies or family histories, and other historical works, for sale by Joel Munsell’s Sons, Albany, N. Y. 48 pp. 12½ cm.

Contains a large number of surnames arranged alphabetically, with date, number of pages and price of publication.

Genealogical, heraldic and historical publications of the Grafton Press. New York: 1905. 16 pp.

Gray’s International Bulletin. Books for sale by Henry Gray, Goldsmith’s Estate, East Acton, London, W., England. Monthly, No. 242 (1904–5?); pp. 16. Contents: Family history, British and foreign.

Same. Subject series, No. 1 (1904–5?); pp. 32. Contents: Family history and other personalia.

Partly annotated, and arranged in alphabetical order by surnames, with some cross references.

McPike, Eugene Fairfield. Genealogy in America. (Notes and Queries, London, tenth series, 2:63.) [Relates to the attitude of Washington, Adams, Franklin, Garfield and Oliver Wendell Holmes toward genealogical research. Authorities cited.]

Clark, A. Howard. List of publications of the American Historical Association, 1885–1902, and the American Society of Church History, 1888–1897. Contents of American Historical Review, 1895–1902, by A. Howard Clark, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903, p. 65, paged 575–639.

Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1902, vol. 1, pp. 575–639. Gives titles of all articles forming contents of each publication, and concludes with an excellent index.

[Deshler, C: D.] A Glimpse of “Seventy-six.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 49, No. 290 (July, 1874): 230–245.

An interesting account by one who was personally acquainted with many survivors of the American Revolution. Accompanied by illustrations of colonial furniture.

Finney, B. A. Public libraries and local history. (Public Libraries, 10, No. 1 [Jan., 1905]: 1–6.) [Read before the Ann Arbor Library Club, March 12, 1903.] Same. Also issued separately.

Guest, Captain Moses. 1755–1828. Poems on several occasions. To which are annexed extracts from a journal kept by the author while he followed the sea, and during a journey from New Brunswick, in New Jersey, to Montreal and Quebec Ed. 2. Cincinnati: Looker & Reynolds, 1824. 160 pp., 12^o in half sheets.

Most of these poems were written during the American Revolution. Captain Guest belonged to the New Jersey militia and captured Lt.-Col. J. G. Simcoe, of the Queen’s Rangers, Oct. 26, 1779. This incident is described in his journal, which, however, begins 16 March, 1784. He removed to Cincinnati in 1817.

[McLaughlin, Andrew C.] [Descriptions of work undertaken by the Bureau of Historical Research, established by the Carnegie Institution of Washington.] (Am. Hist. Review, 9, No. 3 [April, 1904]: 635–636; caption Notes and News: America.)

McLaughlin, Andrew C. Historical research. (In Carnegie Institution of Washington, Year book, No. 3 [1904], pp. 65–67.)

Describes the work and plans of the Bureau of Historical Research, established by the Carnegie Institution; includes mention of its (completed) 351Guide to the Archives of the Government of the U. S., at Washington; of preliminary report by Prof. Chas. M. Andrews of Bryn Mawr, on the character, extent and location (in British archives) of material for the study of American history; of a bibliography of current (1903) writings on American history, etc. As the director is the editor of the American Historical Review, some of the material collected by the Bureau appears in that periodical.

[Putnam, Herbert.] Publication of historical material by the Government. (In his report of the librarian of Congress for the ... year ending June 30, 1904; pp. 66–70; 171–181.)

“The library seems in a peculiarly favorable position to publish such of the MSS. in its possession as seem to deserve publication. It will begin with those that most obviously require it. The first of these is the Journals of the Continental Congress, of which admittedly no one of the three existing editions is either complete or accurate.” Extract, p. 69. Other important historical collections mentioned.

Richardson, Ernest Cushing, and Morse, Anson Ely. Writings on American history, 1902. An attempt at an exhaustive bibliography of books and articles on United States history, published during the year 1902, and some memoranda on other portions of America. Princeton, N. J.: The Library Book Store, 1904. P. xxi + 294.

A similar collection for 1903 has been undertaken by the Bureau of Historical Research, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D. C.

Tarbell, Ida M. The Story of the Declaration of Independence. (In McClure’s Magazine, 17, [July, 1901]: 223–235.)

“Illustrated with portraits and autographs of the signers.”

Chicago.

Although the year now nearly ended has been one of extreme labor on the part of the Editor, he feels a reasonable degree of pride in that his efforts to produce a magazine worthy of being known as the successor of Mrs. Lamb’s Magazine of American History, have been recognized as successful, by many of his subscribers. That the venture could be financially profitable the first year, was not expected—yet the deficiency is not large, and may even yet be extinguished by the receipt of a comparatively small number of subscriptions before the New Year is upon us.

It is not the Editor’s custom to make unlimited promises for a coming year—he much prefers to let the performance of 1905 stand as a fair sample of what may be expected in 1906, and promises only to improve on it if he can. It is so obvious that the standard of a periodical depends on the growth of its subscription list, that he alludes to it only to emphasize the fact that an historical periodical is particularly so dependent, as advertising receipts from such an one can never be large—advertisers as a rule seeking only those of great circulation. Hence the need that all who claim to be interested in our Nation’s history should prove that interest by subscribing to this, the only monthly devoted to the subject and not confining itself to any one section of the United States.

Its value can also be enhanced by the receipt of queries or historical items appropriate to its columns—and the Editor wishes such whether from subscribers or those who may read it only in our public libraries.

To those who have aided him by contributing MSS. during the year, he returns his warmest thanks, appreciating fully that only by such aid has it been possible to successfully conduct the publication.

The irregularity in publishing the monthly parts, has been unavoidable—but subscribers may rest assured that all possible will be done to reduce this to a minimum. It has been as much of an annoyance to the Editor as to his subscribers, but may be occasionally inevitable in the absence of the usual “quantity of matter awaiting publication,” which more fortunate editors have been known to mention to aspirants for literary fame.

[The description of the vast flocks of the wild pigeons (Ectopistes migratoria), given in Mr. Ryman’s article in the October Magazine, makes the following article, from a recent number of Forest and Stream, of timely interest. The Editor remembers that in 1892, when he desired to give a game dinner in New York, he was unable to add these birds to his list, although making application to dealers as far west as Minneapolis. The description of a flight of pigeons, given by Audubon and Wilson in their works, is of remarkable value, as showing the great change wrought in a comparatively short period of time by the increase of population in the former haunts of these valuable birds.—Ed.]

Being old enough at the time to fully appreciate the grand sight of the myriads of wild pigeons as they moved back and forth through the Mississippi valley in the late seventies, it did not occur to the writer when they suddenly disappeared that it meant they had done so for all time.

As the years pass and no satisfactory explanation has been advanced, the subject fairly nettles the thoughtful lover of nature. Superficial humane zealots as usual credit the trapshooters with wanton slaughter, which is positively silly when it is remembered that a single flock, one of a hundred that passed in a day, would supply pigeons for trapshooting for several years. That disease exterminated them is not impossible, and is by far more reasonable than the trap or net explanation, twenty-five or more years of guessing having failed to locate or account for the birds.

The suggestion here offered (for what it is worth), which was brought about by a dream, may, if followed up, give a clew to the whereabouts or fate of the birds which sportsmen of the last generation will ever remember as the most graceful and skillful flyers known. The dream above mentioned need not be given in detail, nor could it be at this time; however, the writer dreamed of a pow-wow with a venerable Indian who, when asked what had become of the pigeons, stated, to quote him literally (as dreamed), that “Pigeon heap d——n fool, fly in big water [meaning the Gulf of Mexico], no come back.”

I am without any element of superstition, but this dream and Indian 354affirmation have haunted me for months. I have just returned from the Gulf coast, where, strange as it may seem, the dream has in a measure been confirmed as follows:

Having waded through a slough several times in quest of jack snipe, which were there in large numbers, and having killed and bagged many, I came to an inviting log near the edge of the swamp, which made a good resting place for a tired shooter. While seated there making up my mind whether I should quit shooting or go back after the snipe again, an old negro driving an antiquated mule attached to a creaking, ramshackle wagon with dished wheels, drove up. A few pieces of webbing, some chains for traces, and a bridle and reins of common clothesline made a perfectly harmonious outfit.

“Whoa, Jake!” commanded the old man as he rolled up to my resting place. “Good mo’nin’, sah. You all been spo’tin’ some dis mo’nin’.”

I assured him I had bagged a lot of jacks.

“I dun hear pow’ful lots o’ gun firin’ as I come along back.”

His aged and gray head was set with bright eyes, and his old face beamed with good nature. I decided to do some of the questioning, so I started in with an inquiry as to whether Jake, who stood within reach of my seat on the log, had been or was a kicker. His owner assured me he was gentle and “never was a fool mule.”

“How long have you lived here, uncle?” I inquired.

“I don’t live here; I lives up dis road ’bout fo’ miles.”

“Yes, but how long have you lived in Texas, or near the Gulf?” I asked.

“Good Lo’d! I dun always been here,” and, as if to emphasize the statement, his old face wrinkled more than usual.

“Do you remember the pigeons, years ago?” I asked.

“I shore does, sah.”

“What became of them?” I asked, recalling the dream.

“Whar you all come from to ast dis nigger such fool things! Of cou’se I knows.”

355“Well, I don’t,” I remarked; “but would like to very much.”

“You never dun heard of de black fog and the ‘norther’ on dis beach ’bout twenty-five years ago?”

“I never have; but what has that to do with it?”

“Beg your pa’don, sah, I guess you-all ain’t jokin’?”

I assured him I was not, and he began the story of the disappearance of the pigeons something like this:

“When me and Tom Clay was out huntin’ ’coons and bob cats one day, de fog came so thick it was most pitch dark in dis woods, and we was ’fraid to go to the island where Mars Judge Tobin lived, and we was workin’, and jes had to stay right dar in dat timber fo’ days and fo’ nights—coze we shore would git lost if we rowed de boat in dat fog. Well, de second mo’nin’ along come de ‘norther’ an’ dun blowed dis timber most to pieces, but not de fog. By an’ bye I hear a sound, I dun heard befo’, pigeons was a-flyin’ over, and de sound kep’ up all dat day till mos’ dark. Den dey come fallin’ thro’ de trees around us with their wings busted, and heads busted, like they was plum crazy; an’ when dey seen our fire dey fluttered into it and put it clean out. Yas, sah, dat’s God’s truf, I dun tole you all. Next mo’nin’ all dat could fly started off to’d the ocean, an’ the noise of more a-comin’ kep’ up all day till mos’ night. Dat noise was shore mighty bad, an’ we dun been ’bout scared to death when de fog lifted, an’ we started fo’ home in de boat. Den we was scared agin, fo’ de bay was mos’ covered with dead pigeons an’ blood an’ feathers, an’ mos’ every kind of a fish was dar jes helpin’ hisself, an’ so thick we could jes row de boat. We dun busted right into a nest of sharks feedin’ on pigeons, an’ one throwed his tail so hard he knocked de oar out of de boat mos’ ten feet. Next mo’nin’ all the pigeons was dun gone, excep’ on de beach was some washed up, an’ a pow’ful lot of dead fish, little ones’ s’pose got killed in de rush for pigeons. I neber did see a big flock since, an’ ain’t seen nary one fo’ yeahs now.”

“Then you think they perished in the Gulf?” I asked.

“I dun seen um, I knows I know it!” he replied.

Will some kind reader help me in this matter and interview some old sea dog who may have met the unfortunate birds further out to sea, and verify this negro’s story, and the characteristic statement that “pigeon heap fool, fly in big water, and no come back,” of the visionary Indian?

Among the legends which the traveler frequently hears, while crossing the prairies of the Far West, I remember one which accounts in a most romantic manner for the origin of thunder. A summer storm was sweeping over the land, and I had sought a temporary shelter in the lodge of a Sioux or Dacotah Indian on the banks of the St. Peter’s River. Vividly flashed the lightning, and an occasional peal of thunder echoed through the firmament. While the storm continued my host and his family paid but little attention to my comfort, for they were all evidently stricken with terror. I endeavored to quell their fears, and for that purpose asked them a variety of questions respecting their people, but they only replied by repeating, in a dismal tone the name of the Lone Buffalo. My curiosity was of course excited, and it may readily be imagined that I did not resume my journey without obtaining an explanation of the mystic words; and from him who first uttered them in the Sioux lodge I subsequently obtained the following legend:

There was a chief of the Sioux nation whose name was the Master Bear. He was famous as a prophet and hunter, and was a particular favorite with the Master of Life. In an evil hour he partook of the white man’s fire-water, and in a fighting broil unfortunately took the life of a brother chief. According to ancient custom blood was demanded for blood, and when next the Master Bear went forth to hunt, he was waylaid, shot through the heart with an arrow, and his body deposited in front of his widow’s lodge. Bitterly did the woman bewail her misfortune, now mutilating her body in the most heroic manner, and anon narrating to her only son, a mere infant, the prominent events of her husband’s life. Night came, and with her child lashed upon her back, the woman erected a scaffold on the margin of a neighboring stream, and with none to lend her a helping hand, enveloped the corpse in her more valuable robes, and fastened it upon the scaffold. She completed her task just as the day was breaking, when she returned to the lodge, and shutting herself therein, spent the three following days without tasting food.

357During her retirement the widow had a dream in which she was visited by the Master of Life. He endeavored to console her in her sorrow, and for the reason that he had loved her husband, promised to make her son a more famous warrior and medicine man than his father had been. And what was more remarkable, this prophecy was to be realized within the period of a few weeks. She told her story in the village, and was laughed at for her credulity.

On the following day, when the village boys were throwing the ball upon the plain, a noble youth suddenly made his appearance among the players, and eclipsed them all in the bounds he made, and the wildness of his shouts. He was a stranger to all, but when the widow’s dream was remembered, he was recognized as her son, and treated with respect. But the youth was yet without a name, for his mother had told him that he should win one for himself by his individual prowess.

Only a few days had elapsed, when it was rumored that a party of Pawnees had overtaken and destroyed a Sioux hunter, when it was immediately determined in council that a party of one hundred warriors should start upon the war-path and revenge the injury. Another council was held for the purpose of appointing a leader, when a young man suddenly entered the ring and claimed the privilege of leading the way. His authority was angrily questioned, but the stranger only replied by pointing to the brilliant eagle’s feathers on his head, and by shaking from his belt a large number of fresh Pawnee scalps. They remembered the stranger boy, and acknowledged the supremacy of the stranger man.

Night settled upon the prairie world, and the Sioux warriors started upon the war-path. Morning dawned and a Pawnee village was in ashes, and the bodies of many hundred men, women and children were left upon the ground as food for the wolf and vulture. The Sioux warriors returned to their own encampment when it was ascertained that the nameless leader had taken more than twice as many scalps as his brother warriors. Then it was that a feeling of jealousy arose, which was soon quieted, however, by the news that the Crow Indians had stolen a number of horses and many valuable furs from a Sioux hunter as he was returning from the mountains. Another warlike expedition was planned, and as before the nameless warrior took the lead.

The sun was near his setting, and as the Sioux party looked down upon a Crow village, which occupied the center of a charming valley, the 358Sioux chief commanded the attention of his braves and addressed them in the following language:

“I am about to die, my brothers, and must speak my mind. To be fortunate in war is your chief ambition and because I have been successful you are unhappy. Is this right? Have you acted like men? I despise you for your meanness and I intend to prove to you this night that I am the bravest man in the nation. The task will cost me my life, but I am anxious that my nature should be changed and I shall be satisfied. I intend to enter the Crow village alone, but before departing, I have one favor to request. If I succeed in destroying that village, and lose my life, I want you, when I am dead, to cut off my head and protect it with care. You must then kill one of the largest buffaloes in the country and cut off his head. You must then bring his body and my head together, and breathe upon them, when I shall be free to roam in the Spirit-land at all times, and over our great prairie-land wherever I please. And when your hearts are troubled with wickedness remember the Lone Buffalo.”

The attack upon the Crow village was successful, but according to his prophecy the Lone Buffalo received his death wound, and his brother warriors remembered his parting request. The fate of the hero’s mother is unknown, but the Indians believe that it is she who annually sends from the Spirit-land the warm winds of spring, which cover the prairies with grass for the sustenance of the Buffalo race. As to the Lone Buffalo, he is never seen even by the most cunning hunter, excepting when the moon is at its full. At such times he is invariably alone, cropping his food in some remote part of the prairies; and whenever the heavens resound with the moanings of the thunder, the red man banishes from his breast every feeling of jealousy, for he believes it to be the warning voice of the Lone Buffalo.

AGREEMENT BETWEEN EDMUND MUNRO AND JOHN SELLON

[Edmund Munro of Lexington, Mass. [1736–1778], lieutenant in the French and Indian war. Served at the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775; Lieutenant, Captain Miles’s company, Colonel Reed’s regiment, also Quartermaster at Ticonderoga and with the Northern army in the campaign ending with Burgoyne’s surrender; also Captain, Colonel Bigelow’s (13th Mass.) regiment, Continental army; killed in the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778.

The agreement between him and Sellon, executed at Crown Point, is a curious proof of the caution of the New England nature. Sellon practically insures him against loss, for a premium of £3. It is a unique document, as far as we know.—Ed.]

Whereas Mr. Edmund Munro Has Served as an Adjutant in the Massachusetts forces Last Winter, by order of the Gov^r of this Place, and by Virtue of a Warrant Granted to Him Last Year by Gov^r Bernard And Whereas the Afors^d Munro is under some Apprehensions that the Massachusetts Government will not grant Him Pay for His Doing the Duty of an Adjutant, from the 17^th Day of Nov^r Last till the 4^th day of March 1762

For and in Consideration of a Note of Hand Given to me the Subscriber Payable to me or my Order for the Sum of Three Pounds Law^l Money Bearing Equal Date with this I Do hereby Covenant, Seal and make Sure, and if the Province does not Pay Him, the afors^d Munro, for the Service aforementioned, in that case I Promise to pay or Cause to be paid unto him the Pay allowed for the Service of Adjutant for the term of time afors^d in Six Months, and Witness my Hand N. B.—if the afores^d Munro did not Receive a Warrant or Commission to serve as Adjutant Last Year in Col Hoar’s Regt then the above Obligation to be void and of None Effect But if he did Receive a Warrant or Commission to act as Adjutant then the above obligation to Remain in full Force and Virtue

Test. Thomas Cowdin

I arived at this place the 12^th Instant after a very fatiguing march through the woods with 75 of the Company, the Capt. Lieut. Ensign with the remainder of the Company are not arived yet. We had rain almost every day, we are well fortified and Ready for the King’s troops if they see cause to pay us a visit The troops that have been here this Summer are sickly Moses Harrington died about ten days ago. Daniel Simonds & Samuel Munro are sick but Like to recover, there is none sick of the Small Pox & it is thought there is no Danger, By the last account from Canada it is thought that the King’s troops will not be like to come near us this summer, our whole army are Employed in fortifying this place which will soon be strong enough if well man^d to stand a rangle with all Brittain. Francis Bowman & Wm Crosby are well & desire to be remembered to their friends Lexington men are in good Health If you will leave a letter at Buckmans the Post will bring it to me I shall be glad you could write me as I shall not rest easy till I hear from you, by the next post I hope to send you some money. my love to our little ones as you & they are never out of my mind My compliments to all friends I remain my Dear your Loving Husband

I send these lines with my warmest love & respect to you & the Little ones Wishing they may find you & them & all friends in perfect Health & Prosperity. I am in good Health through divine goodness. I have nothing new to write you; the Lexington men are in a good State of health, Except Levi Mead & pomp,^[14] they are not well, but so that (they) keep about. I am going on command tomorrow morning down 361to the Enemy’s lines, there are two thousand going on the command I am of the mind that we shall have a dispute with them before we return Give my dutifull respects to Father & Mother Compliments to all Friends. I conclude, Wishing you & the little ones the Best of Heaven’s Blessings, and remain, my dear,

Your Most Effectionate Husband

Inclosed is a Lancaster news paper which you will see the account of the grand fue de joy we had on the Sixth of May instant which is a true & particular account of that day

I send these lines with the Most effectionate love & Respect, to you & the children, wishing they may find you in Perfect Health & prosperity. I am well & in High spirits through divine goodness Lexington men are all well; news we have none except the Commissioners are arived from Great Brittain at Philadelphia in order to settle the dispute between us & them They have Sent a Flag of truce, what they had to offer is forwarded to Congress The new establishment of the army is arived in camp; there is to be a Large Reducement of officers, but as it has not taken place as yet, it is not known who are to be Reduced The new arrangement is on a Better footing than it was before. As it is to take place soon I will let you know my destiny by Mr Williams who is in a fair way to recover of the Small Pox; by him I am in Hopes to send you some money. I receiv^d you letter & a Pair gloves I hope to reward you for your kindness to your satisfaction Be kind enough to let me know whether you have Drawn a Blank or a Prize in States Lottery

My due respects to all Friends

[An extremely valuable Lincoln document, perhaps the best that was ever offered at public sale. It was accompanied by a letter from Mrs. E. J. Grinsley of Springfield, Ill., dated April 10th, 1866, presenting the Speech to the Rev. E. P. Hammond.

Mrs. Grinsley in her letter calls it “part of an address,” but it reads like a short but complete speech.]

The following is the text:

Upon those men who are in sentiment opposed to the spread and nationalization of slavery, rests the task of preventing it. The Republican organization is the embodyment of that sentiment; though, as yet, it by no means embraces all the individuals holding that sentiment. The party is newly formed; and in forming, old party ties had to be broken, and the attractions of party pride and influential leaders were wholly wanting—In spite of old differences, prejudices, and animosities, its members were drawn together by a permanent common danger—They formed and manœuvered in the face of the disciplined enemy, and in the teeth of all his persistent misrepresentations— Of course, they fell far short of gathering in all their own—And yet, a year ago, they stood up, an army over thirteen hundred thousand strong—That army is, to-day, THE BEST HOPE OF THE NATION AND OF THE WORLD— Their work is before them; and FROM WHICH THEY MAY NOT GUILTLESSLY TURN AWAY.

MAJOR JAMES M’HENRY TO GEN. GREENE

[Part of letter of Major Jamel McHenry, member of the Continental Congress, military secretary to Washington, and afterwards Secretary of War, to General Greene. It is dated at Ambler’s Plantation, (opposite James Island, Va.), July 8, 1781. It is not signed, but is of great historical interest. He says:]

On the 4th Instant, the Enemy evacuated Williamsburg, where some Stores fell into our Hands, and retreated to this Place, under the Cannon of their Shipping. Next Morning we advanced to Bird’s Tavern and a Part of the Army took Post at Narrell’s Mills about nine Miles from the British Camp.—The Sixth I detached an advanced Corps under Gen’l Wayne, with a View of reconnoitering the Enemy’s Situation. Their light Parties being drawn in, the Pickets which lay close to their Encampment 363were gallantly attacked by some Riflemen, whose Skill was employed to great Effect, Having ascertained that Lord Cornwallis had sent off his Baggage, under a proper Escort and posted his Army in an open Field fortified by the Shipping, I returned to the Detachment which I found more generally engaged. A Piece of Cannon had been attempted by the Van Guard under Major Galvan, whose conduct deserves high Applause. Upon this the whole British Army came out and advanced to the thin Wood occupied by Gen’l Wayne. His Corps chiefly composed of Pennsylvanians, and some light Infantry did not exceed eight hundred Men, with three Field Pieces. But notwithstanding their Numbers at Sight of the British Army, the Troops ran to the encounter, a short Skirmish ensued with a close Warm and well directed firing, but as the Enemy’s Right and Left, of Course greatly out flanked ours, I sent Gen’l Wayne Orders to retire Half a Mile to where Colonels Vose and Barber’s light Infantry Battalions had arrived by a rapid Move and where I ordered them to form, In this Position they remained ’till some Hours after Sunset, The Militia under Gen’l Lawson had been advanced and the Continentals were at Narrel’s Mill, when the Enemy retreated in the Night to James Island, which they also evacuated, crossing over to the South Side of the River. Their Ground at this Place and the Island was successively occupied by Gen’l Muhlenberg, many valuable Horses were left on their Retreat. From every account the Enemy’s Loss has been very great and much Pains taken to conceal it. Their Light Infantry the Brigade of Guards and two British Regiments formed the first Line. The Remainder of their Army, the Second, the Cavalry paraded, but did nothing. By the enclosed Returns you will see what Part of General Wayne’s Detachment Suffered most. The services rendered by the Officers make me happy to think that although many were wounded, we have lost none. Most of the Field Officers had their horses killed. The same accident to every Horse of two Field Pieces made it impossible to move them unless men had been sacrificed. But it is enough for the Glory of Gen’l Wayne, and the Officers and Men he commanded, to have attacked the whole British Army, with a reconnoitering Party only, close to their encampment, and by this severe Skirmish hastened their Retreat over the River. Colo. Bayer of the Riflemen is a Prisoner.

Gentlemen.—I am extremely happy in the occasion now afforded me to express my sense of your goodness, and to declare the sincere and affectionate gratitude which it inspires.

The retrospect of past scenes, as it exhibits the virtuous character of our country, enhances the happiness of the present hour, and gives the most pleasing anticipation of progressive prosperity—

The individual satisfaction, to be derived from the grateful reflection, must be enjoyed in a peculiar degree by the deserving citizens of Georgia—a State no less distinguished by its services, than by its sufferings in the cause of freedom.

That the city of Savannah may largely partake of every public benefit, which our free and equal government can dispense, and that the happiness of its vicinity may reply to the best wishes of its inhabitants is my sincere prayer.

LETTER OF MARTHA WASHINGTON

My Dear Fanny.—Your Letter of the 2d of November came to my hands yesterday—I am truly glad that the Major has had some little relief, and I trust ere this he has found ease from the pain in his breast and side. I beg my dear Fanny to write one day in every week and that we shall know when to expect her letters, we are very anxious when the southern post comes to hear from you. I write to you by every Mondays Post, your letters come to us on Saturday.—I hope you will pay some attention to your own health, as I feared you were in very delicate situation when I left you at Mount Vernon. Thank god we are all tolerable well hear—Tho I know you are with your friends that is ready to give you every assistance and kindness, yet if there is any thing hear that you cannot get whare you are that you may want, I beg you will let us know and it will give us pleasure to supply you with it.

I am happy to hear that your dear little Babes keep well.

Our compliments to Mr. Bassett—my love and good wishes to your self and the Major,—Your Brothers and Sisters,—Kiss the children for me.