JOHN KEYES AND JOHN SHEPARD KEYES 1

Transcription

1 AND 1 NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY 1. Keyes as in in size.

2 1787 March 24, Saturday: John Keyes was born, a son of the storekeeper Joseph Keyes ( ) of Westford, Massachusetts, with his 2d wife Sarah Boyden Keyes. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

3 1797 Organization of the Corinthian Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons, at Concord, Massachusetts. The Masters of the lodge, until 1859, would be as follows: LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

4 1808 At about this point, in Concord, with John Thoreau having reached the age of about 21, and with his having for about four years worked in Salem for a merchant named Hathaway while learning the dry-goods business, he was opening a store for himself. He borrowed $1, of his stepmother Mrs. Rebecca Kettell Thoreau to set up in this business, 2 providing as security for the business loan a $1, mortgage on his eighth share of the old house at Number 57 in Prince Street in Boston s North End, a structure which was then worth on the market approximately $10, A yellow building on the corner where the Thoreau town house would stand in later years, this store would eventually be altered and moved and would become the residence of John Keyes. 3 HENRY S RELATIVES 2. Who would his son Henry borrow from? In 1840 he borrowed at least $ from his father In 1842 he borrowed Mrs. Hawthorne s fine music box In 1843 he borrowed $ from Emerson In 1847 he borrowed $ from Emerson In 1849 he in effect borrowed an unspecified amount from publisher James Munroe for 1,000 copies of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS It could be said that he borrowed the cabin site at Walden Pond (although it could also be said that he rented it at the price of his labor clearing brush and stumps from the area that became the beanfield), and he did indeed borrow an ax. 3. In Thoreau s journal: When about twenty-one, [Father] opened a store for himself on the corner where the town house stands of late years, a yellow building, now moved and altered into John Keyes s house.

5 1809 John Keyes graduated from Dartmouth College. He would read law with John Abbot of Westford. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

6 1811 John Keyes relocated to Concord, Massachusetts. He would read law there with John Leighton Tuttle. For a year, Simeon Putnam, hired from elsewhere, would be teaching Concord s grammar students Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year 1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year 1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year 1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months 1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months 1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year 1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year 1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year 1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year 1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years 1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years 1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year 1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year 1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year 1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year 1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year 1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

7 1812 Concord postmaster John Leighton Tuttle resigned in order to accept an appointment as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the US Army, and Commandant of the 9th Regiment of Continental Infantry, 4 with the result that John Shepard Keyes became postmaster. For a year, Isaac Warren, hired from elsewhere, would be teaching Concord s grammar students Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year 1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year 1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year 1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months 1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months 1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year 1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year 1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year 1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year 1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years 1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years 1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year 1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year 1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year 1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year 1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year 1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown The town of Concord began to appoint a Cow-Pock Committee. John White and Benjamin Prescott were Concord s deputies and representatives to the General Court. John L. Tuttle of Concord was a Senator. In Concord, Thomas Wheeler was a Selectman. In Concord, Nathan Barrett was a Selectman. In Concord, John Buttrick continued as Town Treasurer. This was the condition of Concord s economy: EMPLOYMENT. Agriculture is the greatest source of wealth to the town. Manufactures are next in rank. Three farmers in the town own about 1000 sheep, the value of whose wool was estimated, in 4. Tuttle would be murdered during a payroll robbery.

8 1831, at $1500. There were raised 884,000 teasles. The oldest cotton-mill now [1835] in this state was commenced in this town in 1805, and the manufacture of cotton soon after began by Messrs. Hartwell and Brown, and has since been carried on by Ephraim H. Bellows through the various fluctuations of the business. The proprietors were incorporated in The mill contained 1100 spindles, 20 looms, employs 9 men, 3 boys, and 30 girls, works 50,000 lbs. of cotton, and makes 188,000 yards of cloth annually, valued at $17,900. David Loring commenced the manufacture of lead pipes in 1819, and of sheet lead in He employs 6 men, and upwards of 300,000 lbs. of lead are annually wrought, valued, when ready for sale, at about 20,000. In the extensive establishments for the manufacture of chaises, harness, and carriages, owned by Colonel William Whiting and the Messrs. Robbins, the value of the articles manufactured last year was estimated at $14,000. The smithery, where the iron work was made, used upwards of 100,000 lbs. of iron, and 4,000 of steel, in Henry H. Merrill, the proprietor, erected, in 1832, a steam-engine, and has otherwise enlarged his works. Elijah Wood commenced the manufacture of boots and shoes in 1812 and makes, annually, about $6,000 worth. Nehemiah Ball began the same business in From 3000 to 6000 gross black lead pencils and points are annually made in town. William Monroe commenced the manufacture of these in 1812; and his method of making them he regards as his own invention, having, he informs me, had no instruction from anyone in relation to the subject. The lead for the first pencil was ground with the head of a hammer, was mixed in a common spoon, and the pencil sold to Benjamin Adams in Boston. In 1814 he made 1212 gross, which he sold for $5,946. He has since made about 35,000 gross; in some years 4,000 gross of pencils, and 1,000 of points. John Thoreau and others in the town have also carried on the business extensively, but the profits are now [1835] very much reduced. Mr. Thoreau also makes red lead pencils and glass paper. There were also made, in 1831, 50 brass time-pieces, 1,300 hats, 562 dozen bellows, 100 guns, 300,000 bricks, 500 barrels, 20,000 lbs. bar soap, 5,000 nailkegs, and cabinet ware, the value of which was estimated at $14,860. This is what is generally termed wholesale business, and includes very little custom work; the articles manufactured being principally sold abroad. There are 6 warehouses and stores; one bookstore and bindery; two saw-mills; and two gristmills, at which it was estimated that 12,000 bushels of grain were ground the last year [1834?]. The manufacturing and mechanical business of the town is increasing, and promises to be a great source of wealth Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

9 In Carlisle, John Jacobs was chosen as a deacon by the church. A bell was obtained for the church at Carlisle. It cost $350. Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts: Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830 Representatives of Lincoln 6 Chambers Russell 54-57, 59, 62, 63, 5. Joshua Brooks Samuel Farrer Leonard Hoar Eleazer Brooks 74-78, 80, 5, 7, William Hayden 1815, Chambers Russell Elijah Fiske Samuel Hoar 94, 95, 97, 98, 1801, 3-8. Joel Smith Samuel Farrar, Jr Silas P. Tarbell 1827, Not represented 1758, 60, 62, 69-73, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 93, 96, 99, 1802, 17, 23, 25, 26. September 19, Saturday: Admitted to the bar in Middlesex County, John Keyes hung out his shingle as a lawyer in Concord. The Emperor Napoléon I authorized a French retreat from Russia. In Spain, British forces withdrew from Burgos. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 19 of 9 M / Our dear little boy seems to be well at present which with the present good health of his mother I feel as a blessing to me. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 6. Ibid

10 1813 February 14, Sunday: John Leighton Tuttle resigned and was replaced as postmaster of Concord by John Keyes. Alyeksandr Sergeyevich Dargomizhsky was born in Troitskoye, Tula District, south of Moscow, son of a wealthy landowner who was the illegitimate son of a nobleman, and Princess Kozlovskaya, a poet. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 14th of 2nd M 1813 / I watch d last night with Joseph Tillinghast who is very low & at times much lost in his Mind but at intervals quite rational & conversed on subject of a serious nature very properly He spake to me of the beauty of Brethren dwelling together in love & observed it was very precious he said he had been much exercised for some Months past & had labor d to have his mind settled on good things, & that from time to time in his life he had been much edified in reading friends writing & considered them very benefifical to young people - he several times appear d in prayer & thanksgiving for the Many favors vouchsafed. & I was glad I passed the night with him I was so unwell inconsequence of Watching that I did not attend Meetings today - & my dear H went all day RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

11 Jonas Lee was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. In Concord, John Buttrick continued as Town Treasurer. In Concord, Nathan Barrett was a Selectman. John Keyes of Concord became Treasurer of Middlesex County. In Concord, Thomas Wheeler was a Selectman In this year Amos Freeman and Love Oliver Freeman had a son John who would survive only to the age of 8 years. Fall: According to page 25 of Dr. Edward Jarvis s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS , there was an interesting pretense of military activity going on in Concord in the autumn of this year. One wonders with what seriousness this was being taken: In the autumn of 1814, when the British Fleet lay off the harbor of Boston, the Infantry and Artillery of Concord were called to Boston to defend the town, with other troops. Also some were drafted from the militia company. In their absence, a company was organized in town of exempts, principally of those excused from age over 45 and others exempted for various reasons not referring to bodily disability. Some men over 60 and perhaps even over 70 enlisted. Certainly they were a very venerable and highly respected company, apparently more fitted for the council chamber than the field of war. The officers were, I think, Colonel Roger Brown, Captain; Major James Barrett, Lieutenant. I forget the ensign, but Mr. John Keyes was standard bearer. At least on the presentation of the flag there were two old drummers and Mr. Jonathan Wheelock, who had been drummer in the Revolutionary War. The other [was] perhaps Edward Harrington. If there were other musicians, I do not remember them... the public authorities asked for aid from the country to complete some of the forts. Then men went in large parties from various towns, with picks, shovels, bars and hoes, and rendered what aid they could in raising up embankments and doing what was needful on Fort Warner and Fort Stow under the guidance of appropriate national officers. One such (and I think two or three such companies) went on different days from Concord. They started at 4 o clock in [the] morning in wagons and such other vehicles, carrying their tools, provisions and whatever else was thought needful. Dr. Shattuck s history provides some additional details: Early in September, 1814, orders were issued for calling out the militia of the state for the defence of the sea-coast. the Light Infantry and Artillery companies of Concord and the Acton Blues,

12 marched September 10th. Nehemiah Flint was Captain, John Brown, Lieutenant, and Artemas Wheeler, Ensign, of the Concord Infantry; and Reuben Brown, Captain, Francis Wheeler, 1st Lieutenant, and Cyrus Wheeler, 2d Lieutenant, of the Artillery. The infantry were attached to the first regiment under the command of Colonel Joseph Valentine. Eliab W. Metcalf was Adjutant, and the Rev. Nathaniel How, Chaplain. These companies were stationed at South Boston, and returned home, October 31st. Military affairs then much engaged the attention of the people. A company of exempts was organized here, September 13, 1814, and Colonel Roger Brown was chosen Captain, Colonel John Buttrick, Lieutenant and Major James Barrett, Ensign. At a parade October 3d a standard was presented by the ladies with appropriate ceremonies Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

13 In Vermont in about this year, William Allen (Henry Thoreau s classmate in Harvard College s Class of 1837 who would take over the teaching duties in Concord s Centre School when Henry resigned) was born. The Middlesex Bar commenced the formation of a law library in Concord, to be maintained by the Treasurer of Middlesex County. Noah Webster, Esq. continued as a member of the Massachusetts General Court (he would serve also in 1817). Tilly Merrick was Concord s deputy and representative to the Massachusetts General Court. In Concord, John Buttrick continued as Town Treasurer. In Concord, Nathan Barrett was a Selectman. In Concord, Thomas Wheeler was a Selectman These were the appropriations made by the town of Lincoln: 8 Date Minister / / $ $600 $460. Schools 13 1 / / Highways $ Incidental charges 24 1 / Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

14 Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts: Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830 Representatives of Lincoln 9 Chambers Russell 54-57, 59, 62, 63, 5. Joshua Brooks Samuel Farrer Leonard Hoar Eleazer Brooks 74-78, 80, 5, 7, William Hayden 1815, Chambers Russell Elijah Fiske Samuel Hoar 94, 95, 97, 98, 1801, 3-8. Joel Smith Samuel Farrar, Jr Silas P. Tarbell 1827, Not represented 1758, 60, 62, 69-73, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 93, 96, 99, 1802, 17, 23, 25, 26. Appropriations made by the town of Carlisle Minister $ Schools Roads Town Charges County Tax 11 3 / State Tax Ibid

15 Town Clerks of Carlisle Zebulon Spaulding Asa Parlin ; John Jacobs 1803, , 1826 Jonathan Heald Jonathan Heald, Jr , John Heald , , Cyrus Heald John Keyes leased a house just to the northeast of the Courthouse that Concord had erected in (Eventually the family would buy this leased structure; Keyes, working at the nearby Courthouse, would live out his life there. His son Judge John Shepard Keyes would be born in that house and would reside in it until it would burn during the 1849 Courthouse fire.) CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

16 1816 December: John Keyes got married with Nancy Stow, daughter of Timothy Shepard of Hopkinton.

17 1820 This was the year of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, and one of the delegates to this convention was the Reverend Joseph Tuckerman, who had gotten the blues in the previous year by witnessing a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina. An interesting factoid is that, despite what he had just witnessed, at this convention he assumed that free black citizens would not be eligible for state office, just as he assumed that white women would likewise be ineligible (some habits of mind don t go away very easily, or, at least, don t go away very easily when they maybe disturb somebody else s life agenda but fail to disturb one s own personal life agenda). (Lemuel Shaw, who had been a state senator, was another delegate to this convention for amending the Massachusetts Constitution. When he would become Massachusetts Chief Justice and serve in that capacity for three decades would he be less of a fool in regard to race than this reverend?) (Charles Turner, Jr. was another delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention) (John Keyes was another delegate to the convention for amending the Massachusetts Constitution.) (During this year and the following one, the Reverend James Freeman was serving as another delegate at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.) Although nonsubscribers to the official state religion had been barred from holding public office and had been obligated by the letter of the law to pay taxes and penalties to the state for the maintenance and support of the established commonwealth church, at least the tax provisions had been unenforced since 1799, and in this year the new state constitution eliminated at least the test of religious affiliation for office.

18 In Concord, Nathan Barrett was a Selectman. In Concord, Isaac Lee continued as a Selectman John Keyes was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. Elijah Wood built a large ell onto his home on Wood Street in Concord and hired apprentices in the manufacture of shoes for shipment to the American South and West. The 10 to 20 male cobbler s apprentices worked until 9PM. Uppers were stitched by Concord women in their homes at piecework rates. A group holding to trinitarian beliefs decided to separate itself from Concord s First Parish Church into a Trinitarian Congregationalist Church. For the time being they would continue to meet at the First Parish meetinghouse (eventually they would have their own structure on the far side of Mill Brook). Here is a summary of the situation in nearby Acton for this year: In 1821, there were 140 dwelling houses; 230 other buildings; 513 acres of tillage land on which was raised 705 bushels of rye, 932 of oats, 5833 of corn, 75 of barley, and 140 of beans acres of mowing land, producing 956 tons of hay; 2026 acres of pasturing, keeping 939 cows, 196 oxen, 69 horses, and 181 swine; 2055 acres of wood; 3633 acres unimproved; and 1311 unimproveable; 240 used as roads and 500 covered with water. It then had 3 grist-mills, 2 carding-machines; 2 fulling-mills, and 4 saw-mills. In 1825, there were 236 polls. Valuation $ The principal employment of the inhabitants is agriculture. Barrels may be considered the staple production of the town [of Acton]. From 15,000 to 20,000 of this article, it is estimated, are annually manufactured here [in Acton], and this business is the source of considerable income. During 20 years subsequent to 1800, there were published 208 intentions of marriage, and there occurred 161 marriages, 344 births (as recorded); 302 deaths, of whom 72 died under one year old; 32 were 80 and upwards, 8 were 90 and upwards, and one lived 99½. The average number annually was 15, about one in 70 of the whole population. The mean average was 35 years Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

19

20 Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts (not represented in 1822): Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830 Town Clerks of Carlisle Zebulon Spaulding Asa Parlin ; John Jacobs 1803, , Jonathan Heald 1804, Jonathan Heald, Jr. 13, 14, John Heald 15-17, 21-25, Cyrus Heald September 19, Wednesday: In Boston, a carpenter named Pearl was convicted of having sex with his apprentice boy who was discovered actually to be a young woman, in disguise. John Shepard Keyes was born in Concord, a son of John Keyes and Ann Stow Shepard Keyes. He would grow up with a sister Mary Keyes (born March 24, 1827; died October 3, 1834), a brother Joseph Boyden Keyes (born May 13, 1829; married May 17, 1855; died May 6, 1870), and a brother George Keyes (born May 12, 1832; married September 14, 1854). He would be educated at the Concord Academy under Phineas Allen and William Whiting, at Harvard College ( ), and at the Harvard Law School. He would begin to practice law in 1844, become a Massachusetts state senator, become a sheriff of Middlesex County, become a United States marshal, and become a judge of the District Court of Eastern Middlesex. His duties as Marshal would during the Civil War come to include handling cases of prize ships, contraband goods, and the custody of certain types of prisoners and due to this, for a period the family would need to reside closer into Boston rather than in Concord.

21 1822 In Concord, beginning in this year, Cyrus Hubbard was a Selectman. In Concord in this year, the Assessors were chosen separately from the Selectmen. Also, formation of a Concord Debating Society. John Keyes was Concord s deputy and representative to the Massachusetts General Court.

22 HDT WHAT? INDEX In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth became a Selectman. His home: The Concord Light Infantry militia formation of Concord was granted permission to expand its enlistment from 45 to 64. The Concord Light Infantry is believed to be the oldest company in the Commonwealth, excepting the Ancient and Honorable Artillery. It was incorporated October 13, 1669, as the Second Troop of Horse in Middlesex. Twenty-two of the original

23 petitioners belonged to Concord and 14 others to Billerica, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, and Sudbury. April 30, 1777, the character was altered, and it was incorporated as the Concord Light Infantry, and consisted of 39 members with liberty to increase the number to 45. In 1822 liberty was granted to enlist 64. The Captains, since 1777, have successively been, Joseph Hosmer, Samuel Jones, Roger Brown, James Colburn, Isaac Hoar, John Buttrick, Jonas Buttrick, Nathan Wood, John Hayward, Jonathan Buttrick, William Brown, Nehemiah Flint, John Brown, Artemas Wheeler, Cyrus Hubbard, Edward Flint, Nehemiah Hunt, Francis Jarvis, Jr., Nathan Barrett, and Asa Brooks. Of these, James Colburn was promoted to the office of General in the Brigade, Roger Brown, John Buttrick, and Jonas Buttrick to Colonel, and John Hayward to Major Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

24 Dr. Grosvener Tarbell, who had relocated to Lincoln from Sturbridge in 1796, died. Town Clerks of Lincoln 12 Ephraim Flint , 1754, Grosvenor Tarbell Ebenezer Cutler 1753, 1755, 1759 Thomas Wheeler Samuel Farrar 1758, Elijah Fiske John Adams Stephen Patch Abijah Pierce , 1781 Charles Wheeler Samuel Hoar 1780, 1782, , Elijah Fiske 1831 Richard Russell Justices of the Peace of Carlisle Name Died Age Jonathan Heald December 28, Nathaniel Hutchinson July 30, Asa Parlin October 8, Jonathan Heald, Jr. John Heald John Nelson 12. Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

25 1823 In the building that had been used as the Black Horse tavern at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road in Concord, Nathan Brooks and his new second wife Mary Merrick Brooks, daughter of Concord storekeeper Tilly Merrick, took up housekeeping. (The couple would add to the daughter by the previous marriage, Caroline Downes Brooks, two sons, George Merrick Brooks and Charles Augustus Brooks, who would die while an infant. This would be their home until Brooks s death in 1863, and Mrs. Brooks would continue in this house after his death. The building would be bought by William Munroe, founding benefactor of the Concord Free Public Library, in preparation for construction of the library building, and moved in 1872 to what is now 45 Hubbard Street. It is now known as the Nathan Brooks House.) Elisha Fuller was admitted to the bar and began a legal practice in Concord. He was son of the Reverend Timothy Fuller of Princeton, and had graduated at Harvard College in He would relocate to Lowell

26 during June In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. Nathan Brooks was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. John Keyes of Concord would be a senator for Middlesex County until 1830 (after that he would be a member of the House and sometimes its Speaker). Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts: Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830

27 Per Walter Roy Harding s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU: A BIOGRAPHY (NY: Knopf, 1966): A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar Chapter 1 ( ) -Downing gives a cursory account of the Thoreau and Dunbar heritage and more fully traces the nature and movement of the Thoreau family in the first five years of Henry s life. Thoreau s father, John, while intellectual, lived quietly, peacefully and contentedly in the shadow of his wife, Mrs. Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, who was dynamic and outspoken with a strong love for nature and compassion for the downtrodden. 1st Helen -quiet, retiring, eventually a teacher. 2nd John Jr. - his father turned inside out, personable, interested in ornithology, also taught. 3rd Henry (born July 12,1817) -speculative but not noticeably precocious. 4th Sophia -independent, talkative, ultimately took over father s business and edited Henry s posthumous publications. The Thoreau s constantly struggled with debt, and in 1818 John Sr. gave up his farm outside Concord and moved into town. Later the same year he moved his family to Chelmsford where he opened a shop which soon failed and sent him packing to Boston to teach school. A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar In 1823 uncle Charles Jones Dunbar discovered graphite in New Hampshire and invited John Thoreau to join Dunbar and Stow Pencil Makers back in Concord. Henry s Concord youth was typical of any small town American boy of the 19th century. Henry attended Miss Phœbe Wheeler s private infants school, then the public grammar school, where he studied the Bible and English classics such as William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Dr. Samuel Johnson and the Essayists. Henry was considered stupid and unsympathetic by schoolmates he would not join in play, earning the nicknames Judge and the fine scholar with the big nose. At school he was withdrawn and anti-social but he loved outdoor excursions. From Henry attended Concord Academy (Phineas Allen, preceptor). Allen taught the classics -Virgil, Sallust, Caesar, Euripides, Homer, Xenophon, Voltaire, Molière and Racine in the original languages- and emphasized composition. Henry also benefitted from the Concord Lyceum and particularly the natural history lectures presented there.

28 A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar WALTER HARDING S BIOGRAPHY Chapter 3 ( ) -Thoreau enters Harvard (president Josiah Quincy), having barely squeezed by his entrance exams and rooming with Charles S. Wheeler Thoreau s Harvard curriculum: Greek (8 terms under Felton and Dunkin)-composition, grammar, Greek Antiquities, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer. Latin Grammar (8 terms under Beck and McKean)-composition, Latin Antiquities, Livy, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, Juvenal. Mathematics (7 terms under Pierce and Lovering) English (8 terms under ET Channing, Giles, Wig Simmons)- grammar, rhetoric, logic, forensics, criticism, elocution, declamations, themes. Mental Philosophy (under Giles) Paley, Stewart. Natural Philosophy (under Lovering)-astronomy. Intellectual Philosophy (under Bowen) Locke, Say, Story. Theology (2 terms under H Ware)-Paley, Butler, New Testament. Modern Languages (voluntary) Italian (5 terms under Bachi) French (4 terms under Surault) German (4 terms under Bokum) Spanish (2 terms under Sales) Attended voluntary lectures on German and Northern literature (Longfellow), mineralogy (Webster), anatomy (Warren), natural history (Harris). Thoreau was an above average student who made mixed impressions upon his classmates. In the spring of 36 Thoreau withdrew due to illness -later taught for a brief period in Canton under the Rev. Orestes A. Brownson, a leading New England intellectual who Harding suggests profoundly influenced Thoreau. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986)

29 Allen, Gay Wilson. A New Look at Emerson and Science, pages in LITERATURE AND IDEAS IN AMERICA: ESSAYS IN MEMORY OF HARRY HAYDEN CLARK. Robert Falk, ed. Athens OH: Ohio UP, 1975 A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar Allen examines NATURE and Waldo Emerson s attitudes toward science in the light of four of Emerson s early lectures. These lectures, given in , were about science, and were titled The Uses of Natural History, On the Relation of Man to the Globe, Water, and The Naturalist. Allen s 1975 essay furthers the work done by Harry Haydon Clark in his 1931 essay Emerson and Science; Clark did not have access to these lectures. The first lecture, The Uses of Natural History, was, Allen says, a preliminary sketch for NATURE. In this lecture Emerson elaborated on the uses of nature much as he did in NATURE: how nature contributes to human health (beauty, rest); to civilization (with due Emersonian skepticism about technology); to knowledge of truth (here Allen discusses the influence of geology on Emerson: how the age of the earth and the slowness of earth s transformative processes confuted traditional religious doctrine); and to self-understanding (nature as language that God speaks to humanity nature as image or metaphor of mind) (60-64). Emerson s second lecture, On the Relation of Man to the Globe, was also a preliminary sketch for NATURE. In this lecture, Allen says, Emerson drew heavily on his readings in geology, along with some biology and chemistry, and attempted to demonstrate how marvelously the world is adapted for human life. (64) Emerson s sources included Laplace, Mitscherlich, Cuvier; his arguments echoed Lamarck (evolution, nature adapted to humans) and [the Reverend William] Paley (argument from design) (64-67). The third lecture, Water, was Emerson s most technical according to Allen, which is, perhaps, why it is not discussed at any length. It is also not assessed for its scientific accuracy. Allen does say that Emerson read up on the geological effects of water, the laws of thermodynamics, the hydrostatic press, and related subjects (67). Allen says that Emerson s fourth lecture, The Naturalist, made a strong plea for a recognition of the importance of science in education (60). Emerson emphasized particularly the study of nature to promote esthetic and moral growth (67). Emerson wanted science for the poet and poetry for the scientist; the fundamental search for the causa causans (67-69). He was reading Gray and other technical sources, observing nature, and reading philosophers of science, especially Coleridge and Goethe (68). Allen says that the value of these lectures is not merely the light they shed on Nature but what they reveal about his reading and thinking about science before he had fused his ideas thus derived with the Neoplatonic and transcendental ideas of Plotinus, Swedenborg, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, and seventeenth-century English Platonists (69).

30 A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar Allen concludes that Waldo Emerson s theory of nature in NATURE is derived far more from Neoplatonism than modern scientific knowledge, but Emerson was not turning his back on science; he wanted instead to spiritualize science, to base science on the theory that the physical world is an emanation of spirit, the apparition of God (Chapter 6), or a projection of God in the unconscious. (70) Allen contends that Emerson s theory anticipates Phenomenology in its emphasis on mind/world interactions and correspondences. Science, Allen says, continued to have a pervasive influence on Emerson s thought even after 1836: Indeed, the two most basic concepts in his philosophy, which he never doubted, were compensation and polarity, both derived from scientific laws, i.e. for every action there is a reaction, and the phenomena of negative and positive poles in electrodynamics. To these might also be added circularity, which translated into poetic metaphors the principle of conservation of energy. (75) One could argue, I think, that these scientific laws were themselves derived from philosophical and metaphysical speculations (e.g. Kant); their life-long conceptual importance to Emerson, in other words, does not seem precisely described as scientific. [Cecily F. Brown, March 1992]

31 1824 In Concord, the incorporation of the Proprietors of the Concord Social Library. Read yourself to death! A Library Company was formed February 23, Whether there had previously been a library in town, and if any, how long it continued, and its number of volumes, is not known. A Charitable Library Society was formed May 25, 1795, depending chiefly on the voluntary donations of its members for support. Jonathan Fay, Esq., Jonas Minott, Esq., and the Rev. Ezra Ripley were successively presidents of this society. Its members united with others and composed the Proprietors of the Concord Social Library, and were incorporated in The presiding officers since have been the Rev. Ezra Ripley, the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. John Keyes, and the Hon. Abiel Heywood. The library, divided into 50 shares, contains about 900 volumes [1835] and constantly increases by the addition of new publications Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

32 John C. Breed, Concord s barber and notorious drunkard, was found dead on the road. He had a son who became a day laborer and likewise became a drunkard, with whom Thoreau would describe an encounter in WALDEN. The cellar hole of his habitation is located just into the Walden Woods off the northern end of what is now the Fairyland Woods parking lot on Walden Street:(Contrary to what some have presumed, the Breeds were not persons of color. They derive from an Allen Breed who had arrived in Lynn in 1630, probably bringing children born in England, and in 1656 married there a 2d time with Elizabeth Knight, also of English ancestry.) In this year the town of Concord combined the function of Treasurer and the function of Collector. In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. Nathan Brooks was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. John Keyes of Concord was a Senator. The collective maintenance of the town poor at an Alms House and Poor Farm, which had in 1821 cost Concord $1,450, in this year was accomplished at a cost of but $1,200.

33 WALDEN: Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed s location, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family, New England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller s beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went their ways again. Breed s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant s Gondibert, that winter that I labored with a lethargy, which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods, we who had run to fires before, barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. It s Baker s barn, cried one. It is the Codman Place, affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted Concord to the rescue! Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. PEOPLE OF WALDEN JOHN C. BREED JOHN CODMAN

34 WALDEN: So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witness, including Bascom s shop, and, between ourselves we thought that, were we there in season with our tub, and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief, returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul s powder, but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder. It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end, all that he could now cling to, to convince me that it was no common rider. I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts (not represented in 1825): Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830

35 Representatives of Lincoln 14 Chambers Russell 54-57, 59, 62, 63, 5. Joshua Brooks Samuel Farrer Leonard Hoar Eleazer Brooks 74-78, 80, 5, 7, William Hayden 1815, Chambers Russell Elijah Fiske Samuel Hoar 94, 95, 97, 98, 1801, 3-8. Joel Smith Samuel Farrar, Jr Silas P. Tarbell 1827, Not represented 1758, 60, 62, 69-73, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 93, 96, 99, 1802, 17, 23, 25, Ibid

36 September 2, Thursday: The Marquis de Lafayette breakfasted in Newburyport on yet another rainy day, and William Lloyd Garrison was among the hundreds of townspeople who obtained his handshake at the Tracy mansion on State Street (a building which now houses the town s public library) prior to his departure for Concord. When the illustrious citoyen reached Concord, Squire Samuel Hoar, on behalf of all, rose to deliver the welcome. Lafayette, nous sommes ici! General Black Jack Pershing, arriving with US troops in France at the very end of the WWI trench warfare. Unfortunately, Squire Hoar did this in a manner which would begin a long and bitter controversy with Lexington over which town s militia had been the first to fire upon the colonial army in America, by pointing out in his speech of welcome that it had been at the Old North Bridge over the Concord River rather than during the prior slaughter on the green in Lexington town that the first forcible resistance had been offered by the militia to the army. Before this visit by the marquis, there had in fact been very little note taken either in Concord or in Lexington of the anniversary of the April 19th dustup between the militia and the army. This invidious discrimination between two outbreaks of smallarms fire would produce a storm of protest from indignant Lexingtonians. Major Elias Phinney of Lexington would begin to pull together the depositions of survivors, none of whom had forgotten any details of the battle and some of whom were finding that they were able to recall details that hadn t actually happened. When Mary Moody Emerson was introduced to the general, she coquettishly told him that since she had been at the time a newborn infant, she also could lay claims to having been in arms at the Concord fight. 15 John Shepard Keyes would later preserve a dim memory of having been pulled by a sister out of the way of the horses that drew Lafayette through Concord, and of the pageantry of that very special day. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn would later allege that Henry Thoreau had been able to summon a childhood memory of this event, which would have occurred subsequent to his 7th birthday, but Thoreau s memory of the event would have been rather more like the trace memory of Keynes (John Shepard Keyes) and nothing like Walt Whitman s for Walt s memory much later (a memory produced for the amazement of his friend 15. I don t know whether this presentation of Mary Moody Emerson to Lafayette occurred earlier during this day, in Newburyport, or later, in Concord.

37 John Burroughs), was that somehow he had obtained for himself a manly kiss: On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came over to Brooklyn in state, and rode through the city. The children of the schools turn d out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for youths was just then commencing, and Lafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whitman, and pressing the child a moment to his breast, and giving him a kiss, handed him down to a safe spot in the excavation. John Burroughs. Abba Alcott would love to recount, in her old age, how her aunt Dorothy Sewall Quincy met the marquis at the ball held in his honor. We may be able to judge the nature of the reception and ball at which Dorothy Sewall Quincy met her marquis presumably in Boston rather than in Concord where there would not have been an adequate infrastructure of edifices, servants, and the paraphernalia of privilege by considering that the visit of this distinguished friend of America, who had been declared a guest of the nation by President James Monroe and by the federal Congress, was our nation s chief social excitement of this year. In Philadelphia, for instance, the celebrations had occupied several days, with the good general Lafayette bowing with grace of manner and greeting each lady and gentleman presented to him with How do you do?

38 in very careful English, and the following account subsequently appeared in Niles Weekly Register: THE NATION S GUEST On Monday morning, the 4th inst., about three hundred children of both sexes, from the different schools in Philadelphia, were arranged in the State House yard to receive General La Fayette: the spectacle was most beautiful and highly interesting. In the evening he attended a grand ball at the theatre: the lobby of which was converted into a magnificent saloon, adorned with beautiful rose, orange and lemon trees, in full bearing, and a profusion of shrubbery, pictures, busts, banners with classical inscriptions, etc., all illuminated with a multitude of lamps. For the dancers there were two compartments, the house and the stage; the upper part of the former was hung with scarlet drapery, studded with golden stars, while the great chandelier, with two additional ones, and a row of wax tapers, arranged over the canopy, shed down a blaze of light. The first and second tiers of boxes were crowded with ladies in the richest apparel, as spectators of the dazzling array. Beyond the proscenium the stage division wore the appearance of an Eastern pavilion in a garden, terminating with a view of an extended sea and landscape, irradiated by the setting sun, and meant to typify the Western world. The company began to assemble soon after seven o clock, and consisted of two thousand or more persons, of whom 600 or 700 were invited strangers. Twenty-two hundred tickets had been issued. No disorder occurred in the streets, with the arrival and departure of the carriages, which formed a line along the adjoining squares. General La Fayette appeared at nine o clock and was received at the door by the managers of the ball. He was conducted the whole length of the apartments through an avenue formed by the ladies to the bottom of the stage, where Mrs. Morris, Governor Shulze, and the Mayer waited to greet him in form: the full band playing an appropriate air during his progress. As soon as he was seated, the dancers were called, and at least four hundred were immediately on the floor. The dancing did not cease until near five o clock, though the company began to retire about three. At twelve, one of the managers, from an upper box, proclaimed a toast to the nation s guest, which was hailed with enthusiasm and accompanied by the descent of a banner from the ceiling. Behind this was suddenly displayed a portrait of the general, with allegorical figures. A short while later, churning this topic, Niles Weekly Register offered information about the sexual overtones of toasts which had been offered at a similar upscale bash in Baltimore, and the manner in which such

39 gallantries had been offered and received: When the music for the dancing ceased, the military band of the first rifle regiment played the most pleasing and fashionable airs... Just before the ladies of the first tables retired, General La Fayette requested permission to give the following toast, which was received in a manner that reflected credit on the fair objects of it: The Baltimore ladies the old gratitude of a young soldier mingles with the respectful sense of new obligation conferred on a veteran. The ladies rose and saluted the general, and the sensation and effect is not to be described; when he sat down there was a burst of applause from all the gentlemen present. Need we explore the overtones of this toast? The old French general is relying upon the national stereotypes according to which Frenchmen in tights are gallant, and is reminiscing about when he and his fellows were young and horny, traveling around in magnificent uniforms diddling the lovely young colonial maidens. He is saying to these ladies at the banquet Maybe it was you I swived with when you were much younger, and you will remember but not I, or consider that maybe it was your mama, and he was saying to their husbands as well, Maybe it was your wife I swived with when we were so much younger, and she will remember but not I and she will most certainly not tell you about it, or maybe it was your mama, or your wife s mama. He remembers youthful delights and is grateful. Lafayette says all this in the most careful innuendo, and the sensation and effect is not to be described. What could the American males do but applaud wildly? They couldn t very well rush the main table and shove this codger s head into his soup, could they? In Newport, Rhode Island Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Morng - called a little while at Jos Anthonys, then came on board the Packet & got home in about five hours - This little jant [jaunt] to Providence has been attended with depression on account of the inconvenience of leaving home when I have considerable of my own to attend too, & my outward circumstances require my attention - yet I have (I trust) humbly to acknowledge an evidence of divine favour & even an enlargement of my views & exercises which is worth sacrifice & even suffering for & as to my spiritual condition I have returned refreshed & enlivened, with renew d desires for myself & the society of which I am a member, that I may grow in grace, & there by become increasingly usefull to the latter RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

40

41 In Concord, the Assessors would be chosen separately from the Selectmen, until In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. Nathan Brooks was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. John Keyes of Concord was a Senator. Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator Dr. Dudley Smith commenced medical practice in Concord. He was a son of Dudley Smith, born in Gilsum, New Hampshire on September 15, He studied with Dr. Charles G. Adams of Keene, New Hampshire and with Dr. Warren of Boston, and had graduated in this year from the Medical School of Dartmouth College. He would relocate to Lowell in At this point work rituals, such as husking bees, were on the decline in Concord. James Furbish, hired from elsewhere, was the schoolmaster for Concord s grammar students Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year 1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year 1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year 1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months 1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months 1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year 1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year 1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year 1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year 1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years 1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years 1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year 1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year 1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year 1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year 1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year 1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

42 This was the state of the town s finances: In consequence of having to maintain eight bridges, and the liberal appropriations for schools and other objects, the taxes in Concord are supposed to be higher, in proportion to its wealth, than in many towns, amounting to about $3 on every inhabitant. In 1803, the roads and bridges, independent of a highway tax of $1000, cost $1,244; in 1805, $967; in 1807, $1,290; and on an average, for the last 40 years, about one eighth of all the town expenses. The following table will exhibit the appropriations for several periods since. Year. State Tax. County Tax. Minister. Incidental. Total s. 4d s. 3d s. 9d s. 1d. 1,585. 8s. 5d s. 4d s. 6d s. 6d s. 11d s. 3d $ $ $ $2, $3, $ $ $ $2, $4, $ $ $ $3, $4, $ $ $ $4, $5, $ $ $ $4, $4, The amount of debts due from the town, in 1825, was $3,284.04, and in 1831, $5, These appropriations were made by the town of Lincoln: 17 Date Minister / / $ $600 $460. Schools 13 1 / / Highways $ Incidental charges 24 1 / Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) 17. Ibid.

43 These were the appropriations made by the town of Carlisle: Minister $ Schools Roads Town Charges County Tax 11 3 / State Tax

44 1826 The Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company was established in Concord. Concord was not represented on the General Court. However, John Keyes and Samuel Hoar, Jr. were Senators. In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. During the construction of the Orthodox church in Concord, one of the workmen, named Stiles, fell while putting up the lightning rod and died. Representatives of Carlisle to the General court of Massachusetts (not represented in ): Deacon Ephraim Robbins Reverend Paul Litchfield Captain Timothy Heald Captain Thomas Heald 1815 Jonathan Heald, Jr., Esq John Heald, Esq. 1818, 1821, 1823 Dr. John Nelson 1824 John Heald, Esq , 1830 Town Clerks of Carlisle Zebulon Spaulding Asa Parlin ; John Jacobs 1803, , Jonathan Heald 1804, Jonathan Heald, Jr. 13, 14, John Heald 15-17, 21-25, Cyrus Heald Bill of Mortality: No records were kept, by which to form a bill of mortality [in Carlisle], before From that date to 1826, the Rev. Mr. Litchfield regularly recorded the deaths as they took place. From these records the following facts are obtained. The total number of deaths in these 27 years is 334, about 13, or one in 50 of the inhabitants annually; the aggregate amount of ages is 11600, and the mean average 34 3/4 nearly. The least

45 average age was 15, in 1808; and the greatest 58, in Of these 334 deaths, 58 died under the age of 1 year, 44 between 1 and 5; 17 between 5 and 10, 18 between 10 and 20; 29 between 20 and 30; 23 between 30 and 40, 20 between 40 and 50; 36 between 50 and 60; 20 between 60 and 70; 30 between 70 and 80; 26 between 80 and 90; and 13 between 90 and 100. The proportion of males to females, who died from 90 and upwards was as 6 to 7; and 80 to 90, as 11 to 15. By this it appears that 1 in 20 nearly arrive to the age of 90; 1 in 9 to 80; 1 in 5 to 70; 1 in 4 to 60; and 1 in 3 to 50. One fifth nearly, die under 1 year, and one third under 2 years. It appears from a careful examination of the records that the month in which the least number of deaths occurred was May, and the greatest, in October. 23 died in January, 23 in February, 22 in March, 37 in April, 19 in May, 22 in June, 22 in July, 32 in August, 35 in September, 41 in October, 33 in November, and 25 in December. In 1817, fourteen died of the disentery, 10 of whom were under 5 years. In 1819, of those under 1 year, 8 died. In 1821, the canker rash prevailed and was fatal to many. I subjoin a few remarkable instances of longevity which may interest some readers. 18 Died Name Age April 19, 1800 Jon. Spaulding 95 June 28, 1803 the widow of S. Fletcher 94 September 11, 1807 the widow of R. Heald 90 April 4, 1808 the widow of E. Nichols 94 February 5, 1810 the widow of L. Spaulding 93 December 22, 1812 Joseph Barrett 91 November 30, 1816 John Waters 98 April 28, 1817 the widow of M. Parker 93 September 23, 1819 Amos Kidder 90 December 5, 1821 the widow of R. Monroe 99 January 21, 1815 William Wilson 94 January 10, 1826 Isaac Wilkins 92 November 17, 1826 the widow of L. Russell Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

46 March 3, Friday: Carl Maria von Weber suffered a seizure in Calais due to wet weather. Incorporation in Concord of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company. The Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company was incorporated March 3, and organized March 29, The Hon. Abiel Heywood was chosen President, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks, Secretary and Treasurer, who, with John Keyes, Daniel Shattuck, Elias Phinney of Lexington, and Daniel Richardson of Tyngsborough, have since been Directors. The other directors have been Samuel Burr, 1826 to 1830; Josiah Davis, from 1830; Micah M. Rutter of East Sudbury, 1826 to 1828; Joshua Page of Bedford, 1826 to 1829; Rufus Hosmer of Stow, from 1829; and Charles Merriam of Weston, from The first policy was issued May 17, 1826; and the following table will show the amount of business in this excellent institution since that time. 19 Year Policies Insured Premium Notes Losses $801,247 $41, $ $387,871 $22, $ $645,673 $37, $ $857,700 $53, $2, $646,279 $39, $1, $708,064 $45, $3, Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

47 Fall: In the fall, 9-year-old David Henry Thoreau returned for a 3d year of instruction at Concord s Town School. The master there, Edward Jarvis, was appealing to the self-respect of the students and to their love of propriety rather than seeking to make them fearfully obedient. Jarvis, with Lemuel Shattuck, and with the Reverend Hersey B. Goodwin, was attempting to put into practice locally the new educational principles of which they had been reading. The schoolmaster for the young Concord scholars at the Concord Academy, for this school year of 1826/1827, was a recent Harvard graduate, Mr. Richard Hildreth whose HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA a 38-year-old Harvard graduate Henry David Thoreau would be perusing as of the Year of Our Lord 1855! HILDRETH S US, I HILDRETH S US, II HILDRETH S US, III (It seems not to be generally understood, that Richard Hildreth had been one of the predecessor teachers at the Concord Academy, many years before Henry David Thoreau himself became a teacher there! Well understanding that Henry would not enter the Academy until 1828 after Mr. Hildreth had departed, well understanding that it was instead Mr. Phineas Allen who would be Henry s preceptor while boarding at the Thoreau boardinghouse, one may well wonder precisely where this previous preceptor had likewise taken up lodgings there in Concord during his own season of teaching. We can imagine that since he was a Hildreth, he

48 would have taken his lodging with Jonathan Hildreth and Benjamin Warren Hildreth in Concord, but we presently have no datapoint with which to corroborate that inference. Might there be a possibility, therefore as yet unrecorded that he had like his successor Allen up lodgings in the Thoreau boardinghouse and had like his successor Allen at the dinnertable encountered young scholar David Henry Thoreau?) During this year, not nearly so far along as little David Henry, John Shepard Keyes was attending the private infant school of Miss Phœbe Wheeler, kept in the southwest chamber of the old Peter Wheeler house on the Walden Road. He then also attended a school kept by a Miss Rice, at Deacon Jarvis s bakehouse. He then also would attend for one winter term at town school in the brick schoolhouse, where his teacher would be John Brown (please note that this happens not to have been any of the famous John Browns). WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

49 Nehemiah Ball became a member of Concord s Social Club. In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. John Keyes of Concord was a Senator. Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator Reuben Brown, Jr. and Samuel Burr were Concord s deputies and representatives to the General Court. In Concord, Juvenile Libraries were established in each of the religious societies, as part of their Sunday- School effort. Concord procured, by subscription, a clock for the belfry of its meetinghouse. The clock in the front gallery of the meeting-house was given to the town in 1793, by Mr. John Minott; and that in the belfry was procured by subscription, in 1827, for $ Organization of the Volunteer Engine Company of Concord, a 2d fire society, which would in 1831 procure by subscription a new fire engine. Provision Against Fire. The Fire Society was organized May 5, 1794, and holds its annual meetings on the 2d Monday in January. The Presidents have been, Jonathan Fay, Esq., Dr. Joseph Hunt Tilly Merrick, Esq., Dr. Isaac Hurd, Deacon Francis Jarvis, Hon. Samuel Hoar, and Joseph Barrett, Esq. The Engine Company was formed, and the first engine procured, in A new engine was obtained in A Volunteer Engine Company was organized in 1827, who procured by subscription a new engine in Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) 21. Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

50 Fall: In the fall David Henry Thoreau returned for a 4th year of instruction at Concord s Town School. Clearly, however, he was not receiving all his education within the walls of this school. For instance, at about this point (that is, at about ten years of age) he needed to put his pet chickens in a basket and take them to the local innkeeper to be sold. For convenience, as the innkeeper drew them from the basket one by one he wrung their necks, before young David Henry s eyes. At this point young John Shepard Keyes was arriving at the age of six, and was sent to the Academy then kept by Phineas Allen, the poorest teacher and worst school I ever knew anything about personally, in the lower part of the building on Academy Lane. Although put to the study of Latin and then Greek, he did not learn anything of either or anything else at that school. 22 Here for schoolmates I had among the older boys William Whiting, Lincolns Solicitor of the War Dept. E R Hoar, Grants Attorney Gen. William M Prichard of the New York bar, Hiram B Dennis and J. Fay Barrett, of the Boston bar John and Henry D. Thoreau, of the Musketaquid bar, and I think for a term or more Hon William M. Evarts, and many more or less distinguished whom I do not recall. Among the girls were the sisters of all these if they had any, and some of my older school mates from Miss Wheelers & Miss Rices. 22. The difficult plainness of the writing in his autobiography, on file at the Concord Free Public Library, indicates that not only did this young scholar not learn Latin and Greek well, but also, he did not learn English at all well! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

51 1828 The Milldam 23 Company businessmen s association was organized by Daniel Shattuck, Cyrus Stow, Ephraim Merriam, Abel Moore, John Keyes, and Nehemiah Ball, with a capital stock of $20, The company bought the land on both sides of the Concord mill dam where there had previously been a native village s communal fishing weir. (The name of that village is not of record. The pond had been south of the present street with the stream draining north into the Concord River, and it had been into this pond that the British troops had hastily dumped Concord s military supplies. As Henry Thoreau would note on one of his surveys, the stream had been diverted into Concord s storm drains.) Draining the pond, they widened the road by 20 feet and sold lots for business buildings. The tanyard on the north side of the milldam, and the smithy at the corner of Walden Street, would be replaced by retail stores. Possibly as part of the businessmen s agreement which created the Milldam district of downtown Concord in this year, John Thoreau, Senior gave up operation of the mill, milldam, race, and pond on Mill Brook, which he had been operating since Please note that in referring to this area as the Milldam, Concord merchants were copying a famous name of Boston, which already had a district referred to as The Milldam.

52 April 21, 1852: Was that a large shad bush where fathers mill used to be.? There is quite a water fall beyond. where the old dam was Where the rapids commence at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the fall C ONCORD ZOOM MAP In Acton, Mr. Perham had once acted as postmaster but then for some reason this had been discontinued and there had not been a Post Office for some time. In this year a Post Office was re-established, and Silas Jones would be serving as postmaster. At this point Dr. Bela Gardner, who had been in Acton since 1823, removed to Vermont. Henry Durant of Acton graduated at Yale College. He would become a tutor there while pursuing theological studies. According to Theodore Rawson Crane s THE COLLEGES AND THE PUBLIC, , pages (NY: Columbia, 1963), the Yale Report of 1828 amounted to a defense of the educational tradition of the superior education, which is to say, education in superiority itself, education which included plenty of Greek and plenty of Latin, and an attack on the looser, less status-conscious, form of education that was being introduced among other places at the University of Vermont. Samuel Baker died at Enosburg, Vermont. In Concord, Jonathan Hildreth continued as a Selectman. John Keyes of Concord was a Senator. Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator. Reuben Brown, Jr. and Samuel Burr were Concord s deputies and representatives to the General Court. David J. Merrill, hired from elsewhere, became the schoolmaster for Concord s grammar students Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year 1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year 1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year 1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months 1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months 1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year 1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

53 1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year 1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year 1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years 1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years 1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year 1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year 1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year 1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year 1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year 1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown Town Clerks of Lincoln 24 Ephraim Flint , 1754, Grosvenor Tarbell Ebenezer Cutler 1753, 1755, 1759 Thomas Wheeler Samuel Farrar 1758, Elijah Fiske John Adams Stephen Patch Abijah Pierce , 1781 Charles Wheeler Samuel Hoar 1780, 1782, , Elijah Fiske 1831 Richard Russell Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

54 March 29, Saturday: David Lee Child, as editor of the Massachusetts Journal, accused State Senator John Keyes of Concord, a Jacksonian who was running for reelection, of participating in the award of an illegal state contract for printing services (Senator Keyes would sue for false, scandalous and malicious libel ). Der Vampyr, a grosse romantishce Oper by Heinrich August Marschner to words of Wohlbruck after Nodier, Carmouche, de Jouffroy, Planche, and Ritter, was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig s Stadttheater. Also on this day, according to his mother s wishes and against his own, Robert Schumann matriculated in law at the University of Leipzig. On this day Nicolò Paganini was making his debut at Vienna s Redoutensaal. This 1st concert was not well attended but word-of-mouth accounts of his wizardry would soon be attracting the multitudes. He could make his violin go Moo like a cow, could make it bark like a dog, etc. He could make it sound like it was saying Hello, how are you? in your own language regardless of what language that might be. The Wiener Theaterzeitung would offer His expression seemed to mirror an inner conflict; the most unspeakable pain, the most ardent longing, the cruelest jest, even the most cutting scorn became discernible... He would be providing a total of 14 concerts in the city over the following 4 months. December 3, Wednesday: The Democrat from Tennessee, General Andrew Jackson, was elected President of the United States of America, with 648,286 popular votes and 178 electoral votes. A large and respectable meeting of the citizens of Concord was convened... at the Centre brick school-house, pursuant to public notice given by Rev. Dr. Ripley after the religious exercises on Thanksgiving Day [that was the week before], to take into consideration the expediency of forming a Lyceum in Concord. John Keyes became the chairman of that Concord Lyceum project, and Lemuel Shattuck became its secretary. A committee consisting of Samuel Hoar, John Keyes, Nathan Brooks, Daniel Shattuck, Daniel Starr Southmayd, Samuel Burr, Daniel Stone, and Lemuel Shattuck was charged to prepare a constitution for this new society. In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 3 of 12 M / Our week day Meeting which Mary B Allen Attended & had searching & powerful labour much to my consolation & edification & I have no doubt she spoke to the States & condition of many present. Called a little while at Moses Browns on buisness found him more bright than yesterday RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

55 1829 January 12, Monday: David Lee Child was arraigned before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, before a judge who was, like the plaintiff (State Senator John Keyes of Concord) a Jacksonian, which is to say, one of those self-proclaimed champions of the underdog consumed by a desire to retaliate against those who allegedly considered themselves better than they are who considered this defendant to be a suitable representative of the pseudo-high-principles of the effete Boston aristocracy. Harrumph! Let s gang up and persecute this dude in the name of fairness and democracy! Il paria, a melodramma by Gaetano Donizetti to words of Gilardoni after Delavigne, was performed for the initial time, in Teatro San Carlo, Naples. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 12 of 1 M / Attended the funeral of James Mitchell the Meeting was held at the Meeting house, it was a pretty solid sitting & a few words spoken by Hannah Robinson. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS January 15, Thursday: David Lee Child was found guilty before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts of the charge that had been brought against him by State Senator John Keyes of Concord, that while the senator was running for reelection and while he was the editor of the Massachusetts Journal he had falsely, scandalously, and maliciously libeled this senator by accusing him of having participated in his previous term in the illegal award of an state contract for printing services. The criminal journalist, Child, was sentenced to prison, and appealed. Giacomo Meyerbeer met with Alexander von Humboldt in Paris. The composer wanted Humboldt to bring a message to King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia when he traveled to Berlin. His message was to apologize that Robert le diable had not yet been produced in Berlin because it had taken two years to get it produced in Paris. Meyerbeer promised it to the king as the 1st production after Paris. The topographical duties to which 1st Lieutenant, Corps of Artillery James Duncan Graham had been assigned were coming at this point to be recognized as an occupational specialty. He was brevetted as a captain to become a staff-assistant to the topographical engineer, so that he might enter the US Army s Corps of Topographical Engineers and participate in government surveys in Vermont.

56 1832 Joseph Barrett and John Keyes were Concord s deputies and representatives to the General Court. Samuel Hoar, Jr. of Concord was a Senator. A noisy steam-driven trip hammer was installed at the smithy at the Milldam; at the time Concord also boasted a five-story factory structure, was the legal and governmental center of Middlesex County, and had a sizeable stone-walled prison edifice at the center of town. C ONCORD ZOOM MAP

57 1833 Mary Merrick Brooks s infant, Charles Augustus Brooks, died. Nathan Brooks, who had been sharing the office space of a building on Main Street with Samuel Hoar, during this year relocated to the back room of the new Concord Bank building (the one which still stands on Main Street). John Keyes again represented Concord in the Massachusetts Legislature. John Shepard Keyes, in Hurd s 1890 HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, described the work life of this attorney: In the dark, dingy back-room of the bank building, where Mr. Brooks worked... more stories have been told, more anecdotes repeated, more politics discussed than in any other room in the town if not of the county... Indeed if those walls could repeat what was said there, it would be a history of Concord, of Middlesex and Massachusetts, if not of the country and the world. March 3, Saturday: The decision of the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of Worcester v Georgia was that it was government at the federal level which had exclusive jurisdiction over relationships with native American tribes, and over all negotiations in regard to their land claims even within a state. (As it turned out, the state of Georgia, in its lust for the Cherokee farms, would ignore this decision of the Supremes, and would be supported in this defiance by President Andrew Jackson: John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it! Incorporation of the Concord Bank. Its new building would house also the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company. The Concord Bank was incorporated March 3, 1832, with a capital of $100,000. Daniel Shattuck, Esq., President, John M. Cheney, Esq., Cashier, and the President, Abiel Heywood, John Keyes,

58 Nathan Brooks, Abel Moore, and Phineas How, of Concord, Rufus Hosmer of Stow, George F. Farley of Groton, John Merriam of Bedford, Benjamin Muzzy of Lexington, and Timothy Prescott of Littleton, Directors. A neat and appropriate building was erected for its own accommodation and that of the Middlesex Mutual Fire Insurance Company, in November 12, Tuesday: Alyeksandr Porfiryevich Borodin was born in St. Petersburg, an illegitimate son of Prince Luka Stepanovich Gedianov (Gedianishvili) by Avdotya Konstantinovna Antonova, daughter of a soldier from Narva. According to common practice the infant was registered as the son of one of the Prince s serfs, Porfiry Ionovich Borodin. This would be the night of the birth of meteor astronomy. With David Henry Thoreau 16 years old and John Shepard Keyes 12 years old, a spectacular meteor shower during the wee smalls of the early morning hours was witnessed by numerous observers at various places on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent. For four hours the pre-dawn sky was lit with meteors. We don t know that Henry himself saw it; presumably he was asleep, although there were newspaper reports that many people were awakened by the flashes of light cast on the walls of dark bedrooms by the fireballs, and in the towns many people were awakened by the shouts and cries of neighbors. Keyes would report that: I slept in a chamber with an easterly window and happening by some unusual circumstance to be waked very early perhaps by the flashes of light I laid in bed for an hour or two watching and trying to count the bright streams of fire that shot so incessantly and madly across the sky. At last thoroughly roused by the sight I got up and pulling the bed clothes over my shoulders sat at the window till the day light hid the display. In my ignorance of the cause I almost concluded that the stars set or went out like that every morning and wondered I had never been told of it or seen it before. On coming down to breakfast I told the family that I saw hundreds of shooting stars that morning and was soundly taken to task for exaggeration, and scolded so that I held my tongue about it. But in a day or two when the accounts were in all the papers and everybodys mouth, I had an even worse scolding for not calling up the others to see the sight. It was grand splendid and magnificent beyond any thing I have ever seen since. The only picture I have ever seen that at all comes up to the scene is the one in the bulky volume of the one hundred memorable events of the first century of the U.S. It literally for all that hour or two rained stars with their long trails of sparks rocket like, in all directions across the heavens, mainly starting from a point in front of my window, and varying in sheer directions and colors to any extent. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY 25. Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

59 The United States Telegraph of Washington DC suggested that The strong southern wind of yesterday may have brought a body of electrified air, which, by the coldness of the morning, was caused to discharge its contents towards the earth. The Charleston Courier suggested that the sun had caused gases to be released from plants recently killed by frost. These gases, the most abundant of which was believed to be hydrogen, became ignited by electricity or phosphoric particles in the air. Yale College s professor of natural philosophy, Denison Olmstead, however, in collecting and collating these various reports, would note that the apparent point of origin for these thousands upon thousands of streaks, regardless of the point of observation, had been a stationary radiant position in the neck of the constellation Leo. (This is why we now term them the Leonids, meaning children of Leo. ) A historian of Philadelphia would write the following description of the event: The meteors of the 13th of November, 1833, were the most remarkable ever witnessed. A beholder says, he was sitting alone in a well lighted apartment at 4 AM., when he suddenly saw through the window a shower of sparks falling past it on the outside. He supposed the house was on fire, and rushing to the door, to his extreme amazement, he found the entire atmosphere filled with flakes of fire, (for they fully resembled flakes of snow of a stellated or radiated form) of a pale rose red, seemingly of an inch diameter, falling in a vertical direction, as thick as he ever saw snow! Intermingled with the smaller stars, were a larger kind, equal to one in a hundred of the others, of an intense sapphire blue, seemingly of three to four inches diameter. This shower continued up to broad day light. They were seen all over the United States, and have been variously described, but all agreeing that they surpassed all other known cases. SKY EVENT

60 A woodcut of the times, which would be recycled in color as below in Edmund Weiss s 1892 volume BILDER- ATLAS DER STERNENWELT, displays the sublime falling-star spectacle as it had been experienced above the magnificent sublime gloom and drifting sublime vapors of the Niagara Falls. 26 LEONID METEOR SHOWER The Reverend William Miller and his followers interpreted these falling stars as a sure sign of The End. MILLENNIALISM This display would lead to the first formulation of a theory on the origin of meteors....a tempest of falling stars broke over the Earth... The sky was scored in every direction with shining tracks and illuminated with majestic fireballs. At Boston, the frequency of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an average snowstorm. Their numbers... were quite beyond counting; but as it waned, a reckoning was attempted, from which it was computed, on the basis of that much-diminished rate, that 240,000 must have been visible during the nine hours they continued to fall. 26. Whether such a Leonid meteor shower is spectacular or not varies from year to year and from region to region. The best one of this century has come and gone in 1966, with up to 100,000 meteors an hour having been visible. The last chance of this millennium to see a potentially enticing Leonid will come in 1999, but to view this during the hours of darkness you will need to travel to Europe. If you miss it you ll need to wait another century or more for the next one expected to be spectacular, at least until the year 2098 and perhaps until the year Yep, it just ain t fair.

61 This Leonid storm was of course observed on the Great Plains by a number of bands of Dakota and appears in any number of winter counts painted on animal skin. Von Del Chamberlain of the Smithsonian has tabulated the astronomical references in 50 such Dakota records and found that 45 of the 50 made reference to the meteor shower of 1833/1834. The journal of Alexander M. Stephen records a meeting with Old Djasjini of the Hopi group on December 11, Old Djasjini is recorded as having said How old am I? Fifty, maybe a hundred years, I can not tell. When I was a boy of so big (eight or ten years) there was a great comet in the sky and at night all the above was full of shooting stars ah! that was a very long time ago, maybe a hundred years, maybe more. During the probable lifetime of Old Djasjini there had been two such events which we know of, the great Leonid storm of 1833 followed by the sungrazing comet 1843 I. The Pawnee remember a Pahokatawa was of the opinion that when meteors were seen falling in great numbers it was not a sign that the world would end. Thus when the Pawnee witnessed the Leonid shower of 1833, when the stars fell upon the earth, they were able to say to one another Remember Pahokatawa and overcome their fear. SKY EVENT In this year, as in 1866 and in 1966, observers might see waterfalls of shooting stars flowing down all sides of their sky. There might well on occasion be more than 8,000 flashes per minute. The Leonids of this year generated numerous accounts of meteors that made a swishing noise, meteors that made a whooshing noise and one that resembled the noise of a child s pop-gun. DO THE METEORS SING TO US?

62 1834 Waldo Emerson s brother Charles Chauncy Emerson lectured at the newly founded Concord Lyceum on the life and the death of Socrates. (He would repeat this lecture in the Salem Lyceum during the Winter

63 lecture season.) Before Lecture After Lecture Were John Shepard Keyes, who was trying to decide between Hanover and Cambridge, and David Henry Thoreau, who had become a freshman in Cambridge, in the audience? June 1, Sunday: Former King Miguel of Portugal boarded a British ship at Sines south of Lisbon and was transported toward exile in Genoa (thence to Austria). Yanked out of the classroom of Phineas Allen on account of that teacher s anti-mason activities, John Shepard Keyes would begin to attend a new private class kept by Mr. William Whiting (Junior) in the upper hall of the same Academy building. In a year and a quarter I learned more ten times over from Mr. Whiting than I had in the seven years of Mr. Allen, and acquired habits of study and application I had never before imagined possible. Latin became a delight and an actual language instead of a dead and buried tongue. Greek unfolded its mysteries and beauties. French its grace, and Arithmetic and Algebra became the fascinations of exact science. He introduced us to Shakespeare, to Plutarch to Burke and English Literature generally and he made ardent students out of idle boys, and brilliant scholars of bright girls. What a revelation and awakening that time was to me, and to most of the others. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

64 John Augustus Stone committed suicide by throwing himself into the Schuylkill River. There were some who were not obviously impressed either by this successful attempt at a play or by this successful attempt at a suicide: Mr. Stone did what he could to atone for the injury he inflicted upon the world by the production of this play... he drowned himself on 1 June 1834, in the Schuylkill River. We will accept his presumptive apology. Edwin Forrest, who had paid Stone $ for his play METAMORA: OR THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS, an often-staged play which usually grossed approximately that amount per night (as well as another $ for WAMPANOAG another less performed play entitled THE ANCIENT BRITON), would thoughtfully fund the monument for the grave: IN MEMORY OF THE AVTHOR OF METAMORA BY HIS FRIEND, E. FORREST After the drowning, Stone s wife, the actress Mrs. Legge, would remarry to N.H. Bannister. During this year Forrest anticipated Waldo Emerson s project for American literary independence, to be propounded at Harvard College three years later, in 1837, by declaring with enviable simplicity: Our literature should be independent.

65 August: HOMĒROU ILIAS. THE ILIAD OF HOMER, FROM THE TEXT OF WOLF. GR. WITH ENGLISH NOTES AND FLAXMAN S ILLUSTRATIVE DESIGNS. EDITED BY C.C. FELTON (2d edition. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Co.). This would be a required text at Harvard College and would be found in the personal library of Henry Thoreau. When a plank on a Concord bridge gave way, two girls drowned. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS One or two incidents of these schools are fresh to my memory. Sitting at the north window of the school room one summers afternoon, I was curious to know the cause of the rapid driving & running up the main road, and impatiently waited to find out after school, that two girls of about half my age had fallen through a loose plank in the south bridge and were drowned clinging to each other and the piles under water I knew one of them very well, Esq Joseph Barretts daughter. It was a great shock, and the whole town turned out the funeral of the victims I with other boys of my age was asked to be one of the bearers, and attended first at Dea. Elijah Woods house, the services of the Orthodox minister over one child, and then in the old Lee house where Squire Joe lived the two were placed side by side, and another service was performed by the Unitarian preacher It was an awfully hot day, and while this service was proceeding a fearful thunder shower came up, the worst I can recall. The roomy old mansion was full of people men women and children for the schools were dismissed for the occasion, and the rain poured the wind howled and the thunder rattled till women fainted, children screamed and men were panic stricken, while the lightening struck several times on the farm one setting into a blaze and burning up a large pine tree in plain sight of the door where I stood. I recall the remark of the old stage driver Stuart at the sight, that they burned the Charlestown convent last night so that was safe from the lighting, and that news that was whispered about did not allay the excitement or the strain After a long long hour of waiting the rain stopped, and in the muddy washed out and badly gullied streets under the broken clouds and muttering thunder we bore the bodies on the bier to the graveyard & were dismissed after sunset worn out, exhausted and in a frightened state. This was August After this experience I had a great fear of thunder showers that lasted till a boy came to stay at our house and got to school whom I did not like and who was even more of a coward about lightening. Laughing and plaguing him on the matter cured me so entirely that I hardly remember any more showers till recent years. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

66 Previously Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had for some reason turned down an offer to become companion to the supercargo aboard the sailing ship Japan, which would have meant an all-expenses-paid visit to Calcutta. While Ellery Channing II waited in the Dana home on Ellery Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his distant cousin Dick Dana, eyesight temporarily damaged by measles, asked his father Richard Henry Dana, Sr. for permission to leave Harvard College and signed on the Pilgrim, a ship bound to pick up a cargo of cowhides in the Los Angeles area 27, for use in the manufacturing of shoes in the Boston area. That is, to take up for a period the life of a common seaman Visit a replica of the Pilgrim at moorings next to the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point Harbor, south of Disneyland. 28. The narrative he would write would take no notice of the common homosexuality of sailor life during this period. It would be made to appear as if this were something with which this particular attractive young man never had to deal.

67

68 1835 September: As William Whiting (Junior) began to attend the Harvard Law School, his replacement as preceptor in the Concord Academy would be Charles C. Shackford, who had just graduated there as the top scholar in the class and would go on to become a professor of Rhetoric at Cornell University. NEW HARVARD MEN John Shepard Keyes, one of the pupils, would report: Mr. C.C. Shackford the first scholar in the class of 1835, succeeded in September of that year Mr Whiting, who began then the study of law Mr S was a very different man, as bright and keen, but without ambition, and bilious, moody, and very unequal in his instruction, at times thrilling and inspiriting and at others sour and cross and depressing Our training under the first teacher and the impulse carried the older scholars through the second year, but the newcomers of whom there were several didnt have that help and the school so far ran down that it closed with Mr Shuckfords twelve month. He was a strange compound, and rather an exciting mystery to the older girls, to whom he paid great deference, and soon became blindly in love first with my charmer and then when rejected, by her, with the next prettiest but most wayward of them all. How he fared in this pursuit was the theme of endless discussion of the older scholars and took much time from our studies to watch the traces of success or despair. Some of us thought them engaged definitely others that she refused, and it ended in smoke if there was ever more to it. And he has been married twice, and is a Professor at Cornell, and she a matron of a large family and high position in Concord, of course like a dutiful pupil and the oldest boy in the school I was bound to follow such an example, and did my utmost to plague his life, and make him feel the jealousy from which I suffered, as much as he did. But alas how time cures all wounds. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY David Henry Thoreau was back at Harvard College for his Junior year as of the age of eighteen, living in 31 Hollis Hall. This month his assigned composition was on classroom discipline, The comparative moral policy of severe and mild punishments. The end of all punishment is the welfare of the state the good of community at large not the suffering of an individual. It matters not to the lawgiver what a man deserves, for to say nothing of the impossibility of settling this point, it would be absurd to pass laws against prodigality, want of charity, and many other faults of the same nature, as if man was to be frightened into a virtuous life, though these in a great measure constitute a vicious one. We leave this to a higher tribunal. So far only as public interest is concerned, is punishment justifiable if we overstep this bound our own conduct becomes criminal. Let us observe in the first place the effects of severity.

69 Does the rigor of the punishment increase the dread operating upon the mind to dissuade us from the act? It certainly does if it be unavoidable. But where death is a general punishment, though some advantage may seem to arise from the severity, yet this will invariably be more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty attending the execution of the law. We find that in England, for instance, where, in Blackstone s day, offences were considered capital, between the years 1805 and 1817 of 655 who were indicted for stealing, 113 being capitally convicted, not one was executed; and yet no blame could attach to the conduct of the juries, the fault was in the law. Had death, on the other hand, been certain, the law could have existed but a very short time. Feelings of natural justice, together with public sentiment, would have concurred to abolish it altogether. In fact wherever those crimes which are made capital form a numerous class, and petty thefts and forgeries are raised to a level with murder, burglary, and the like, the law seems to defeat its own ends. The injured influenced, perhaps, by compassion, forbear to prosecute, and thus are numerous frauds allowed to escape with impunity, for want of a penalty proportionate to the offense. Juries too, actuated by the same motives, adopt the course pointed out by their feelings. As long as one crime is more heinous and more offensive than another, it is absolutely necessary that a corresponding distinction be made in punishing them. Otherwise, if the penalty be the same, men will come to regard the guilt as equal in each case. It is enough that the evil attending conviction exceed the expected advantage. This I say is sufficient, provided the consequences be certain, and the expected benefit be not obtained. For it is the hope of escaping punishment a hope which never deserts the rogue as long as life itself remains, that renders him blind to the consequences, and enables him to look despair in the face. Take from him this hope, and you will find that certainty is more effectual than severity of punishment. No man will deliberately cut his own fingers. The vicious are often led on from one crime to another still more atrocious by the very fault of the law, the penalty being no greater, but the certainty of escaping detection being very much increased. In this case they act up to the old saying, that one may as well be hung for stealing an old sheep as a lamb. Some have asked, cannot reward be substituted for punishment? Is hope a less powerful incentive to action than fear? When a political pharmacopoeia has the command of both ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter instead of the sweet? This reasoning is absurd. Does a man deserve to be rewarded for refraining from murder? Is the greatest virtue merely negative, or does it rather consist in the performance of a thousand everyday duties, hidden from the eye of the world? Would it be good policy to make the most exalted virtue even, a subject of reward here? Nevertheless, I question whether a pardon has not a more salutary effect, on the minds of those not immediately affected by it, vicious as well as honest, than a public execution. 29. Sir William Blackstone s COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND.

70 It would seem then, that the welfare of society calls for a certain degree of severity; but this degree must bear some proportion to the offence. If this distinction be lost sight of, punishment becomes unjust as well as useless we are not to act upon the principle that crime is to be prevented at any rate, cost what it may; this is obviously erroneous. September 12, Saturday: It was the 2d centennial of the founding of the town of Concord and Waldo Emerson stood before its assembled citizenry in the old church to deliver the 2d Centennial Anniversary Address. The structure was packed so full that it was felt appropriate to place props under the galleries. Still one of them settled alarmingly with the weight, and when it cracked ominously some members of the audience made a rush to save themselves. Emerson, however, read for an hour and three-quarters: A Historical Discourse, Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September (See Rusk, Volume I, pages ) Good people, they sat still to hear about themselves. The paper told them how fine New Englanders were and what a grand institution the New England town meeting was: It is the consequence of this institution that not a school-house, a public pew, a bridge, a pound, a milldam, hath been set up, or pulled down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor-house chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, and consider, at leisure, the wisdom and error of their judgments. Waldo, in his wisdom, specifically called for the compensated emancipation of all American slaves (no compensation whatever to the slaves for their stolen labor, of course, and no provisions whatever for their illness or old age), followed of course by a total black repatriation to the coast of Africa. He supposed this could be accomplished at the ridiculously low cost of one week s wages, which is to say approximately $6, per white citizen worker: It is said, it will cost a thousand millions of dollars to buy the slaves, which sounds like a fabulous price. But if a price were named in good faith, with the other elements of a practicable treaty in readiness, and with the convictions of mankind on this mischief once well awake and conspiring, I do not think that any amount that figures could tell, founded on an estimate, would be quite unmanageable. Every man in the world might give a week s work to sweep this mountain of calamities out of the earth. As part of the oration, Emerson pointed out that after the Reverend John Eliot s praying Indians had requested permission to establish a praying village near Concord, and had been granted such permission, It is the misfortune of Concord to have permitted a disgraceful outrage upon the friendly Indians settled within its limits, in February, 1676, which ended in their forcible expulsion from the town. That s all. Nothing about racial mass murder, or the violation of the innocent woman and child. John Shepard Keyes liked this one heck of a lot self-congratulation being right up his alley: JOHN ELIOT

71 At any rate I had never enjoyed so much in a day before and I keep the manuscript of Emersons oration to this day as my greatest literary treasure, and I mean never to part with it. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY O C R the 64 pages of: Waldo Emerson s A Historical Discourse, Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September 1835

72 A quotation from page 36 of Dr. Edward Jarvis s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS , in regard to the elaborate mechanics of this celebration, is to be found on the following screen: [next screen]

73 The dinner tent was in the field where now (1875) stands the dwelling of Judge Brooks. Mr. Shepherd, the excellent keeper of the hotel, was professionally ambitious and unwilling to set out a cheap dinner to which the multitude should come. He would get one that would be honorable to his hotel and to the town. The majority and the leading influences in the committee agreed with him and accepted his proposition to have a dinner at the cost of a $1.50 for each person. There was not then nor has there since been any doubt that Mr. Shepherd s dinner was worth that sum or that as a matter of entertainment it was an honor to his skill and good taste and honorable dealing with customs. But although about 400 ate at this table and enjoyed the intellectual feast that followed, there was yet very many to whom it was an impossibility and these were kept away, who otherwise might have joined in the festivity and contributed by their presence to swell the gathering of Concord and her children and children s children at their family homes... They remembered and brought up the scene on the Common when Lafayette was entertained in 1825 and said that this, like that, was for the glorification of the rich and [that it was] framed [planned] with the necessary consequence of the mortification of the mass of the people. Means were taken and influences used to persuade people not to accept this hospitality as alluded to in the article opposite then printed in the Concord paper. [The article referred is a letter dated September 12, 1835, signed The wife of a Middlesex farmer, and describes the events of the centennial celebration: I notice those who in independence might leisurely recline on a hair-cloth sofa with a volume of the ILIAD, or ride in a splendid carriage to variegate the scene; here were those, who in the humbler walks of life ply their needles or tend their dairies for a livelihood -- all, all seemed happy without any inequality or distinction... Most of us have the means of educating our children, as well as those who count their thousands; let us do it, and ever impress on their minds that true greatness and superiority consists more in wisdom and merit than in splendid equipages and fine houses. ]... When the committee had finished their work and paid all the bills for expenses incurred under their direction, they found that they had exceeded the town s appropriation by about one hundred dollars. At first view, seeing that all this town s money had been expended in carrying out the purposes of the town, it would seem that this excess should be reported to the town and an additional appropriation asked for the payment. But the committee remembered the dissatisfaction that had been manifested by some and the undercurrent of censure that had been stirred by the leading malcontents and thought it more wise to ask no more grant of the town and avoid any opportunity of public complaint or unkind taunting at the gathering of the people. They therefore unanimously agreed to pay this deficiency out of their own private funds, each paying an equal proportion of the whole.

74 Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of the continent, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was getting involved again in the port business of carrying hides, ferrying passengers, etc., in San Pedro harbor just as in San Diego harbor, the biggest difference between the two anchorages being that the ship was now farther offshore. AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The next morning, according to the orders of the agent, the Pilgrim set sail for the windward, to be gone three or four months. She got under weigh with very little fuss, and came so near us as to throw a letter on board, Captain Faucon standing at the tiller himself, and steering her as he would a mackerel smack. When Captain T was in command of the Pilgrim, there was as much preparation and ceremony as there would be in getting a seventy-four under weigh. Captain Faucon was a sailor, every inch of him; he knew what a ship was, and was as much at home in one, as a cobbler in his stall. I wanted no better proof of this than the opinion of the ship s crew, for they had been six months under his command, and knew what he was; and if sailors allow their captain to be a good seaman, you may be sure he is one, for that is a thing they are not always ready to say. After the Pilgrim left us, we lay three weeks at San Pedro, from the 11th of September until the 2nd of October, engaged in the usual port duties of landing cargo, taking off hides, etc., etc. These duties were much easier, and went on much more agreeably, than on board the Pilgrim. The more, the merrier, is the sailor s maxim; and a boat s crew of a dozen could take off all the hides brought down in a day, without much trouble, by division of labor; and on shore, as well as on board, a good will, and no discontent or grumbling, make everything go well. The officer, too, who usually went with us, the third mate, was a fine young fellow, and made no unnecessary trouble; so that we generally had quite a sociable time, and were glad to be relieved from the restraint of the ship. While here, I often thought of the miserable, gloomy weeks we had spent in this dull place, in the brig; discontent and hard usage on board, and four hands to do all the work on shore. Give me a big ship. There is more room, more hands, better outfit, better regulation, more life, and more company. Another thing was better arranged here: we had a regular gig s crew. A light whale-boat, handsomely painted, and fitted out with stern seats, yoke, tiller-ropes, etc., hung on the starboard quarter, and was used as the gig. The youngest lad in the ship, a Boston boy about thirteen years old, was coxswain of this boat, and had the entire charge of her, to keep her clean, and have her in readiness to go and come at any hour. Four light hands, of about the same size and age, of whom I was one, formed the crew. Each had his oar and seat numbered, and we were obliged to be in our places, have our oars scraped white, our tholepins in, and the fenders over the side. The bow-man had charge of the boat-hook and painter, and the coxswain of the rudder, yoke, and stern-sheets. Our duty was to carry the captain and agent about, and passengers off and on; which last was no trifling duty, as the people on shore have no boats, and every purchaser, from the boy who buys his pair of shoes, to the trader who buys his casks and bales, were to be taken off and on, in our boat. Some days, when people were coming and going fast, we were in the boat, pulling off and on, all day long, with hardly time for our meals; making, as we lay nearly three miles from shore, from forty to fifty miles rowing in a

75 day. Still, we thought it the best berth in the ship; for when the gig was employed, we had nothing to do with the cargo, except small bundles which the passengers carried with them, and no hides to carry, besides the opportunity of seeing everybody, making acquaintances, hearing the news, etc. Unless the captain or agent were in the boat, we had no officer with us, and often had fine times with the passengers, who were always willing to talk and joke with us. Frequently, too, we were obliged to wait several hours on shore; when we would haul the boat up on the beach, and leaving one to watch her, go up to the nearest house, or spend the time in strolling about the beach, picking up shells, or playing hopscotch, and other games, on the hard sand. The rest of the crew never left the ship, except for bringing heavy goods and taking off hides; and though we were always in the water, the surf hardly leaving us a dry thread from morning till night, yet we were young, and the climate was good, and we thought it much better than the quiet, hum-drum drag and pull on board ship. We made the acquaintance of nearly half of California; for, besides carrying everybody in our boat, men, women, and children, all the messages, letters, and light packages went by us, and being known by our dress, we found a ready reception everywhere. At San Pedro, we had none of this amusement, for, there being but one house in the place, we, of course, had but little company. All the variety that I had, was riding, once a week, to the nearest rancho, to order a bullock down for the ship. The brig Catalina came in from San Diego, and being bound up to windward, we both got under weigh at the same time, for a trial of speed up to Santa Barbara, a distance of about eighty miles. We hove up and got under sail about eleven o clock at night, with a light land-breeze, which died away toward morning, leaving us becalmed only a few miles from our anchoring-place. The Catalina, being a small vessel, of less than half our size, put out sweeps and got a boat ahead, and pulled out to sea, during the night, so that she had the sea-breeze earlier and stronger than we did, and we had the mortification of seeing her standing up the coast, with a fine breeze, the sea all ruffled about her, while we were becalmed, in-shore. When the sea-breeze died away, she was nearly out of sight; and, toward the latter part of the afternoon, the regular north-west wind set in fresh, we braced sharp upon it, took a pull at every sheet, tack, and halyard, and stood after her, in fine style, our ship being very good upon a taughtened bowline. We had nearly five hours of fine sailing, beating up to windward, by long stretches in and off shore, and evidently gaining upon the Catalina at every tack. When this breeze left us, we were so near as to count the painted ports on her side. Fortunately, the wind died away when we were on our inward tack, and she on her outward, so we were in-shore, and caught the land-breeze first, which came off upon our quarter, about the middle of the first watch. All hands were turned-up, and we set all sail, to the skysails and the royal studding-sails; and with these, we glided quietly through the water, leaving the Catalina, which could not spread so much canvas as we, gradually astern, and, by daylight, were off St.

76 Buenaventura, and our antagonist nearly out of sight. The seabreeze, however, favored her again, while we were becalmed under the headland, and laboring slowly along, she was abreast of us by noon. Thus we continued, ahead, astern, and abreast of one another, alternately; now, far out at sea, and again, close in under the shore. On the third morning, we came into the great bay of Santa Barbara, two hours behind the brig, and thus lost the bet; though, if the race had been to the point, we should have beaten her by five or six hours. This, however, settled the relative sailing of the vessels, for it was admitted that although she, being small and light, could gain upon us in very light winds, yet whenever there was breeze enough to set us agoing, we walked away from her like hauling in a line; and in beating to windward, which is the best trial of a vessel, we had much the advantage of her. Wilhelm Wieprecht, director of the Berlin Gardes du Corps-Musik, received a patent for a bass tuba. In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 12th of 9th M 1835 / I dreamed a dream last night which I have often thought of thro the day. I was at the School in Providence where I saw a scene, which I shall not describe - It was among the classical Schollars & my mind was so wrought upon by it, that I fell to preaching to them with a powerful voice & with such regularity & connection as made me wonder at my self as when ever I have offered any thing among them my expressions have been few & under a degree of embarrassment - Well I have greatly desired & laboured much for the welfare of that Institution, but if things remain as they were when I was last there, & if they should prove as I saw them in my dream last night - it is Certainly time there was some change in its condition. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS October 3, Saturday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Morning to our comfort & support Benj Marshall arrived which took from us much weight & responsibility -Arrangement was made for the funeral which was agreed to be from our house tomorrow at 10 OClock & to be inter d in friends ground according to his request both verbal & written - we came home in the afternoon to arrange for the funeral & in the evening the Corps was brought to Town & deposited in our South keeping room. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

77 Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, and other dignitaries were approached, one by one, by the committee preparing for Concord s bicentennial event, to provide oratory for the occasion, and had struck out in each and every case. Finally they decided they would need to settle for some oratory from a local citizen, and approached Waldo Emerson. In preparation for his delivery of the keynote address for Concord s bicentennial, he borrowed proof sheets for the new local history book by Lemuel Shattuck. He also placed a notice of the publication of Shattuck s book in the Yeoman s Gazette Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

78 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... When the English settlements first commenced in New England, that part of its territory, which lies south of New Hampshire, was inhabited by five principal nations of Indians: the Pequots, who lived in Connecticut; the Narragansets, in Rhode Island; the Pawkunnawkuts, or Womponoags, east of the Narragansets and to the north as far as Charles River; 1 the Massachusetts, north of Charles river and west of Massachusetts Bay; and the Pawtuckets, north of the Massachusetts. The boundaries and rights of these nations appear not to have been sufficiently definite to be now clearly known. They had within their jurisdiction many subordinate tribes, governed by sachems, or sagamores, subject, in some respects, to the principal sachem. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, they were able to bring into the field more than 18,000 warriors; but about the year 1612, they were visited with a pestilential disease, whose horrible ravages reduced their number to about Some of their villages were entirely depopulated. This great mortality was viewed by the first Pilgrims, as the accomplishment of one of the purposes of Divine Providence, by making room for the settlement of civilized man, and by preparing a peaceful asylum for the persecuted Christians of the old world. In what light soever the event may be viewed, it no doubt greatly facilitated the settlements, and rendered them less hazardous I have supposed that the Indians living south of the Charles River did not belong to the Massachusetts tribe. Chickatabot, sachem of Neponset, and Obatinuat acknowledged submission to Massasoit in 1621, and were at enmity with Squaw Sachem. No instance within my knowledge is recorded of a petty sachem going to war with his own tribe. It is also worthy of remark, that these sachems and their descendants executed deeds of lands within Massasoit s territories, but never in the Massachusetts territories As the country became settled by the English, and the jealousies between different tribes were forgotten, all the Indians living within the Massachusetts patent were rather erroneously classed among the Massachusetts Indians. Hence the statements of Winthrop, Daniel Gookin, and other historians. See Prince, ANNALS, MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COLLECTION, volume I. PEQUOT WAMPANOAG MASSACHUSETT NARRAGANSETT Shattuck, a resident in Concord from 1823 to 1834, noted that there had been a third soldier buried and a house built over the spot and that one of the wounded died and was buried where Mr. Keyes house stands. 31 He evidently was referring to a house just to the northeast of the replacement Courthouse the town had erected in 1784, that in 1815 had been leased by John Shepard Keyes (the father, who worked at that

79 courthouse). A H I S T O R Y OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD ; MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO 1832 ; AND OF THE ADJOINING TOWNS, BEDFORD, ACTON, LINCOLN, AND CARLISLE ; CONTAINING VARIOUS NOTICES OF COUNTY AND STATE HISTORY NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED. BY LEMUEL SHATTUCK, MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Nobler records of patriotism exist nowhere. Nowhere can there be found higher proofs of a spirit that was ready to hazard all, to pledge all, to sacrifice all ia the cause of their country, than in the New England towns. WEBSTER. The local historian is sure of obtaining the gratitude of posterity if he perform his task with faithful diligence. His work would have a great and increasing value within the narrow sphere of its subject, even if confined to that sphere ; but must be very imperfectly executed, if it does not contain some matter of illustration for the national annals, for the history of manners, for literature, philology, natural history, and various other departments of knowledge. QUARTERLY REVIEW. B O S T O N : RUSSELL, ODIORNE, AND COMPANY. CONCORD : JOHN STACY Of the three stricken soldiers of the 4th Regiment Light Infantry Company, Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall, two had died and were buried at the North Bridge itself, while the third was carried toward town before succumbing to his wounds.

80 1836 By this point the Reverend Hersey B. Goodwin had died and Dr. Edward Jarvis and Lemuel Shattuck had left Concord. The attempt made by these three educators to put the educational principles of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi into practice at the Town School was a thing of the past. The School Committee had fallen into the hands of conservatives who seemed much more interested in their own local internecine political struggles than in the welfare of the students. The cream of the college crop was being skimmed by the private Concord Academy, leaving in the public system the children of the poor, the dullards, and the discipline problems. Too bad. Phineas Allen, the Preceptor at the Concord Academy, who had alienated the Academy Committee through his anti-masonic activities, ran for Town Clerk, and was elected. In order to understand how such a change of power in the little town of Concord could be related to the torching of the Ursuline Convent near Boston, and in order to understand how rioters who had committed an anti-religious arson could be acquitted in the Middlesex County courts, it is necessary to understand something of the anti-masonic fervor which was sweeping the nation. Here is the story, in brief: William Morgan, a Mason, had become disaffected in a struggle internal to the fraternity and had published, in defiance of his oath of secrecy, the rites of the order. He had then, in Canandaigua NY, mysteriously disappeared, and it was rumored that the Masons had ordered that he be executed. John Quincy Adams, former president of the US, lost his head and published an attack on this fraternal organization. Then, while visiting Boston, Adams had happened to meet Squire Samuel Hoar of Concord, and had asked for his opinion. Old Sam had given it to him straight between the headlights: It seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world sillier than Masonry. That is Antimasonry. But in Concord, a 3d-degree Mason and the owner of the Gazette, Hermon Atwill, resigned from the fraternity and republished the secrets published by the defector William Morgan. Concord became as bitterly divided as the nation. The sheriff of Middlesex County, Abel Moore, collected and consolidated all the outstanding bills that could be charged against the Gazette, and presented them for immediate payment in cash in an attempt to drive the paper out of existence. The Concord Bank, newly founded, called for payment of its note. John Keyes attempted to foreclose the mortgage. Atwill was no longer the owner of the Gazette, which became the Whig paper, and so he funded the Freeman in order to continue his Antimasonic crusade. With the harmlessness of the Masonic conspiracy and the ridiculousness of the Antimasonic evil-mongering becoming more and more obvious to everyone, Francis Richard Gourgas soon took over this undercapitalized gazette and turned it into a Democratic newspaper. At the Concord Town Meeting, the citizens were so bitterly divided that it took them four ballots before they could even agree on a presiding officer. In the election of public officials, all the old Masonic affiliates were unseated and replaced with new Antimasonic officials. On the first ballot for the main position, Clerk of the Town of Concord Phineas Allen, representing the Antimasons, tied with Dr. Abiel Heywood, who had been clerk for 38 years and was sympathetic with Masonry. On the second ballot, Allen was elected by a margin of seven votes. The electorate was then persuaded to give Dr. Heywood a vote of thanks for 38 years of uninterrupted service to the town. EDUCATION. Many of the original inhabitants of Concord were well educated in their native country; and, to the end that learning be not buried in the graves of the forefathers, schools were provided at an early period for the instruction of their children. In 1647, towns of 50 families were required to have a common school, and of 100 families, a grammar school. Concord had the latter before An order was sent to this town, requiring a list of the names of those young persons within the

81 bounds of the town, and adjacent farms, who live from under family government, who do not serve their parents or masters, as children, apprentices, hired servants, or journeymen ought to do, and usually did in our native country ; agreeably to a law, that all children and youth, under family government, be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism and that they be brought up to some honest employment. On the back of this order is this return: I have made dillygent inquiry according to this warrant and find no defects to return. Simon Davis, Constable. March 31, During the 30 years subsequent to this period, which I [Lemuel Shattuck] have denominated the dark age in Massachusetts, few towns escaped a fine for neglecting the wholesome laws for the promotion of education. Though it does not appear that Concord was fined, a committee was appointed in 1692, to petition the General Court, to ease us in the law relating to the grammar school-master, or to procure one with prudence for the benefit of learning, and saving the town from fine. From that time, however, this school was constantly maintained. For several years subsequent to 1700, no appropriations were made to any other school. In 1701, grammar scholars paid 4d. and reading scholars 2d. per week towards its support; and from that time to 1712, from 20 to 30 were annually raised. In 1715, it was kept one quarter, in different parts of the town, for 40. The next year 50 were raised for schools; 35 for the centre, and 5 for each of the other three divisions. In 1722, Timothy Minott agreed to keep the school, for ten years, at 45 per year. In 1732, 50 were raised for the centre and 30 for the out-schools ; and each schoolmaster was obliged to teach the scholars to read, write, and cipher, all to be free. In 1740, 40 for the centre, and 80 for the others. These grants were in the currency of the times. In 1754, 40 lawful money were granted, 25 of which were for the centre. Teachers in the out-schools usually received 1s. per day for their services. The grammar-school was substituted for all others in 1767, and kept 12 weeks in the centre, and 6 weeks each, in 6 other parts, or school societies of the town. There were then 6 schoolhouses, 2 of which were in the present [1835] limits of Carlisle, and the others near where Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 6, now [1835] stand. This system of a moving school, as it was termed, was not, however, continued many years. In 1774 the school money was first divided in proportion to the polls and estates. The districts were regulated, in 1781, nearly as they now [1835] are. The town raised 120, in 1784, for the support of schools, and voted, that one sixteenth part of the money the several societies in the out-parts of the town pay towards this sum, should be taken and added to the pay of the middle society for the support of the grammar-school; and the out-parts to have the remainder to be spent in schools only. This method of dividing the school-money was continued till 1817, when the town voted, that it should be distributed to each district, including the centre, according to its proportion of the town taxes. The appropriations for schools from 1781 to 1783, was 100; from 1784 to 1792, 125; 1793, 145; 1794 and 1795, 200; 1796 to 1801, 250; 1802 to 1806, $1,000; 1807 to 1810, $1,300; 1811,

82 $1,600; 1812 to 1816, $1,300; 1817 and since, $1,400. There are 7 districts, among which the money, including the Cuming s donation, has been divided, at different periods, as follows. The last column contains the new division as permanently fixed in The town then determined the amount that should be paid annually to each district, in the following proportions. The whole school-money being divided into 100 parts, district, No. 1, is to have 52½ of those parts, or $ out of $1,550; district, No. 2, 7 5 / 8 parts; district, No. 3, 8¼ parts; district, No. 4, 8 5 / 8 parts; district, No. 5, 8¼ parts; district, No. 6, 7 1 / 8 parts; district No. 7, 7 1 / 8 parts; and to individuals who pay their money in Lincoln and Acton, ½ a part. District. Old Names No. 1. Central $ $ $ $ $ No. 2. East ¼ No. 3. Corner ½ No. 4. Darby ¼ No. 5. Barrett ¼ No. 6. Groton Road ¼ No. 7. Buttrick ¼ Individuals $ , , , ,450.00

83 At the erection of new school-houses in 1799, the first school committee was chosen, consisting of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, Abiel Heywood, Esq., Deacon John White, Dr. Joseph Hunt, and Deacon George Minott. On their recommendation, the town adopted a uniform system of school regulations, which are distinguished for enlightened views of education, and which, by being generally followed since, under some modification, have rendered our schools among our greatest blessings. The amount paid for private schools, including the Academy, was estimated, in 1830, at $600, making the annual expenditure for education $2,050. Few towns provide more ample means for acquiring a cheap and competent education. I [Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, the year usually beginning in September Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year 1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year 1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year 1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months 1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months 1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year 1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year 1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year 1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year 1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years 1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years 1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year 1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year 1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year 1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year 1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year 1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

84 The Concord Academy was established, in 1822, by several gentlemen, who were desirous of providing means for educating their own children and others more thoroughly than they could be at the grammar-school (attended, as it usually is, by a large number of scholars) or by sending them abroad. A neat, commodious building was erected, in a pleasant part of the town, by the proprietors, consisting of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and Mr. Josiah Davis, who own a quarter each, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks and Colonel William Whiting, who own an eighth each. Their intention has always been to make the school equal to any other similar one. It was opened in September, 1823, under the instruction of Mr. George Folsom, who kept it two years. He was succeeded by Mr. Josiah Barnes and Mr. Richard Hildreth, each one year. Mr. Phineas Allen, son of Mr. Phineas Allen of Medfield, who was born October 15, 1801, and graduated at Harvard College in 1825, has been the preceptor since September I [the young John Shepard Keyes] had played truant every afternoon that previous winter spending the school hours at the foundry or the shops or the stables with no rebuke from the teacher, report to my parents or effect on my lessons. The nervous irritable Phineas had been worsted in a regular fight with Isaac Fiske a big boy from Weston whom he attempted to ferule, and who took away the ruler and broke it over the teachers head, ruining the gold spectacles, and the little discipline there had been in the school with a single blow. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY 32. Lemuel Shattuck s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.)

85 1837 In a continuation of the previous year s anti-catholic and anti-masonic political furor, Concord postmaster John Keyes was thrown out of office because he was a Mason (and therefore per one of the Know-Nothing controlling fantasies of the time a man whose loyalties were to a secret cabal rather than to the American nation). Charles B. Davis became the postmaster, and would serve intermittently as postmaster for Concord from that point forward, whenever the Democrats were in power. February 1, Wednesday: The Reverend Barzillai Frost was ordained as a teacher and as a colleague for the Reverend Ezra Ripley in the Concord church. The prayer of consecration was offered by the Reverend Convers Francis of Watertown. According to the recollections of young John Shepard Keyes, the Reverend Frost would be at least at first uninspiring: [He] had been a mathematics tutor at Cambridge and ought never to have been anything else. He was a very old, dried up, cast iron conservative cold critter, that suited the old fashioned notions of some of his parishioners, and never interested any of the live young people. I began to recite to him while he lived at Dr Ripleys, and the dull gloomy Old Manse only increased his dulness and dyspesia It was almost too much for my spirits and if it had lasted much longer might have made a minister or worse of even me But in June Mr Frost married a very rosy bright agreeable lady a Miss Stone of Framingham and they took east side of the double brick house on Main St. and began housekeeping Col Whiting had built this house a year or two before bringing the bricks in canal boats from Lowell up the river to the bottom of the lot, a feat of navigation that greatly interested us boys also that same season 1836 the monument at the battleground had been teamed from Carlise by Mr Wilkins and set up, where it could be seen from the windows of the Parsons study when I recited to him. But he had got settled and waked up by his new wife and home and lessons were more interesting and better after this vacation and I made some progress towards being fitted during that summer. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 1st of 2nd M Attended the Select Qrly Meeting It was a

86 time of some searching but on the whole a pretty good Meeting we had the company of our friends John Meader & wife Moses Beedie & Daniel Clapp & Susan Howland, who with the exception of Moses Beedie are out with minutes from their Meetings Dined at Wm Jenkins s - lodged at Jonathon Congdons RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS August 27, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 27 of 8 M / Both Meetings were solid good comfortable ones - father Rodman had short offerings in each. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS John Shepard Keyes, who had been a onetime schoolmate of Henry Thoreau s at the Concord Academy, stayed for several nights in his room in Stoughton Hall while taking the Harvard College entrance examinations.... the summer slipped away and the dreaded examination was at hand. The Monday before commencement then the last Wednesday in August was the appointed time. To reach Cambridge in season involved then going down Sunday night and my arrangements to spend the nights with David Henry Thoreau as we all called him then, had all been comfortably agreed upon. Armed with Parson Frosts certificate of good moral character, (precious little he knew about mine) and a carpet bag well stored with lunches and books I gladly mounted the mail stage about 5 PM & rode off. Nothing memorable can I remember happened on that momentous ride bearing a green boy to the first of his decisive trials in real life and I was dropped at the yard gate where Thoreau met me and took me to his room in Stoughton. I was anxious of the morrows fate overawed by the dull old college walls, and not a little inclined to be over thoughtful at the sudden change it all implied. But these fancies were soon dispelled, a burst of Thoreaus classmates into his room headed by Cha s. Theodore Russell, Trask, and others who chaffed Thoreau and his freshman in all sorts of ways, and took down some of our local pride, and Concord self conceit for which I soon found out that my host was as distinguished for in college as afterwards These roaring seniors fresh from vacation s fun and with no more college duties to worry about made a sharp contrast with a Sunday evening at home. It was seeing something of the end before even the beginning. There had been some kind of a row with the faculty and the trouble was carried into the Criminal Court and I had heard the county side of it at home, and now was told the students side by some of the actors or sympathizers and got some ideas of college discipline that varied essentially from the home notion It was startling and novel to hear Old Prex and the other nicknames familiarly applied to such dignitaries as Concord had almost worshipped, and I fear that the introduction wasnt of the most useful sort to just such a boy as I was. I had that evening recalled to mind scores of times since when I have met the laughing chaff of C.T. Russell who perhaps remembered it too. Early next morning after breakfast at the meagre commons, not yet filled at any but the seniors table, and so

87 poorer than at regular term time, I reported at Old Massachusetts, and as Mr Frosts scholar was assigned to a section with Mr. Hedges scholar of Plymouth, and Mr. s scholar of Boston, and ordered to an instructors room in university. Here on giving our names I found myself between Abraham Jackson and Samuel F McCleary Jr, and as our names thus accidentally came alphabetically, I touched elbows with them for the whole four years at prayers & recitations, no one ever coming in to alter the order of our names, a curious and remarkable instance! So we went on from teacher to tutor all that day, and at night I slept better than the previous one, as I was tired out and not disturbed by seniors that I remember. The next day my father appeared anxious to hear of his boy and while I finished the examinations, he strolled about the yard and found another father anxious like himself for his boy. The two struck up an acquaintance though as unlike as their sons, agreed to put them together in the tutors freshman room that I had secured by some introductory letter to Charles Mason, the Latin tutor. I was disgusted enough at the plan when announced as I had seen several much more agreeable fellows to chum with, but the result of the examination in which I had one or two conditions, didnt encourage me in an effective rebellion and I rode home in the chase with Father not quite so elated as I should have been if things had gone more to my liking I was admitted, and I had got the promise of driving to Phi Beta with my particular charmer, in Shepherds white chaise and bob tailed horse, if I succeed in passing examinations and the anticipations of such bliss were enough to make me forget other troubles. Mother was radiantly delighted and aided my hopes all in her power. But alas for boy s felicity, how I never exactly knew, but it fell through and I didnt go, and my beloved went with quite another party, whether by her own choice or through the manoeuvres of our respective fathers I cannot tell. Perhaps a little of both, as she was soon after engaged to that other fellow, and married him before I was out of college. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY September 1, Friday: Boston s volunteer fire brigades having proved in the recent riots pertaining to the Irish to be a source of rowdyism as well as a source of political cronyism, Mayor Samuel Eliot decided it was high time that his city transited a full-time professional fire department. The Hedge Club met again, this time at the home of Waldo Emerson in Concord. 17 transcendental souls attended (counting female transcendental souls). In a dense fog at 7AM, John Shepard Keyes had clambered atop Deacon Brown s accommodation stage in Concord, with black leather trunk and carpet bag he was on his way to become a Harvard Man! Real homesick I was till the fog lifted as we drove over the Lexington hills and changed horses there, and drove on to Cambridge by the foot of the locks, now Arlington Heights and Menotomy, or West Cambridge now Arlington by Porters just beginning as a cattle market, down North Avenue then a solitary country road, till the college buildings came in sight, grey with age, but the yard gay with students and the life of the

88 opening term. Stopping at the posts in the old wooden fence behind Holworthy the grumbling Deacon helped me in with my trunk to my room N o. 9 lower floor middle entry of Holworthy Hall, then a much despised, now a much coveted apartment. Here I began my college course, with a bed and washstand in my sleeping room, a small bureau and table two chairs and a locker a pail, lamp, and washbowl, and naught else, save a pine bookcase and standing desk so cheap and cumbrous that some Concord boy of former generations had left them as transmittendences to Concord students of whom I was then the only representative. These were duly welcomed and inscribed and I in turn transmitted them to my successors but they have long since departed, split up I guess for kindlings, or sold for a pittance by the more luxurious denizens of later years. At any rate when my son, who inquired for them in his college life, no trace or memory of them could be found. Here and thus I settled myself for what was to come My chum, a tall lank red haired uncouth fellow from Scituate, Ephraim Otis by name, soon made his appearance, even more meagrely fitted out than I and as much greener as he was older and as different as Concord from Scituate. How soon after I thoroughly hated and despised him I wont undertake to say. I believe it was before supper that night if it wasnt before dinner. What his miserly curmudgeon of a father, and my polished and courtly but anxious parent were thinking of when they yoked up such an unlike pair, I never understood. Mine I suppose went on the Concord rule of getting an old sedate and studious chum for the wild fellows that were sent from that county seat. My class only numbered forty five on entering and had as its numbers showed come in at the lowest ebb of the tide in the college life of the nineteenth century. Josiah Quincy was the President, and almost in his dotage, the Professors Channing Ware Beck Sales were nearly or quite in the same state, and the younger ones Fellow Pierce Longfellow Webster, Bowen and Lovering had none of their subsequent fame or reputation The scholarship and instruction were poorer, and inferior than ever before or since, so that it was at this beginning of its second century at the turning point of slack water. We had that to find out and to me certainly no student it didnt occur till I came in after years to look back on it and discover the fact. Of course I was then much more interested in the football game with the sophs and the anticipated hazing night than in lessons or text books. The first I had practised much on the common at home and could run well, and kick a fair bit and though I helped considerably we I believe were beaten in all or nearly all of our three games with the sophomores though when the juniors came to our aid and the seniors to theirs, we beat them, thanks to Baker s prowess and Ganson s knocks and Austins speed and Kings height all of them junior heroes to us that night. The hazing was mild and merciful to me who bought my peace with a bowl of punch from Willards, but my chum who refused to share the expense, was worse treated. It was rather horseplay without malice & not at all up to the raw head and bloody bones of which I have heard both before and since. Of my class whom I soon came to know every member as we recited together in nearly all our studies, there were but few who made much impression early. Sedgwick facile primus, a rosy

89 cheeked handsome nephew of Miss Sedwick the authoress, soon showed to the front in both lessons and class meetings, Higginson the youngest member, from Cambridge where his family lived on intimate terms with all the professors, was soon prominent while the Boston, New York, and other city boys for a time carried off the honors by their better dress and greater fitness for display I think I took kindly to college life at any rate before the Christmas vacation I had got to know every one in college by sight and name had built a bonfire or two in the yard simply because it was prohibited had joined Mr. Simmons Sunday class, and learned the way to the race track and stables beyond Porters, had on the night of November election in a big snow storm, had my first spree in H y 18. Tuckerman s room, of boiled sweet potatoes &c with something to wash it down, and though coming very near to it had not lost my matriculation As to studies I did as little as I could but had ransacked the library for books I had heard of but never read, and as then we had free access to the alcoves had learned where to find the treasures. I had some privates, but hadnt got to a public admonition and thorougly hated professors and tutors, & mildly even proctors, while for my elbow neighbours and the Worcester boys I had formed quite a friendship, and I might add the Portsmouth also. I remember nothing else in especial save a Sunday at home once a month, on one or two of which I walked up to save the stage fare, for money was short in the panic of 37, and on other Saturdays exploring Boston very thoroughly taking supper at the Parkers and walking up the lonely road from East Cambridge with my classmate Hall of that locality. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 1st of 9th M 1837 / Attended this PM the funeral of Henry Goddards wife, he being a descendent from friends & once a member of Society She was buried in Friends Ground in the Medow field. This Afternoon David Buffum read me a letter he had received from Philad. announcing the Arrival in this Country of Joseph John Gurney from England on a religious visit to friends in this country. he Arrived in Philadelphia on 6th day the 25th of 7th M 1837 after a long passage of about seven Weeks. After staying some days in Philadelphia he set out for Ohio Yearly Meeting accompanied by John Paul. - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS December 25, Saturday: Harvard College was on recess, for Christ was born! There were events in Concord, and events in Florida, and first for our amusement I ll provide you with the rather nice events in Concord as recorded for us later by John Shepard Keyes: This first vacation beginning the Wednesday before Decr 25th. as the catalogue had it to avoid any mention of Chirstmas [sic], was as I found when I came across recently a journal that I kept of my college vacations, one continuous spree. Dancing 5 or 6 nights in the week and a sing the others, sleighing skating or coasting by day. Father away at court my brothers too small to

90 interfere with my amusements and Mother to proud of her college lad to control him at the least. What fun what flirtations and frivolity, it was all spent with the Concord girls and their charms in my eyes were only equalled by their numbers. What a lingering regret it was to go back and how tame seemed the college sprees after the Concord ones. Luckily for me Lizzie Shattuck my nearest neighbor went to the Dana Hill school then kept by Mr Mack in the only house on Dana Hill between the college yard and the park proper, and as Caroline Brooks and Lizzie Prichard my nearest in age were at school in Boston I had with my other acquaintances about Cambridge in Malden Waltham Watertown &c some little female society in term time and this helped away the winter term J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Somehow, down in Florida, we found the time and energy for yet another episode in yet another of America s race wars (James Pierson Beckwourth took part in this one): Black Native Warriors? Where Had That Come From? December 1835 December 18, 1835 December 28, 1835 December 31, 1835 February-March 1836 October 12, 1836 November 21, 1836 January 27, 1837 December 25, 1837 January 15, 1838 January 24, 1838 The destruction of sugar plantations along the St. Johns River south of St. Augustine, Florida The battle of Black Point, west of the town of Micanopy in the Florida Territory Massacre of Major Francis Dade s troops heading for Fort King The 1st battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Clinch s Battle) The siege of Camp Izard The 2d battle on the Withlacoochee River of Florida (Call s Battle) An action in the Wahoo Swamp on the Withlacoochee River The battle of Hatcheelustee Creek at the head of the Kissimmee River The battle of Lake Okeechobee An action at Jupiter Inlet, on the east coast of Florida The battle of Lockahatchee SEMINOLES WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE SWAMP

91 On the basis of the above contemporary illustration, one might be tempted to infer that the battle had been the usual success for the white people. Actually, what happened was that the Seminole lured a force that outnumbered them three to one into a foolhardy frontal assault across a carefully prepared killing field, killed a whole bunch of them while they were attempting to extricate themselves from this trap and then vanished into the swamp. As a direct result of this inanity the commander of the whites would come to be popularly known as Old Rough and Ready. He eventually would become President of the United States of America, and would do about as good a good job in the White House as he had done on this Christmas day. WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE FLORIDA

92 The Battlefield

93 1838 July 24th, Tuesday, or 25th, Wednesday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson lectured in Hanover on LITERARY ETHICS before the literary societies of Dartmouth College. 33 The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my selftrust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. This is the moral of the Plutarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who give us the story of men or of opinions. Any history of philosophy fortifies my faith, by showing me, that what high dogmas I had supposed were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative culture, and only now possible to some recent Kant or Fichte, were the prompt improvisations of the earliest inquirers; of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In view of these students, the soul seems to whisper, There is a better way than this indolent learning of another. Leave me alone; do not teach me out of Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall find it all out myself. IMMANUEL KANT JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE THE LIST OF LECTURES In his autobiography, John Shepard Keyes would later reminisce about how he and his father John Keyes had accompanied Emerson on this lecture expedition: I can remember best my trip to Dartmouth College Hanover NH It was Fathers alma mater, and he perhaps thought it would be a better place for me than Cambridge. So as Mr Emerson was to make the address there before the literary societies we took him in charge and starting Saturday morning journeyed around Monadnock as it seemed to me all day and reached Keene N.H. at dark. Here we staid at the Cheshire House then a famous hostelry and as I had never been out of the state before I enjoyed myself greatly Father had friends there Gen Perry & others Mr Emerson was known and cordially welcomed by them And I saw that pleasant town over Sunday under favorable auspices. At dark that night we took the stage again for Walpole and after a striking drive by lamplight safely were housed at the tavern at Bellows Falls for a sleep, broken by the roaring waters, which I was out very early to see in all their romantic wildness. With Mr. Emerson my father who was quite familiar with them, showed us their huge worn pits and rocky ledges and points of interest until breakfast and the stage called us to resume the journey. All that day we rode up the Connecticut River admiring much its beautiful valley meadows hills and waters reaching Hanover late in the evening to find it bustling with commencement festivities. Mr E was carried off by the societies, and we found rooms and friends at the hotel. The next day Father renewed his youthful memories of people and places, he knew thirty years before finding less change than I had thought possible, while I left to my own devices strolled about the college campus and buildings making vastly unfavorable comparisons of it to my Cambridge. It was in holiday garb but 33. Lawrence Buell s comment on this talk is that it represented the 1st time any major literary figure had ever attempted to define an ethics of the literary, and that it wasn t much of a start. He says he s personally underwhelmed, and considers LITERARY ETHICS as merely a watered-down repetition of the talk the reverend had given in the previous summer at Harvard College, THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR with some gratuitous wilderness stuff thrown in to remind his audience that compared to his alma mater, their Dartmouth College was an intellectual backwater.

94 even that was tame and poor beside the rich and dashing Harvard. At the hotel was a bride the wife of a friend of Fathers a Mr. Spaulding of Nashua, a very young and lovely lady, and I paid her very assiduous attention which her old husband smiled on complacently and she accepted graciously in his absence at the college meetings he attended Of the commencement I remember but little only in my sophomoric conceit I thought the speakers green, and I fear was more impressed with the brides looks than with all orations &c. The address of Mr Emerson was a revelation to all who heard it, and reading it lately since its publication in the new edition of his works I was reminded of the stir to the life and spirit of those who heard it and his power and eloquence then for the first time. It made a great sensation partly because it shocked the orthodoxy and old-fashioned notions of the college and mainly because it voiced the new aspirations then just beginning to be felt all over New England. He received much admiration and attention from every one there, and we came in as his friends for a share of it though I confess that even the bride overlooked her soph for the sages conversation to my mortification. At the ball which closed the festivities I got even however as the lady danced finely dressed splendidly and shone so fairly as the belle in her wedding dress and cameo necklace, that I as her escort for her husband was too old to dance was in high feather again We parted after supper with arrangements all made by me, to have a special stage for our drive home with a select party, and I dreamed of her I feel sure, for I thought I had never seen anyone so lovely and some of the seniors treated me to a parting bumper in return for their introductions to the bride and Mr Emerson. We started early next morning in an extra stage, in which Mr Emerson Father Mr. Spaulding and several friends of theirs of the college or old graduates, and on the outside Mrs Spaulding and myself with the driver, and we climbed very deliberately over the long hills that make the back lane of New Hampshire The days ride was long hot and dusty Mrs S. sought the shade and comfort of the inside and I helped the driver & at last after dark, and with the incident of losing our way & the driver s getting off to climb a guide post and see what it said an experience I never knew repeated in all my staging, we reached Concord N.H. quite late in the evening. We were all too tired to do much but sleep except Mr. Emerson who had preached there years before and knew many of the people, and saw some of them late as it was. The next morning we looked over the town which I remember seemed smaller than our Concord, although it was the state capital and had some good buildings. It was always called then New Concord by Massachusetts people to distinguish it from ours, and was new looking. We took the Mammoth road line of stages because the driver promised me to drive 6 horses a feat I had never tried before, and I forget whether that parted us from the Spauldings or whether we left them at Nashua. Anyhow we reached Lowell in season to get brought in a carry all home Saturday night after an exciting and eventful week. My first journey from home of any length. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

95 1839 August 29, Thursday: John Shepard Keyes, who had been a schoolmate of Henry Thoreau at the Concord Academy, commented in his diary on a melon party, the first melons to ripen that year, that was being thrown by Thoreau in anticipation of his and his brother John Thoreau, Jr. s departure for an adventure from Concord MA to Concord, New Hampshire by boat and on into the White Mountains: Went up to see Henry Thoreau who is about starting on his expedition to the White Mts[.] in his boat. He has all things arranged prime and will have a glorious time if he is fortunate enough to have good weather. He showed me all the minutiae of packing and invited me up there to eat some fine melons in the evening... I spent... the rest of the time getting the fellows ready to go to the Thoreaus[ ] melon spree. We went about 9 and saw a table spread in the very handsomest style with all kinds and qualities of melons and we attacked them furiously and I eat [sic] till what with the wine & all I had quite as much as I could carry home. This is perhaps the Thursday evening party mentioned by Professor Walter Roy Harding as in a recently discovered letter : David had a party of gentlemen, Thursday evening, to eat melons. I went in to see the table, which was adorned with sunflowers, cornstalks, beet leaves & squash blossoms. There were forty-six melons, fifteen different kinds; & apples, all the production of his own garden. This is the only thing of interest that has happened in town this week. When we went in to see the tables, Mrs. Thoreau felt called upon to apologize for Henry having a party, it having been spread abroad by her that such customs met with his contempt & entire disapprobation.

96 1840 During this decade, the antislavery Liberty Party would be in process of forming. Myron Holley would be instrumental in the formation of this political grouping. Among the founders of this new group was Friend John Greenleaf Whittier: I early saw the necessity of separate political action on the part of Abolitionists. And was one of the founders of the Liberty Party the germ of the present Republican Party. The new political formation would be at first opposed by the Garrisonian abolitionists, but then they would reconcile with this party just prior to the election of this year in which it was clear that the candidate of the Whigs, William Henry Harrison, was going to be elected President regardless of the enslavement issue on the basis of their platform of tax revision, distribution of surplus revenue, passage of a federal bankruptcy bill, establishment of a new Bank of the United States, and settlement of boundary disputes with British Canada. Waldo Emerson would label this Whig officeholder an Indignation President : Presidential Candidate Political Party Electoral Votes Popular Votes 1840 WILLIAM H. HARRISON Whig 234 1,275,390 MARTIN VAN BUREN Democratic 60 1,128,854 In his autobiography, John Shepard Keyes would reminisce about the drunken partying that had gone down in Boston as a result of the Harrison/Whig triumph: The election that resulted in Harrisons victory was a terrible rain storm in Massachusetts and I recall driving all day and night about Boston getting returns and waiting at the Atlas office where I already knew some of the staff and the jollification that ensued over the bright prospect of success. Ned Stimson who was with me, and I had a symposium at my room in honor of it, and a champagne bottle that I tossed hitting him in the head floored him so instantly that it seemed like death & sobered the others and frightened me so that I have been careful since of bottles! What a hurrah there was over the election and how the excitement kept up till after the inauguration and death of Gen Harrison The effects of the debauch for such it was lasted all winter and into the next spring in the body politic, for it opened a new vein and began a new era in political management that forty years has hardly ended. If the temperance movement had then began it was a serious drawback to its progress and it as I recollect well set the champagne flowing at private parties as well as in the college rooms, and more public balls. But I didnt care for anything or any body that winter but myself and good times. & I recall a sleigh ride to a Lexington party at the Phinneys where we drank bumpers, and I upset in the Wellington yard coming home with a pretty Miss W. but without harm and another at Danas in east Lexington where we had magnums of champagne at supper, and I rode home horseback in the moonlight after finishing I should not dare to say whether 3 or 4! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

97 Our national birthday, Saturday the 4th of July: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne s 36th birthday. William Johnson of Natchez, a free black man who was himself a slavemaster (!) as well as being a barber and a successful businessman, kept a diary of short entries, hardly missing a day between 1836 and This diary has seen publication as William Johnson s NATCHEZ, THE ANTE-BELLUM DIARY OF A FREE NEGRO, ed. William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis (1951, 1979, and a Louisiana State UP paperback in 1993). Here is one of a series of Johnson s 4th-of-July entries: Business was Quite Dull, this being the 4th of July. I did not Keep open more than half of the Day but walked out into the Pasture to see How the Citizens were Engaging themselves and I found them all in find Humor and in good order. At Cherry Valley, New York, on the centennial anniversary of that town s settlement, William H. Seward delivered an oration. In the US House of Representatives, Congressman Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts presented a proposal that the House decide on claims by Revolutionary soldiers for their relief. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where a large amphitheater-shaped pavilion collapsed, nearly 1,000 people were thrown down but God allowed no fatalities. In Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island, a Clam Bake was held at which 220 bushes of clams were consumed as evidence of patriotic citizenry. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY Orestes Augustus Brownson s provocative essay The Laboring Classes was in the current issue of the Boston Quarterly Review to promote the re-election of President Martin Van Buren and to aid the cause of the Democrats against the Whigs and their candidate, William Henry Harrison. The author rang in memories of the economic crisis of 1837, declaring that No one can observe the signs of the times with much care without perceiving that a crisis as to the relation of wealth and labor is approaching. The struggle between wealth and labor was inherent in all of America s social structures, particularly the wage system, and could not be resolved except by a revolutionary alteration of such structures. First among the institutions to be reformed would have to be the Christian church, as symbolized by the attitudes of its clergy. Contrary to Christ s gospel, which called us to establish justice and God s kingdom on earth, preaching was turning people s eyes toward heaven with an elusive promise of eternal happiness. Government needed to limit its own powers, and to virtually eliminate the banking system, in order to protect the workers from the wealthy. Finally, the author called for the abolition of all monopoly and of all privilege, especially the inheritance of property: as we have abolished hereditary monarchy and hereditary nobility, we must complete the work by abolishing hereditary property. What the Reverend was responding to, in this manner, was the essay Self-Culture, published by the Reverend William Ellery Channing in 1838, in which it had been presumed that the primary focus of our energies should be upon our own rectification rather than on the rectification of society in general which was an end in itself rather than merely a means to a greater end. Brownson declared that Self-culture is a good thing, but it cannot abolish inequality, nor restore men to their rights. 34 To Brownson s dismay, in this balloting the voters went with the Whigs. With the loss of power by the Democrats, he would suddenly be deprived of his politically sponsored stewardship of the United States Marine Hospital in Chelsea MA. Deeply disappointed, he would begin to sift through the socio-political fragments of his shattered religious vision. The election had demonstrated that individual and social reform, he would decide, could not spring from imperfect human nature and inadequate human effort, but only from a power higher than the electorate and the vote. Politically, this would necessitate a constitutional republic rooted in the divine will, but one which in order to protect the rights of minorities would favor states rights. Philosophically, this would necessitate his adoption of Plato s doctrine of ideas and his adjustment of Pierre 34.Refer to Robinson, David. APOSTLE OF CULTURE: EMERSON AS PREACHER AND LECTURER. Philadelphia PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 1982.

98 Leroux s doctrine of communion, which held that humans lived by communion through the medium of institutions with a reality other than their individual selves, the Not-Me : individuals communed with nature by way of the institution of property, individuals communed with other individuals by way of the institutions of the family and of government, and individuals communed with God through the institution of the church. Theologically, Brownson would come to believe, as Christ s organic extension in space and time, the institution of the church constituted the sole medium of God s saving grace. Human nature could institute nothing higher than itself; hence only a divine power mediated through Christ s church would be capable of effecting the progress of humankind. 1,200 people came into Concord from Lowell for the big day of the national political campaign. The other two roads into Concord were also jammed with visitors from the surrounding towns of Middlesex County. A log cabin on wheels was drawn into town by a team of 23 horses, while 150 celebrants sat in this rolling cabin chugging hard cider. The delegates from Boston and the eastern vicinity formed a queue that was all of two miles long, with bands by the dozen. The main spectacle of the day, however, was an enormous wooden ball, 12 to 13 feet in diameter and painted red, white, and blue, that was being rolled out to Concord from Cambridge on this leg of its journey toward Washington DC. The Tippecanoe Club was sponsoring this ball and the slogans painted on it had to do with the Whig candidates, nominee William Henry Harrison for the President and John Tyler for the Vice-President. On the Lexington Road, Waldo Emerson and his group watched this ball roll past, and some of the group helped to push the ball along. 35 The main speeches took place, of course, near the Battle Monument on the south bank of the Concord River. The speeches began only after arrival of a barge from Billerica which, loaded with ladies, had encountered some difficulties in getting over a mud bank below Ball s Hill. Then there was free barbecue and cider in the largest tent ever set up in Middlesex County, seating 6,000, with 4,000 more being forced to wait outside the tent. 36 Horace Rice Hosmer would recollect much later that The political campaign of 1840 Harrison & Tyler was a drunken one, because all drank rum from habit and custom and they drank hard cider to emphasize their political principles, and the result was terrific. He was the only Loco Foco among the students and staff (that is, the only Democrat, everyone else having Whig sympathies). He remembered John Thoreau as an ardent Whig and his political war-cry was Tippecanoe and Tyler too. At that time the great wooden red, white, and blue ball that was the symbol of the party, some 12 feet high, was being kept in the front yard of David Loring s house on Main Street just to the north of the Concord Academy. When Emerson first delivered his The Poet lecture, in Boston in 1841, the Whigs had just used this as a political stunt of the 1840 campaign to demonstrate growing support for their candidate. Little Horace later remembered some of the graffiti on this ball, which must have been most fascinating: O er ever ridge we ll roll the Ball, From Concord Bridge to Faneuil Hall. Farewell poor Van, To guide our Ship, We ll try Old Tip. 35. In 1844, in his essay The Poet, published in ESSAYS, 2D SERIES, Emerson would use an allusion to this political gimmick used by the campaign supporters of William Henry Harrison, Keep the ball a-rolling! See the great ball which they roll from Baltimore to Bunker hill! 36. This was the election year in which people began singing campaign songs, and in which politics became popular entertainment. For an extended period in the 19th Century in the USA, in fact until the campaign of 1888, voter turnouts of 85% to 95% were not at all unusual. At a political rally, one could count on thousands of people being willing to stand and listen to hour-long political speech after hour-long political speech, in the rain. Voters supported the political association of their choice exactly as sports fans now support the team of their choice. Were we, today, to go back from our present 50% turnout for presidential elections to that sort of political involvement, the result would be a rebirth of our democracy, or its death.

99 This Ball must roll, it cannot halt, Benton can t save himself with salt. By another account, the graffiti included: Farewell poor Van, You r [sic] not the man To guide our Ship. We ll try Old Tip. In his autobiography, John Shepard Keyes would later reminisce about the events of the celebration in Concord this year, and would mention having been present at a wedding reception for Reuben Nathan R.N. Rice and his bride Mary Harriet Hurd (daughter of Colonel Isaac Hurd, Jr. and granddaughter of Dr. Isaac Hurd), who had gotten married on July 1st: Interestingly, this reception had been hosted at the Thoreau house (we may well note how characteristic it is, that Henry made no mention of such matters as the hosting of a wedding reception, in his journal): This excitement was soon followed by the celebration of the Fourth of July by the greatest political gathering ever held in Concord, of the Harrison and Tyler campaign The tippecanoe clubs from every town came with banners and flags with log cabins and hard cider, and in teams on horseback in canal boats and on foot filled the streets to overflowing. The preparations were on a grand scale, a speakers stand, and booth of immense proportions was set up on the lot southwest of the present Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and a procession formed in the square that extended to the monument at the battleground, around which they marched with bands and escort flags and devices including the big ball, a huge affair a dozen feet in diameter made of a frame covered with cloth and inscribed with mottoes of all the political bye words songs and phrazes in letters that could be read as it rolled on drawn by ropes in the hands of earnest sturdy yeomen. The charm of such an occasion drew me home days before, and I was busier in its work than in my studies, cutting for it recitations and exercises, and even such examinations as we had then which amounted to next to nothing The great day came and fine weather and entire success greeted it. The Democrats got up a rival affair at Lexington but it was so tame and poor that it only added zest to ours, and it went off with a wild hurrah. I witnessed the gathering and march of the four or five thousand

100 men from the cupola of the Court House, where with a bevy of girls of my own selection, we enjoyed the grand pageant to the utmost. Then escorting them to the booth we listened to the stirring speeches partook of the crackers and hard cider so liberally provided for the multitude and saw many of the great leaders of the old Wig party and heard their eloquence for the first time. Especially I recall that several of the speakers were guests at our house and that one of then Hon Myron Lawrence of Belchertown whose great size and powerful voice made him a prominent figure in that campaign had the night before a terrible attack of asthma, that frightened me out of my sleep by his horrible breathing and who I expected would certainly die of choking before morning, but who rallied, recovered his voice, and filled the whole audience and the entire valley with his stertorous tones at the dinner tables. Henry Wilson made his first appearance then, and excited much interest as the Natick cobbler The day ended with R.N. Rices wedding and reception at the Thoreau house on the square opposite my fathers, where we had a jolly time winding up the festivities with a champagne super J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY July 4, 1840: 4 o clock A.M. The Townsend Light Infantry encamped last night in my neighbor s inclosure. The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood, when a few soldiers gather about one tent in the twilight, and their band plays an old Scotch air, with bugle and drum and fife attempered to the season. It seems like the morning hymn of creation. The first sounds of the awakening camp, mingled with the chastened strains which so sweetly salute the dawn, impress me as the morning prayer of an army. 37 And now the morning gun fires. The soldier awakening to creation and awakening it. I am sure none are cowards now. These strains are the roving dreams which steal from tent to tent, and break forth into distinct melody. They are the soldier s morning thought. Each man awakes himself with lofty emotions, and would do some heroic deed. You need preach no homily to him; he is the stuff they are made of. The whole course of our lives should be analogous to one day of the soldier s. His Genius seems to whisper in his ear what demeanor is befitting, and in his bravery and his march he yields a blind and partial obedience. The fresher breeze which accompanies the dawn rustles the oaks and birches, and the earth respires calmly with the creaking of crickets. Some hazel leaf stirs gently, as if anxious not to awake the day too abruptly, while the time is hastening to the distinct line between darkness and light. And soldiers issue from their dewy tents, and as if in answer to expectant nature, sing a sweet and far-echoing hymn. We may well neglect many things, provided we overlook them. When to-day I saw the Great Ball rolled majestically along, it seemed a shame that man could not move like it. All dignity and grandeur has something of the undulatoriness of the sphere. It is the secret of majesty in the rolling gait of the elephant, and of all grace in action and in art. The line of beauty is a curve. Each man seems striving to imitate its gait, and keep pace with it, but it moves on regardless and conquers the multitude with its majesty. What shame that our lives, which should be the source of planetary motion and sanction the order of the spheres, are full of abruptness and angularity, so as not to roll, nor move majestically. Early in September: There was a Whig gathering on Boston Common, that would be described in the autobiography of John Shepard Keyes: Our senior year began almost with an incident not very conducive 37. Also, written in pencil on a fly-leaf of the journal, we find I have heard a strain of music issuing from a soldiers camp in the dawn, which sounded like the morning hymn of creation. The birches rustling in the breeze and the slumberous breathing of the crickets seemed to hush their murmuring to attend to it.

101 to study, the great Whig gathering on Boston Common early in September. Here Tippecanoe & Tyler too men formed and marched to Bunker Hill, the big ball of Concord heading the Middlesex Delegation and creating great interest as it rolled on In the thills were Father Jos Barrett Sam Hoar Deas Brown and Wood, Cols Shattuck & Whiting and the other magnates of the village and on the ropes were lots of us boys I so well recall that at a halt in State St I procured a bunch of cigars from some enthusiastic Whig of Boston and handing them round, all the old dons lighted up and smoked defiantly of all city ordinances It was the first smoking I ever saw done openly in Boston streets, for then even college boys walking home would have to put off their cigars till they got to the bridge or run the risks of a policeman s stopping them, so strictly was the rule enforced. We labored at the drag ropes up Bunker Hill, heard Webster, Choate, Everett, and N.Y. and Va orators in plenty and wound up the day at John Skinners house on Main Street, with a great spread and lots of fun and champagne. How I got back to Cambridge I dont remember or when after it I got to studying but I fancy the politics had much more attraction for me than lessons, and I know that it was the begining of many pleasant visits to Charlestown and that family that lasted for more than a dozen years, till Harry Fairbanks time. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

102 1841 Henry Jacob Bigelow, who had been a classmate of David Henry Thoreau until being dismissed on April 24, 1837 for having been in possession of firearms and ammunition in his dorm room and repeatedly discharging a firearm inside that room (MH-Ar Faculty Records UAIII IX, 311), had completed his studies at Dartmouth College. He was granted the degree of M.D. at Harvard College. After graduating at Harvard 2d in his class, the impoverished Charles Stearns Wheeler had needed to stay on for a salary. In September 1838, following the nervous collapse of Jones Very, he had taken over as Greek tutor under Professor of Greek Literature Cornelius Conway Felton, and in January 1839 he added to this the duties of instructor in history under Professor of Ancient and Modern History Jared Sparks. As a member of the Parietal Committee (a permanent standing committee made up of proctors and officers of instruction who resided within the college walls, or in buildings over which the college had superintendence), Wheeler had some difficulties in managing the students; for instance they broke out the windows of his room. He would come to regard this task of disciplining the general student rowdiness as incompatible with teaching, and eventually he would urge Harvard President Josiah Quincy, Sr. to implement a number of reforms, including eliminating mandatory worship, elevating the study of English literature, and loosening the disciplinary code. In his autobiography, John Shepard Keyes would reminisce about a Harvard rebellion created by an attempt by Wheeler to discipline a student, Simmons from which he had been rescued in the nick of time by his family, which rescue had enabled him to avoid detection and continue as a student to his graduation: But all this was lame to what was coming an old friend of mine Stearns Wheeler of Lincoln who had fitted for college in the Concord Academy, and a thoroughly good but obstinate fellow was Greek tutor and chairman of the Parietal Committee. His room in the east end of Holworthy was the place of their meeting, and they looked after the discipline of the students. Wheeler was conscientious and some small escapades of a set of our class coming to his knowledge, he set out to catch them, and in so doing had a personal collision with Simmons on the Delta I think, spying on him For this Simmons was expelled, and his set of fellows severely punished in other ways. The class took it up and bore Simmons off in a barouch and four white horses after prayers at night, with half a dozen of the best scholars as his companions in open defiance of the authorities That night the college was in an uproar and all rules were openly violated in the yard and buildings. The Parietal met in Wheelers room and occasionally sallied out to stop some disturbances My sober and sedate chum, one of the first eight in scholarship got greatly excited and vowed to lock them into their room when they returned to their session Watching from our window we saw them go back in squads to Hy 20 in the east entry stealing up the stairs Farnsworth quietly turned the key in the lock of the door and he thought he had them fast, but the door was ajar, and they sprang after him. He rushed up stairs hoping to find an open room or an escape but none offered and in the fourth story there was only the open window of the entry. Desperate but bold the got out of the window and held on to the ledge by his hands. Not seeing him his pursuers returned for a light to make a closer search, when he kicked his feet through the sash of the 3d story window and with this support he climbed back into the entry. The noise of the breaking glass drew the Parietals out into the yard in a pursuit of the stone throwers, and my chum walked coolly

103 down by them and up to our room unsuspected It was a feat of nerve and strength few collegians then would have dared and it made him quite a hero for the nonce. That night a meeting of the class was called for the next morning under the Rebellion tree, and with no debate and but little noise and great firmness we decided to attend no exercises until Simmons was returned, the others let up and Wheeler dismissed, and sent it as our ultimatum to the faculty. Every member with the exception of Higginson signed the paper, and we sent it to the President by a committee. The faculty met and refused it, and threatened But the other classes joined with us and for several days the college was in full Rebellion, no prayers, no recitations, no anything but gatherings in the yard cheers of defiance, groans for any officer seen in the yard, and general rowdiness. How it ended I never exactly knew for Uncle David Jr. going home from Cambridge and stopping to leave my washing that he alway carried, gave such a wildly exciting account of matters there, that Father started in the moonlight and drove to Cambridge to bring me home. Arrived after midnight a knocking at my door though it waked me yet as I thought it some fellow wanting me for some deviltry I slept on tired with the excitement of the day while poor Father finding the college all quiet was forced to try Willards who wasnt easy to rouse up after he had retired at the call of belated students, and I am inclined to the belief kept the old gentleman cooling his wrath and his heels all night Any way he knocked again before sunrise and after finding Farnsworth, and I quietly abed, and very cool and unexcited over the Rebellion insisted on carrying me home to keep me out of mischief, and as that avoided examinations if there were any I unwillingly consented, and we drove home to a late breakfast. Thus I got an additional vacation of a week or more while the Rebellion simmered down & at last petered out. So after a good time at home I came back to hear my name read out among those having parts at commencement, my first last and only college honor. The class graduated forty four in number, and twenty three or one more than half had parts assigned them Mine was a dis something sertation or quisition I dont remember which with two other fellows Minot and [in pencil, possibly in another hand: Rice] subject Rome Athens & Jerusalem. I was utterly astonished, and so was everbody else, none more so than Father who feared much I should lose my degree. The only way I could ever account for it was that the theme I mentioned carried my marks higher than Minots and as he must have a part, I couldnt be left out of one. Any way I got it, wrote it in the 6 weeks before vacation that the senior class then had without lessons for the purpose, and enjoyed those weeks too in many ways till Class Day came. Ours was a failure. Orne the orator was drunk over night and the oration a muddle with out sense or declamation in which he excelled. The poem I dont remember, and the spreads few and poor. The dancing on the green I had anticipated as so many of my lady friends were to be there but it didnt go off well, and the cheering and tree were unenthusiastic. The class supper at the Maverick House East Boston was the best part. Farnsworth and I drove over sat it out and got back at sunrise!! I packed my trunk, said goodbye to my room and college and

104 without a regret left for home in the mail stage that stopped at the same gate as I entered at, and landed me in Concord to breakfast How some trifling incidents cling to the memory I can see that morning and the yard and room as distinctly now after more than forty years while all else even of these recollections are blurred and hazy as was the morning I left home to enter. Why this is thus who can say? J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY September: At the Harvard College commencement exercises this year, Concord s John Shepard Keyes and Thomas Wentworth Higginson were receiving their undergraduate degrees. Keyes would go on to become a lawyer like his father. After a visit with some Virginia relatives during which he would have a personal opportunity to witness the actuality of human enslavement, Higginson would be going on into the college s divinity school. Thoughts of commencement soon became uppermost, cards of invitation to my spread had to be written and sent to my particular friends, as different from the sleek engraved ones I now receive, as the home dainties that Mother made and Betsy cooked from the caterers luxuries of the present day. My part too had to be copied and committed to memory and sent in for correction, and Mr Goodwins black silk gown borrowed of his widow for the occasion & lots of other preparations. I forget how many rehearsals old Channing required but enough to take me back to Cambridge some days before the great day and to have our goodbye sprees duly finished and to take leave of all the college. I suppose it was my fault but I could not recall a helping word or a kind act or a useful hint from any one of my college instructors in my whole course. I found not a friend among them, and our whole relations were that of foes and the course a battle. I did not love either my alma mater, or any of her officers, and did not care to ever see one of them again, unless perhaps our two preachers Drs Walker and Palfrey, whom I respected truly. Of course under this state of things I had got but little advantage from my course, and the quos scio idoneos esse of my diploma was the rankest sarcasm, as many of us thought. I said before that the college was then at its lowest ebb, for before there had been zeal and ambition in its students, if not in the instructors but in my day, the outside interests were taking strong hold of the students, and the professors & tutors had not learned to grapple with these problems in a way to excite or inform their pupils. The whole was to me and to most of those I knew a perfunctory task on both sides and poorly enough performed. Except some leading of my own choice, and the intercourse with bright fellows of my own age, I never have seen any advantages my A.B. brought or that I got for the time and money spent there. My expenses for term bills, board, clothes, and pocket money were 1st year $. 2n year $ 3d year $ 4th year $ in all $ as I find on looking back to my account books, and I fear it was but wasted principally through my own fault Commencement Day brought its crowds of graduates, girls, and gallants, governor and guards, and the old church on the square was packed full, and the sea of upturned faces that greeted me when I mounted the platform

105 was a sight to unnerve a bolder man. The parts were then all delivered in the inverse order of their rank except the latin salutatory. This being first and serving as it wasnt understood only to get the audience settled in their seats, mine followed and so had the best place in the programm. I was satisfied with it whatever others were, and though it was so jejune sophomoric, and commonplace that I couldnt be hired to read it now, it was a surprise and pleasure to my acquaintances and went off better than even I expected. The others dragged on for hours, and when the orations came the throng were too tired and hungry to enjoy them even if they had been masterpieces as they were not, for there were no brilliant men in the class and Tom Higginson the youngest & perhaps the brightest had the salutatory of which I have spoken. The exercises over, my room was filled with my friends including all the Concordites and Walthamites, and the spread was very agreeable. One young lady an old schoolmate was fortunately present for the first time at commencement, and meeting her with the friends she was with, I brought her in my triumph to my room to see her Concord friends, little dreaming then of the effect she was to have on all my after life, and only glad she should see the proudest day of my life. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY September 19, Sunday: John Shepard Keyes, done with his formal education without having learned very much at all, trying to figure out what on earth he was going to do with the rest of his life, began to read law in his father John Keyes s Concord office. He informs us in passing that, despite his general feckless indolence, he was hanging out with the likes of Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Henry Thoreau. Enough of college, I came back to Concord and taking two or three weeks to think about what I should do about various chances for teaching, including a Kentucky school Dr Jarvis wrote to me of from Louisville and one in New York Mr Shackford knew of, and a plan for going out to India with Augustine Heard that came to nothing, I decided on the law I was not fit for a school master, had no facilities for getting into business and as Father evidently preferred it I entered my name in his office Sept 19, 1841 my twentieth birthday and began Blackstone. The office was then in the northwest corner of the Robbins harness shop that stood on the site of the Town House yard, at the corner of Bedford Street, and the business being given up the other parts were in use as Irish tenements. It was a pleasant room facing the common under the shade of the big elm with an open piazza over the door that was very inviting in summer, as from its shelter the Court House, jail tavern stores all the life of the village could be seen. Here I brought Dr Ripleys old secretary, my college sofa, a chair or two, and taking down from the dusty shelves of Fathers law book case a well worn copy of the commentaries, read 8 hours a day Into all the life there was going in Concord I was soon plunged. Father had a little law business, but not enough to be much of an interruption to my reading, I kept pretty strictly to my work for the day time, but my evenings were devoted to some thing else. Mr. Emerson had

106 then the habit of assembling at his house all the villagers that were interested in the discussions of the Transcendentalists by whom he was surrounded. Margaret Fuller, A.B. Alcott, et id omne genus held forth in his parlor to any who would listen and an additional attraction to me was Saint Mary then teaching his children and living there who inspired me with something of the worship devout Catholics have for their saints, and drew me there oftener than philosophy would. Then my friend of commencement day whose father and mine from being old friends and townsmen in their birthplace, had quarrelled over anti masonry and didnt speak to each other, was visiting at one of my daily resorts, and attracted me the more perhaps from the fact of the quarrel. A photographer or daguerrotyper rather had opened a saloon in Shepherds Hall and to it as a new art all Concord flocked to be taken and criticize. I had seen the plates of Daguerres own work when they were first exhibited in Boston at a show, and became somewhat interested in the art. I had kept up my pleasant acquaintance with Thoreau who was at this time living in his shanty at Walden, where I sometimes went to see him, and oftener met him in his walks or on the river. I had some of his naturalist instincts and tastes, used to compare notes with him on birds and beasts, though I was no botanist as he was. His life in Walden, has been somewhat misrepresented as it was by no means so much that of a hermit as is now thought He was at Mr Emersons & the village nearly every day, often partaking of his meals there and at his fathers house and though not intrusive was altogether too egotistic to be either shy or retiring He loved the woods the pond and the river and having met a disappointment in his other love, sought their consolation in preference to that of society. I had built and took great pleasure in a dainty boat named the Fanny Elssler that would barely carry two, and was almost as crank as the wherries of later date In this I occasionally persuaded a lady friend to risk a row on the river. I recall once at high water landing with Jane Whiting on Egg Rock, and while sitting chatting on the top, seems Fanny Elssler quietly float downstream beyond recall. Waiting and wondering how we should get away for it was an island at that stage of the spring floods old Capt Moore came whistling along was hailed and brought back the truant boat, with a grin on his old face, and a story of the adventure I heard of often At another time with Martha, the oar caught in roping under the bridge, the current tipped the boat and we were barely saved by great exertion from drowning and ending prematurely this interesting story J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

107 October 12, Tuesday: The combined British detachment that had ventured out from the relative safety of the metropolis, Cabul, Afghanistan, by this morning had become large enough to transit the pass of Khoord-Cabul, and this was effected with some loss due to long range sniper fire down from the rocks at the sides of the defile. The force then set up a defensive camp perimeter on the far side of the defile at Khoord-Cabul and the 13th light infantry again subjected itself to losses due to its exposure to this unrelenting rifle fire, by returning through the pass to its defensive camp perimeter at Bootkhak. For some nights the camps would repel attacks, that on the 35th native infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death. 38 Frederick Douglass addressed the Middlesex County Anti-Slavery Society at the Universalist meetinghouse in Concord. We very much need to know who was in town at the time, and who did and who did not attend this meeting: Bronson Alcott? Abba Alcott? Anna Bronson Alcott? Louisa May Alcott (8 years old)? Phineas Allen? 38. Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, ). THE MILITARY OPERATIONS AT CABUL: WHICH ENDED IN THE RETREAT AND DESTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH ARMY, JANUARY 1842, WITH A JOURNAL OF IMPRISONMENT IN AFFGHANISTAN. Philadelphia PA: Carey and Hart, 1843; London: J. Murray, 1843 (three editions); Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, ). PRISON SKETCHES: COMPRISING PORTRAITS OF THE CABUL PRISONERS AND OTHER SUBJECTS; ADAPTED FOR BINDING UP WITH THE JOURNALS OF LIEUT. V. EYRE, AND LADY SALE; LITHOGRAPHED BY LOWES DICKINSON. London: Dickinson and Son, [1843?]

108 Perez Blood? Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks? Squire Nathan Brooks? Caroline Downes Brooks? George Merrick Brooks? Deacon Simon Brown? Mrs. Lidian Emerson? Waldo Emerson? Reverend Barzillai Frost? Margaret Fuller? William Lloyd Garrison? Nathaniel Hawthorne? Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar? Edward Sherman Hoar? Senator George Frisbie Hoar? Elizabeth Sherman Hoar? Squire Samuel Hoar? Dr. Edward Jarvis? Deacon Francis Jarvis? John Shepard Keyes, Judge John Shepard Keyes? John M. Keyes? Reverend George Ripley? Mrs. Sophia Dana Ripley? Reverend Samuel Ripley? Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley? Lemuel Shattuck? Daniel Shattuck? Sheriff Sam Staples? Henry David Thoreau? John Thoreau, Senior? Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau? John Thoreau, Jr.? Helen Louisa Thoreau? Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau? Aunt Maria Thoreau? Aunt Jane Thoreau? Alek Therien? Miss Prudence Ward?

109 1842 May: Catholics established St. John s Church, under the Reverend John B. Fitzpatrick, serving worshipers in Cambridge, Somerville, and points west. (This would become the Sacred Heart Parish.) The minister to Concord s Universalists, Addison Grant Fay, was ordained, and in a small structure on newly opened Bedford Street, a Universalist society was organized. They agreed to pay their new minister a salary of $ per year. However, this religious grouping would persist for only a few years and the building they constructed would be recycled by Concord s Catholics. Fay would go on first into the pencil-making business and then into gunpowder, and eventually would meet his maker as the result of one of the series of explosions at the powder mills of Acton. In his autobiography, John Shepard Keyes reminisced about this period in the life of Concord, inclusive of the remarkable event of July 28, 1842, when Horace Brown, Jr. robbed and then torched the store of Phineas How (resulting in How s bankruptcy and resulting also in Brown needing to spend the rest of his life in confinement): There was some religious excitement too a new minister at the Universalest Church Mr Fay, afterwards a politician and powder maker and I think some Methodist interest started Dr Ripley had died the fall before while the old church was undergoing a thorough alteration, the old spire was with much effort pulled over, the building turned round and raised up, a vestry made underneath and new pews, pulpit, frescoes & hymn books and Mr. Frost freed from the restraint of the old Dr. started up some new life in the old parish. I became interested and not only went very regularly but took a Sunday school class, and read good books, and talked seriously with my friend of these things. That season we were greatly excited and alarmed by the burning of Phineas Hows new store, where my cousin Henry Fuller tended, who was my most intimate friend of the Concord boys. I worked hard on the engine to save the other houses, and as it was discovered that the store had been robbed and set on fire, helped watch and patrol the town for some nights afterwards to try to catch the thieves. It was soon found out that an old school mate Horace Brown had broken in plundered and burnt the store some of the property was recovered from Merrills blacksmith shop where it was stored by Brown, and he arrested examined and sent to prison. It was exciting enough for a quiet village and as How failed and was found hopelessly bankrupt it made more than a nine days wonder. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY September: At the beginning of the Harvard College school year, John Shepard Keyes entered its law school. At the beginning of the college year I entered the Cambridge Law School taking with my old class mate M c Clury a room in Graduates Hall, over the stores and facing the rear, and boarding at Mrs. Clarks, and coming home Sundays. The Law School was in its palmiest days, Judge Story lectured and taught in his absences from the United States Court, and was at the zenith of his powers and usefulness. Simon Greenleaf was the resident professor

110 giving us all the benefit of his long experience and through training. Several other lecturers on special topics Charles Sumner, R H Dana, among them helped, and the difference between the college and the law school was marked. I knew many of the students and soon found the advantage of my office and court experience over those without this in understanding and applying the books to practise. I studied hard, and was helped and really taught much. M c. was rather boyish for a chum, but I was sobered down enough to keep him in check, and at Mrs Clarkes a new and younger sett looked up to us older ones as I had done on first going there. All began well, and I made many new acquaintances among the students, of whom several became life friends. The weeks went rapidly with Saturday and Sunday at home, I recall my twenty first birthday Sept , when I felt myself a man and had a long walk with my friend and I received a present from her that was long remembered. During the Thanksgiving holidays I became engaged to her, and was as happy and as much in love, as ever a fellow was. My father was delighted with the engagement, and took the greatest pleasure in showing every kindness and attention to Martha, perhaps from the return of his old friendship for the family so long interrupted, and every one I cared about was satisfied. Her friends were not so well pleased but this didnt trouble us as we could enjoy their dissatisfaction in the fulness of our happiness. So the winter flew on the visits home and the letters between filling the time so full that the law suffered. I wrote and delivered a lecture before the Concord Lyceum on crime and had a moot court case in the school and in the long vacation resumed my desk in Fathers office for as much of the time as I could not spend better. We went together to all that was worth the trouble, and visited at Waltham &c to see and be seen by our relatives, I finished the year at Cambridge and found the summer term and vacation only too short. In June we had at Concord the famous Webster week when at the trial of the Phoenix Bank officers for the embezzlement of its funds they were defended by Daniel Webster Rufus Choate Sidney Bartlett and Franklin Dexter of Boston. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

111 1844 John Shepard Keyes of Concord began to practice law. March 5, Tuesday: Affairs were a mite disagreeable among the curators at the Concord Lyceum. The committee voted to invite the outrageous antislaver Wendell Phillips to lecture whereupon curators the Reverend Barzillai Frost and John Keyes resigned to register outrage at such an allowance for diversity of opinion. Whereupon the remaining curators, clearly relieved that these two were gone, voted to fill their emptied positions with Waldo Emerson and with Henry Thoreau.... that winter we entertained Dr Sears & Dr Hayes Lyceum lecturers for with Mr Emerson and Mr Frost I was a curator of that institution and had a regular quarrel over Phillips and an abolition lecture before the Lyceum This was an old grievance. Years before the abolitionists insisted upon having him lecture because they could thus get an audience and could not for an anti slavery meeting. My father took up the objection that such topics as abolition and temperance were not proper in a literary course to which all parties went any more than political or sectarian addresses would be. Added to this was his disgust at Phillips attacks on the Constitution and Union, and there were hot debates at special meetings of the Lyceum over the question. I remember one where Father most fiercely attacked Phillips sentiments and expressions, and charged him with leading captive silly women and foolish men, that made a buzzing like a hornets nest, and Phillips himself was got to the meeting to answer the attack, which he did eloquently I thought but not logically or effectively. This had slumbered unforgotten and came up in my time, when it fell to me to advocate the same views and have another row over it. This time they didnt as they threatened to bring Phillips himself to put me down, but set Dr Bartlett & Col Whiting &c to advocate their cause. I always thought I had the better of that encounter, even if Mrs Brooks their leader did contradict my statements in the open meeting

112 with the words Thats false Mr Keyes and my reply with a low bow I had it Madam from your own husband and left them to settle the dispute. Any how our side carried their point and Phillips didnt lecture on abolition before the Lyceum, and as I remember Mr Emerson for that reason wouldn t. It was the only difference I ever had for a moment with Mr Emerson and I have often regretted that I let Mr. Frost put me up to that disagreement. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY August 28, Wednesday: John Keyes died at the age of 57. It was destined to be memorable, for there soon came the inauguration balls all over New England and I of course had to attend the one at Concord where Father was a prominent manager and old and young joined in a grand break down in honor of that of the Democracy. Then came his death and the public funerals & eulogies in Boston which the college boys attended in a body wearing crape badges & marching by classes & presenting quite a display Then the class elections which resulted most disagreeably to me, Orne a drunken fellow of the Porcellian Club being chosen orator when I wanted a very different fellow, and the poet, marshals, secretary, & committee were not more to my satisfaction. John Shepard Keyes described the circumstances of his father s death:... we found Father sick, and the Dr came said it was bilious cholic and prescribed the common remedies, but with no effect. He grew worse for a day or two and then took croton oil, and we anxiously watched the result. He was relieved and though very weak got better and stronger for a few days till he sat up part of the time and I decided to go to commencement. Martha spent the day with him, and I with my classmates and I came home at night to find all right, and walked to her house in the evening. When I got back Father was screaming in agony Dr and Mother doing all in their power to relieve him, and it was toward morning before he was quieted by laudaum. Then I slept a little and found him dying gone beyond reviving with every effort and before noon he was dead. Aug. 28, Aet 58 The day had lost its brightness, the sun was paler, there was a blow that darkened every prospect, I had never dreamed or imagined the desolation of our home. The funeral, the work of the world to be taken on my shoulders my mother & brothers care, the business and property concerns, I cannot tell the weight they made on my heart. I had not thought I cared much for him but the loss was overpowering by its greatness and its suddenness. Elsewhere I have written my mature life view of his character and ability. I cannot so much later add to that picture, more than is herein shewn I recall now only my grief and distress at his sudden death. But the days went by somehow, and our marriage which we had planned 18 months before for my next birthday, must be postpone or the preparations completed. We decided to go on and were published the next Sunday as the law then required 3 publications. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

113 September 18, Wednesday: John Shepard Keyes got married with Martha Lawrence Prescott. The union would produce six children, two sons and two daughters in addition to two infants who would die early. It was to be a very quiet family wedding, and fortunately for us the great Whig gathering on Boston Common was fixed for the same day. So when the 19 th came it was as quiet as it was pleasant. There was a cloudless sky a bright beautiful September day. After a long walk together in the fore noon, we were married at our own room in the evening only our nearest relations & my chum and Marthas friend besides, by Mr Frost, and a sober wedding it was. After the ceremony I executed my will and wrote a page of my journal Our honeymoon was spent quietly in our home, and had no interruption by travel or sightseeing. Our rooms were all we wished nicely furnished with mahogany that we still use, and we enjoyed life there extremely Mother kept house and we boarded with her and the boys, and all was harmonious I found that in the 6 mo I had earned by the law about $ including charges, and with this I was satisfied Martha had of her own property some $3 to 4000, which would have been doubled but for the easy going of the administrator, Nathan Brooks Esq. who though he settled everybodys estates, and was as honest as the day if this was a specimen would have done less harm if he had been a sharper. I was determined my fathers estate should be better managed, as I administered and belive of it there was no losses. The inventory was over $40,000 a larger sum than had ever been inventoried before in Concord, and all earned by himself. It made Mother and us three boys very well off, but not rich, and no difference was made in our style of living. Betsy our girl had gone and we had a Jane instead and as Martha took the care of her own rooms there was not more to do for us Except losing my wedding ring on a drive to Lowell Court I recall nothing special that happened that fall and winter J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

114 1845 June 10, Tuesday: In Concord, the Middlesex House, which had been created out of an old country house, burned (but would be rebuilt). This illustration, since it contains telephone wires, is assuredly the new structure rather than the old structure (which has been described as a converted country house): I [John Shepard Keyes] was busy with a full bar of the lawyers at the calling of the docket the Tuesday following when an alarm of fire caused the court to break up, and the old Middlesex Hotel was burnt to the ground. It caught from a defective flue, and in an hour was entirely consumed, no other buildings were burnt tho in much danger, and the prisoners in jail were removed as it was within 30 or 40 ft of the hotel. A good story was told and I think truly of my old law teacher E Millen Esq who rushed up to his room at the first alarm seized a valise and brought it safely out when on looking at it & finding it not his own with a lawyers care and prudence carried it back to the room and bore away his own, leaving that to its fate. I believe it was rescued with much of the furniture but the old hall, bar room dining room and parlor that had seen so much, and heard more of the good old times gone by, were wiped out. It made quite a hole in Concord, and although rebuilt after a year or more the new one never had the business or the success of the old. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

115 Margaret Fuller reviewed the NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE for the New-York Tribune. This specimen of her Sex objectified the author cold-bloodedly and perfunctorily as a specimen of the Black Race, and added her voice to the white voices presuming that Frederick Douglass himself had authored the written form of this self-presentation: The book is prefaced by two communications one from William Lloyd Garrison, and one from Wendell Phillips. That from the former is in his usual over-emphatic style. His motives and his course have been noble and generous; we look upon him with high respect; but he has indulged in violent invective and denunciation till he has spoiled the temper of his mind. Like a man who has been in the habit of screaming himself hoarse to make the deaf hear, he can no longer pitch his voice on a key agreeable to common ears....that prevalent fallacy which substitutes a creed for faith, a ritual for a life... Unspeakably affecting is the fact that he never saw his mother at all by daylight. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.

116 Who Wrote Douglass s NARRATIVE? October 13, Monday: John Keyes was born to Martha Prescott Keyes and John Shepard Keyes (the infant would die on August 2, 1846). Oct 13 th. our first boy was born, and with Rockwood Hoar s first boy christened at church, John and Samuel respectively for their grandfathers. Our s lived but a short year but long enough to show us that he was of a finer make and more promise than any of our other children. His death almost broke down my wifes health, and as soon as she was able we went to Gloucester with her sister for the benefit of sea air and rest, and had a quiet fortnight at the old Niles Tavern and in strolls and rides over the cape and beaches, including the stage ride from Salem, which was very lovely even then J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

117 1846 John Shepard Keyes was accepted as a member of Concord s Social Circle. I was chosen a member of the Social Circle in the place of R N Rice who took Fathers place, and who removed to Michigan after his failure in business in the Green store & keeping the railroad station for a year or two He took letters from me to my wifes cousin there. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY August 2, Sunday: The infant John Keyes of Martha Prescott Keyes and John Shepard Keyes died before reaching its 1st birthday. Catherine Clarkson of England expressed a concern of many in the antislavery movement: I wish he [Frederick Douglass] were full blood black for I fear pro-slavery people will attribute his preeminent abilities to the white blood that is in his veins. That this was a reasonable concern within the geist of that era is revealed by the rancid racist musings which Waldo Emerson had indulged in with regard to Douglass in 1844.

118 1847 May 4, Tuesday: Annie Shepard Keyes was born, a daughter of John Shepard Keyes and Martha Prescott Keyes (she would get married with Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson).... our home was blessed with a daughter who brought back life and cheer to our hearts. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

119 At the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, Herman Melville viewed Thomas Cole s The Course of Empire (this would influence his next book, MARDI; AND A VOYAGE THITHER).

120

121

122

123

124 1849 John Shepard Keyes took a seat in the Massachusetts Senate, and as such, chanced into a priceless opportunity to revisit his alma mater, and enjoy his old proffessors as they squirmed under his newfound and entirely undeserved privilege. The Legislature met in Jan y 1849 and the vacancies in the Senate were filled up with Whigs at once. I remember that we had invited a large party of young and old that night and had a pleasant time when Esq Barrett then state treasurer came in bringing me notice of my election, and adding to the eclat of the occasion what had not been anticipated. I with the others took our seats the next day in that respectable body, and think I was younger than any one before or almost since At any rate I was a mere boy and among forty Whig senators in a very poor place. As the youngest I had the lowest seat with D.C. Baker of Lynn across the aisle he being next me in age, and we formed a lasting friendship. I was put on the Military Com. from my rank I suppose as first lieut to which I had risen, and on the Committee on Education. It was not a very distinguished Senate, but it had some very good fellows in it, and the House had more. I took with the rest a room at the Revere House, attended faithfully to my duties, had some sharp fights in the Committee on Education over incorporating a Catholic College for one and came to know C.W. Upham of Salem the chairman, J Lothrop Motley and Erastus Hopkins of Northampton house members of it very well. Besides the Middlesex lawyers, Lord of Salem Dawes of Pittsfield, Train of Framingham Devins of Greenfield and Bullock of Worcester were in the Legislature and we made a club at the Revere having a parlor, that had much work fun and politics well mixed with hot whiskey for the winter nights. I had but one hobby to fight the Fitchburg R.R. and in this I failed I had some prominence early in the session for Esquire Joe the State Treasurer died suddenly and as his townsman to make the announcement and arrange a legislative com funeral at Concord for him, which was duly attended. I made but little talk as was proper for so young a senator, but I knew everybody of prominence in politics and worked for certain friends in the disposal of the offices that came with the change of administration. I had rather assumed my fathers place in the county, and as I believed owed my early election to the knowledge the county had of him than to my merits. Indeed our names being so nearly alike many people voted for me thinking it him. We put Devins in as U.S. Marshal, P. Greely as Collector and N.W. Coffin as Navy Agent, and divided the spoils as best we could. Of course Danil Webster Abbott Lawrence and R.C. Winthrop and such magnates really decided these matters, but as we boys had done the work of the campaign, and been well patted on the shoulder by them while engaged in it, we were still pleasantly allowed to do something about the selection of officers. It made a busy exciting winter. I usually staid in Boston 3 or 4 nights in a week, and this with attending court at Cambridge where I had some business kept me at work. I recall but little of interest in the legislation of the year, and in the Senate with no opposition we had to be very gingerly about treading on each others toes. I would far rather have been

125 in the House where there was more freedom and interest. The session ended however in a funny incident worth telling I had of course been put on as one of the senatorial overseers of Harvard College, and the exhibition coming the last day of the session when I didnt care to be in my seat for some reason I have forgotten I determined therefore to attend the Cambridge exercises and see how the college was getting on It didnt occur to me that on the last day neither governor nor any of the dignitaries would be able to get away from the Legislature till on arriving I found myself the only member of the board present to examine the college. I had kept somewhat up with college having attended commencement mainly to see our class meetings, while Brooks & Ned. Hoar in 45 Friz Hoar G Bartlett, G Heywood had kept up the Concord line of graduates. My brother Joe had entered and thanks to Everetts folly and his own had a chequered course, and got rusticated for a year at Lunenburg with Babcock! His class finished this year and gave me an additional reason for examining the college. Snuffy old Sparks was the President, Everett having resigned, and on reaching University Hall I found the faculty I used so to dread in solemn waiting for the committee!!! Informing them of the reason why no others would probably attend, they began their reports of the condition of their several departments To those proffessors who used to dead me so often I put questions and comments in their own style and wasn t it nuts to me not seven years out of their clutches to get them into mine old Channing, Beck, and Benny Pierce caught a cross examination, they little imagined & I chuckled mightily over their squirming soberly pocketing their written reports and gravely informing them I would make my report on the state of the University to the full committee, I led the way to the chapel on the arm of the President and sitting in the seat of honor, heard the exhibition parts, and gravely pencilling notes on my programme, I watched the boys and girls out of the corner of my eye, and hugely en- joyed the queer change of a few short years. I think it was one of the most complete revenges of times whirligig I ever met! As we started off in state again J.T. Austin ex Attorney Gen l. arrived and after conferring with me, helped to eat the dinner in Commons Hall, but well served, and relieved me of the reports and the response in behalf of the overseers.! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

126 Joseph Boyden Keyes of Concord, another son of John Keyes, graduated from Harvard College (and would become a lawyer). Charles Louis Flint graduated from Harvard. Although he had not planned to teach, just prior to graduation he receive an offer from a grammar school. NEW HARVARD MEN Harvard Professor of Greek Literature Cornelius Conway Felton prepared an English-language edition of Professor Arnold Henri Guyot s lectures, as EARTH AND MAN, LECTURES ON COMPARATIVE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN ITS RELATION TO THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. THE EARTH AND MAN, 1849 June 19, Tuesday: Concord s courthouse was torched by a man who had been caught selling liquor without a license. In the conflagration not only the courthouse (and its exhibit of the gallows upon which the convicted burglar Samuel Smith had been hung) was consumed, but also the nearby dwelling-house and stable of John Shepard Keyes. 39 Returning from the Legislature and Cambridge to the law and Concord, I got ready for June Court and it was well underway, when an alarm of fire broke on the stillness of midnight. Our room in the ell was undergoing repairs and we were sleeping in the front chamber with the windows open, and the first cry of Fire Fire Court House on Fire, took me out of bed and down stairs

127 seizing my pail of water I rushed out doors and not scaling the fence easily went to the front door of the Court House unlocked and opened it but the smoke was too thick to get far inside. Mother who had gone to the pump for water stepped out with her pail to the back door where the fire was kindled and blazing up and where if we had met we might have put it out. As it was we both returned to the house and began preparations to move our things out. The engines came but too late to do anything except save other buildings. The neighbours rushed in and began clearing our house. I sent the baby Annie to the Goodnows, and locking our parlor door & telling Martha to sit there and keep every one out till I came, rallied a squad of the company boys and with their aid safely removed every article of our parlor furniture beyond the fires reach, without a scratch or mark except a nick in the marble top of the centre table. By this time the flames had mounted to the cupola of the Court House and made a splendid show. This two story lantern with its 16 large windows blazed fiercely the gilt eagle on top shone, scorched & quivering and fell with the crash of the roof to the ground At this critical time the water gave out, the engines had to be moved to the brook for a supply and our house caught from the intense heat of the fire and was burned up completely Every thing of consequence was saved except our school books and some clothing in a forgotten closet, and the morning dawned hot and dry on a scene of desolation and ashes, with all our possessions lining the road & common Some amusing incidents were connected with the fire, Judge Hoar black and grimy with smoke heard our pig squealing in the barn cellar then in flames with lighted hay 39. This Concord courthouse became the place of public display of the gallows upon which a local house burglar, Samuel Smith, was hung at the end of 1799 until with this macabre and tasteless display of judicial power it was consumed in the flames of an arsonist in Here, since we do not have an image of the apparatus on which the house burglar had been hanged, as a substitute macabre and tasteless display, is an image of the chair that Massachusetts used for its final electrocutions, at Charlestown in 1947, producing the deaths of Edward Gertson and Philip Bellino. The chair is not on display (tastes about this sort of think have obviously changed somewhat), but a photo was taken of it in a storage room at the state prison in Walpole in 1974.

128 dropping, and going to its rescue, got an addition of dirt and manure lifting it in his arms over the wall, I never have forgotten the scene as I came to his help, and poor piggy freed with some burns ran wildly to Capt Barretts on the hill before he stopped as if knowing there was a friendly home. Old Nealy a big fat course lubberly fellow searching in the cellar for drinkables & finding in his thirst an earthen pitcher filled put it to his mouth and taking a long drink sputtered out Soft Soape By Gad that made a shout of laughter from all who saw it, and this [word undeciphered] of soap and the cordwood were the only matters the insurance co disputed. The question of whether they were provisions was left out to Judge Hoar who after argument recommended splitting the difference and both parties acquiesced. We took up our quarters at Emiline Barretts boarding house next door. Mother soon went to Waltham, Joe was at Cambridge and George in Boston, and we sweltered through that summer in a hot close chamber with our clothes in Shattucks store then given up from business by Henry who had run it out, our furniture in my office building and wherever else we could find a place for it. It was a sudden lively and entire change, and a new and strange experience to us. On the whole we fared more comfortably than we expected, and I do not recall any long absences from Concord that season by it. It changed my real estate operations materially I had taken in the division of Fathers property the office lot and the garden lot as my share of the real estate, and had planned a stone cottage on the garden site some year or two before. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

129 In 1840 John Warner Barber had published a woodcut of Concord, engraved by the J. Downes of Worcester whom Henry Thoreau knew, in which you can see what that old wooden courthouse had looked like prior to this fire (on the left below), as well as what the old wooden Middlesex Hotel looked like with its sign and emblem:

130 1850 A new Concord Town House, used later as an insurance office and now the office property at 30 Monument Square, was built on the former John Shepard Keyes property but closer to Monument Street in Concord. For a time during the 1850s the school for older students, later to be referred to as the High School, would be located in this new Town House, but transportation would not be offered and these older students would need to find their own way into the population center from wherever inside the limits of Concord their family happened to be residing. The outlying schoolhouses that Concord had constructed in 1799 (Schoolhouse #2 for the East Quarter at Merriam s Corner, Schoolhouse #3 for the South Quarter, Schoolhouse #4 for the West Quarter at Factory Village, Schoolhouse #5 at Barrett s Mill, Schoolhouse #6 at Bateman s Pond, and Schoolhouse #7 for the North Quarter on Monument Street) were repaired and improved. If needed, the buildings were moved back from the roads. Each building had its own local advisory committee, and sent a representative to the town s School Committee. The major portion of the school budget was of course being consumed by the Center District, #1, which occupied multiple schoolbuildings. Here is one of these former District Schools, in its original location at the edge of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (a structure now being utilized by the workers at the cemetery): January 26, Saturday: Florence Keyes was born, a daughter of John Shepard Keyes and Martha Prescott Keyes (she would get married with Charles Walcott).... Florence our second daughter was born in February 1850 and we had two nice girls to care for and comfort us... J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY An issue of Chambers Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF JANUARY 26

131 August 30, Saturday morning: In the morning John White Webster was hanged in public at #5 Leverett Street on Leverett Square in Boston for the murder of George Parkman. It took about four minutes. In deference to the social standing of the culprit, there had not been a prior public announcement of the date or the place of the execution. The Reverend George Putnam, D.D. immediately departed for Cambridge to inform the family. That evening a lady and her two children visiting from New-York would come to the family home in Cambridge in the hope that she would be able to see the corpse of the murderer, but fortunately these ghoulish tourists would be intercepted by the maid and the widow and the daughters did not come to know of it. To fool the crowds which were assembling, and in addition to prevent the body from being exhumed, it would be interred in secret that night at the lowbrow cemetery on Copp s Hill rather than in the expected venue at toney Mount Auburn Cemetery. 40 On this day Henry Thoreau was also concerned with cemeteries, for at the request of John Shepard Keyes, he was surveying two sides of the Concord West Burying Ground by running the lines of the old Hurd place, the so-called Block House now on Lowell Road, and the line of the river bank further east on Main Street. 41 The purpose of this activity, probably, was to determine where to position the iron fence from the old courthouse around the burial ground. According to the Town Report, Thoreau received $1. 00 for this on March 1, View Thoreau s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: (The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) Aug 31st Tall Ambrosia Among the signs of Autumn I perceive The Roman Wormwood (called by learned men Ambrosia elatior, food for gods, For to impartial science the humblest weed Is as immortal as the proudest flower ) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I cross the now neglected garden We trample under foot the food of Gods & spill their nectar in each drop of dew My honest shoes thus powdered country-fide Fast friends that never stray far from my coach Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have been through Who never walk but are transported rather For what old crime of theirs I do not gather The grey blueberry bushes venerable as oaks why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called Vaccinium corymbosum some say amoenum & or Blue Bilberry & Vaccinium disomorphum MX Black Bilberry. Its fruit 40. Due to this unpleasantness, Harvard College has created a special endowment for the relief of desperate professors. The widow Harriet Frederica Hickling Webster, who would only live for a few additional years, would take the four daughters back to the Azores. There, one of the four, Sarah Hickling Webster, would marry Samuel Wyllys Dabney ( ), who would from 1872 to 1892 be the US consul to the Azores. 41. We can gather that it was sometime prior to this date, that this former Concord Academy classmate had become an selectman of Concord.

132 hangs on into September but loses its wild & sprightly taste. Tis very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth. their nectar The morning dew with which we wet our shoes For the gods are simple folks and we should pine upon their humble fare The purple flowers of the humble Trichostema mingled with the worm wood. smelling like it And the spring-scented dandelion scented primrose Yellow primrose The swamp pink Azalea viscosa its now withered pistils standing out. The odoriferous sassafras with its delicate green stem its three-lobed leaf tempting the traveller to bruise it it sheds so rare a perfume on him equal to all the spices of the east. Then its rare tasting root bark like nothing else which I used to dig The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold. The alder-leaved Clethra (Clethra alnifolia sweet smelling queen of the swamp its long white racemes. We are most apt to remember & cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall The choke Berry Pyrus arbutifolia The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel either cornus alba or Paniculata white berried or Panicled beautiful both when full of fruit & when its cymes are naked delicate red cymes or stems of berries. spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies its little palms. Fairy palms they might be called. One of the Viburnums Lentago or pyrifolium or Nudum with its poisonous looking fruit in cymes first greenish white then red then purple or all at once. The imp eyed red velvety looking berry of the swamps The spotted Polygonum Polygonum Persicaria seen in low lands amid the potatoes now wild Princes feather? Slight flower that does not forget to grace the Autumn The Late Whortleberry (Dangle-berry) that ripens now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling

133 1852 April 26, Monday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Ellery Channing, his Concord houselot on Main Street that had formerly been owned by John Shepard Keyes, adjacent to MacKay s lot. 42 April 26, Monday: Chickweed (Stellaria media) naturalized shows its humble star-like white flowers now on rather dirty weather worn branches in low damp gardens now Also the smaller white flowers of the shepherd s purse which is already 6 or 8 inches high in the same places i.e. Cheney s Garden. Both according to Dewey introduced & naturalized. What they call April weather threatening rain notwithstanding the late long continued rains DEWEY P.M. Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Haden s. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half dead low shrub oaks As I lie flat looking close in among the roots of the grass I perceive that its endless ribbon has pushed up about one inch & is green to that extent such is the length to which the spring has gone here though when you stand up the green is not perceptible. It is a dull rain dropping & threatening afternoon. inclining to drowsiness I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge The landscape wears a subdued tone quite soothing to the feelings no glaring colors. I begin now to leave off my great coat. The frogs at a distance are now so numerous that instead of the distinct shrill peeps it is one dreamy sound It is not easy to tell where or how far off they are when you have reached their pool they seem to recede as you advance As you squat by the side of the pool you still see no motion in the water though your ears ring with the sound seemingly & probably within 3 feet I sat for 10 minutes on the watch waving my hand over the water that they might betray themselves a tortoise with his head out a few feet off watching me all the while till at last I caught sight of a frog under a leaf & caught & pocketed him but when I looked afterward he had escaped. The moment the dog stepped into the water they stopped. They are very shy. Hundreds filled the air with their shrill peep. Yet 2 or 3 could be distinguished by some peculiarity or variation in their note. Are these different? The viola ovata budded. Saw pollywogs 2 or 3 inches long. May 7, Friday: Lajos Kossuth was visiting Concord with great fanfare a whole lot of advance publicity and Henry Thoreau, very pointedly, with no fanfare or advance publicity at all, absented himself from Concord to the woods where he heard the first drumming of the ruffed grouse. John Shepard Keyes would report: As selectman I had to welcome Kossuth on his visit to Concord 42. The house was moved up Main Street and across the street near Love Lane. It was occupied for many years by the Misses Rood, and is now owned by the Roberts family. These survey papers are at the Thoreau Lyceum.

134

135 on a pleasant day in May 52 His visit was put off by some engagement and came on us with short notice at last. But we were equal to the emergency. He was met in a carriage at the line and escorted by the artillery he came to my house where he rested and wrote out or arranged his speech. The artillery formed a guard of honor about the yard to keep off too ardent admirers and after a substantial lunch at which he eat buttered radishes he went to the Town Hall and was welcomed by Mr Emerson. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY On a plain block of granite at Greenwood Cemetery is now inscribed: ISAAC T. HOPPER, BORN, DECEMBER 3D, 1771, ENDED HIS PILGRIMAGE, MAY 7TH, Thou henceforth shalt have a good man s calm, A great man s happiness; thy zeal shall find Repose at length, firm Friend of human kind. May 7, Friday: 4:30 A.M. To Cliffs. Has been a dew, which wets the feet, and I see a very thin fog over the low ground, the first fog, which must be owing to the warm weather. Heard a robin singing powerfully an hour ago, and song sparrows, and the cocks. No peeping frogs in the morning, or rarely. The toads sing (?), but not as at evening. I walk half a mile (to Hubbard s Pool in the road), before I reach those I heard, only two or three. The sound is uttered so low and over water; still it is wonderful that it should be heard so far. The traveller rarely perceives when he comes near the source of it, nor when he is farthest away from it. Like the will-o -the-wisp, it will lead one a long chase over the fields and meadows to find one. They dream more or less at all hours now. I see the relation to the frogs in the throat of many a man. The full throat has relation to the distended paunch. I would fain see the sun as a moon, more weird. The sun now rises in a rosaceous amber. Methinks the birds sing more some mornings than others, when I cannot see the reason. I smell the damp path, and derive vigor from the earthy scent between Potter s and Hayden s. Beginning, I may say, with robins [American Robin Turdus migratorius], song sparrows [Melospiza melodia], chip-birds, bluebirds [Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialus], etc., I walked through larks [Eastern Meadowlark Sturnella magna], pewees [Wood Pewee Contopus virens], pigeon woodpeckers [Yellow-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus], chickadee [Black-capped Chicadee Parus Atricapillus] tull-a-lulls, to towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes [Catharus mustelina], brown thrasher [Brown Thrasher Toxostroma rufum], jay [Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata], catbird [Gray Catbird Dumetella carolinensis], etc., etc. Entered a cool stratum of air beyond Hayden s after the warmth of yesterday. The Viola pedata still in bud only, and the other (q.v.). Hear the first partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drum. The first oven-bird [Seiurus Aurocapillus]. A wood thrush which I thought a dozen rods off was only two or three, to my surprise, and betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch. [The 1906 journal editor notes here that probably the bird was a hermit thrush, this motion of the tail being almost a proof positive, adding that probably, too, all the wood thrushes seen by Thoreau in April (see ante) were hermits.] Blackbirds [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus] are seen going over the woods with a chattering bound to some meadow. A rich bluish mist now divides the vales in the eastern horizon mile after mile. (I am ascending Fair Haven.) An oval-leaved pyrola (evergreen) in Brown s pines on Fair Haven. Cliffs. This is the gray morning; the sun risen; a very thin mist on the landscape; the falling water smooth. Far below, a screaming jay seen flying, against the bare stems of the pines. The young oaks on the plain, the pines standing here and there, the walls in Conantum pastures seen in the sun, the little groves on the opposite side of the river lit up by it while I am [in] shade, these are memorable and belong to the hour. Here at this hour the brown thrasher [Brown Thrasher Toxostroma rufum] often drowns the other birds. The towhee [Rufous-Sided Towhee Pipilo Erythrophthalmus] has been a main bird for regular morning

136 singing in the woods for a little while. The creeper [Pine Warbler Dendroica pinus or Brown Creeper Certhia americana or Black-and-white Warbler Mniotilta varia] is regularly heard, too. Found the first strawberry blossoms (Fragaria Virginiana) on Fair Haven. The sedge grass blossom is now quite large and showy on the dry hillside where the wood has recently been cut off. I think that birds vary their notes considerably with the seasons. When I hear a bird singing, I cannot think of any words that will imitate it. What word can stand in place of a bird s note? You would have to bury (?) it or surround it with a chevaux de frise of accents, and exhaust the art of the musical composer besides with your different bars, to represent it, and finally get a bird to sing it, to perform it. It has so little relation to words. The wood thrush [Catharus mustelina] says ah-tully-tally for one strain. There appear to be one or more little warblers in the woods this morning which are new to the season, about which I am in doubt, myrtle-birds [Yellow-rumped Warbler Dendroica coronata] among them. For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south. The purple finch (sobercolored) [Purple Finch Carpodacus purpureus] is a rich singer. As I said the other day, something like the warbling vireo [Warbling Vireo Vireo gilvus], only louder, clearer, mellower, and more various. Bank swallows at Hayden s. I fear that the dream of the toads will not sound so musical now that I know whence it proceeds. But I will not fear to know. They will awaken new and more glorious music for me as I advance, still farther in the horizon, not to be traced to toads and frogs in slimy pools. P.M. To Nawshawtuct. The vireo comes with warm weather, midwife to the leaves of the elm... The first small pewee [Wood Pewee Contopus virens] sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white wing bars. The first summer yellowbirds [Yellow Warbler Dendroica petechia] on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, i.e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows begin to leave out. (And the small pewee [Wood Pewee Contopus virens] on the willows also.) So yellow. They bring summer with them and the sun, tche-tche-tche-tcha-tcha-tchar. Also they haunt the oaks, white and swamp white, where are not leaves. On the hill I sit hi the shadow of the locust trunks and branches, for want of other shade. Thus is a mistake in Nature, to make shade necessary before she has expanded the leaves. The catnep is now up, with a lustrous purple tinge to the under side of its leaves. (Why should so many leaves be so painted on the under side, concealed from men s eye only not from the insects as much as the sculptures on the tops of columns?) There is something in its fragrance as soothing as balm to a sick man. It advances me ever to the autumn and beyond it. [low full of reminiscence is any fragrance! If it were not for virtuous, brave, generous actions, could there be any sweet fragrance? Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. Now you may say the trees generally are beginning to leave out, excepting the oaks, celtis, late water willow, etc., etc. But only the willows and the balm-of-gileads make any show in our landscape yet, of native or wild trees, the latter where they grow in clumps. Its catkins are five inches long. Top of hill. The haze is remarkably thick to-day as if all the distant western woods were on fire. (The wind west and what coolness in it most grateful.) The haze makes the western view, quite rich, so many edges of woodland ridges where you see the pine tops against, the white mist of the vale beyond. I count five or six such ridges rising partly above the mist, but successively more indistinct, the first only a quarter of a mile off. Of course there are no mountains. It belongs to this warm weather. The lower part of the sky is white, like a fog; only in the zenith do I see any blue. It makes the outlines of the blue water on the meadow eastward agreeably indistinct, being more nearly the color of the water itself than the land. A maple swamp in bloom, westward from this hill, is a rich sight, even like a rosy orchard in bloom. The dust flies. I am not sure whether my first violet was the cucullata or ovata, [ I am not sure whether and cucullata or have been crossed out in pencil] or the same with that minute one which I found prepared to blossom by the Spring Path this morning. A fern, one of the osmundas, beyond the celtis, one foot high, covered with reddish wool, unfolding its blossom (?) as it rises. The wool used for birds nests. Might be used for other purposes? It is such weather as in summer we expect a thunder-shower after. Is this smoke-like haze produced by the warm west wind meeting the still cool earth? Or is it smoke? The ground under the walnuts is richly strewn with nutshells, broken and gnawed by squirrels, like an unswept dining-hall in early times. That little early violet close to the ground in dry fields and hillsides, which only children s eyes detect, with buds showing purple but lying so low, as if stooping to rise, or rather its stems actually bent to hide its head amid the leaves, quite unpretending. The gnaphalium, though without scent, is now a pure, dry, enduring flower and bears inspection. The first peetweet [Spotted Sandpiper Actitis macularia]; myrtle birds [Yellow-rumped Warbler Dendroica coronata] numerous. The catbird [Gray Catbird Dumetella carolinensis] does not make the corn-planting sounds. The toads dream loudly these first warm clays. A yellow-

137 throated green frog in the river, by the hemlocks, bright silk-green the fore part of the body, tiger-striped legs. The eyes of toads and frogs are remarkably bright and handsome, oval pupils (?) or blacks and golden or coppery irides. The hop-hornbeam is almost in bloom. The red-wing s [Agelaius phoeniceus] shoulder, seen in a favorable light, throws all epaulets into the shade. It is General Abercrombie. methinks, when they wheel partly with the red to me. The crow blackbirds [Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula] make a noise like crows [American Crow Corvus Brachyrhynchos], and also a singular and rarely heard scream or screech. They fly with lark-like wings. We require just so much acid as the cranberries afford in the spring. The first bumblebee, that prince of hummers, bombyle, [sic], looking now over the ground as if he could find something. He follows after flowers. To have your existence depend on flowers, like the bees and hummingbirds! The willow twigs now may make wreaths so pretty and graceful with their expanding leaves. They afford the only chaplets yet, fit to crown the fairest. The horse-chestnuts in the yards have opened their parasol-like leaves to-day, reminding me of tropical palms; and the rock maples large buds are almost open. Such a haze as this makes a dark night.

138 Kossuth, who had arrived in New-York in the previous December and would tour the US for two more months pressing the flesh and accepting donations for his Independent Hungarian Government ragged band of revolutionaries on the make, was of course making this pilgrimage to Concord because it was the symbolic bloody birth ground of US political independence from the British empire. Waldo Emerson delivered his appropriate Address to Kossuth which has been aptly characterized by Larry J. Reynolds as complimentary, vacuous, and vague 43 and invited the hero to enter the Emerson home. According to pages 145 and of Reynolds s influence study EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS AND THE AMERICAN LITERARY RENAISSANCE (New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1988), 43. Emerson commented that Kossuth had gotten his story told in every palace, and log hut, and prairie camp throughout the continent. Refer to Address to Kossuth, in EMERSON S COMPLETE WORKS, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1929), 3:401. Also refer to Donald S. Spencer s LOUIS KOSSUTH AND YOUNG AMERICA: A STUDY OF SECTIONALISM AND FOREIGN POLICY, (Columbia MO: U of Missouri P, 1977).

139 here is how Kossuth s trip had gone: When Kossuth began his famous tour of the United States, which lasted from December 1851 to July 1852, Whitman saw him. During his visit to Brooklyn, Kossuth was escorted to the armory and to Plymouth Church by a troop of horse guards, and there he spoke to large crowds. In the opinion of Joseph Jay Rubin, Whitman gave his sympathy... to the living symbol of freedom, crushed by emperors and czars, when Kossuth came to America that December in search of means to reverse the calamity in Hungary. In his notebook, Walt Whitman merely recorded that I saw him make his entree in N Y latter part of 1851 riding up Broadway. Rubin is probably right, though, for indeed Kossuth as symbol would have stimulated Whitman s growing sympathy for revolutionary heroes and martyrs... Sympathy for intervention on behalf of republicanism in Europe was greatest in the frontier states, where the expansionist spirit flourished, and there in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri Kossuth was warmly received. In Springfield IL, Abraham Lincoln, although against intervention, drafted resolutions expressing sympathy for Kossuth, the most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe, and in Columbus OH, a 15-year-old William Dean Howells listened with rapt attention as Kossuth spoke on the steps of the statehouse. At age eighty, Howells recalled, I hung on the words of the picturesque black-bearded, black-haired, black-eyed man, in the braided coat of the Magyars, and the hat with an ostrich plume up the side which set a fashion among us, and I believed with all my soul that in a certain event we might find the despotisms of the Old World banded against us, and would yet see Cossacks, as I thrilled to hear Kossuth say. Howells, like so many of his countrymen, bought himself a Kossuth hat, complete with the ostrich plume, to demonstrate his sympathy. Meanwhile, Kossuth marches, Kossuth dances, Kossuth oysters, Kossuth restaurants, Kossuth buttons, flags, and photographs became signs of the times. As Donald S. Spencer has found, even a manufacturer of rat poison capitalized on the revolutionary s popularity: Kossuth s coming, so they say; He s a lion in his way And made tyranny his prey; But for bugs and such as they Our old Lyon is O.K. Rats and mice, too, he can slay. After making his way through the Midwest and the South (where he was coolly received), Kossuth visited a number of cities and towns in New England, where the people were eager to see him. The major writers in the region of course noticed his presence. Annoyed at having been in general, and especially in this cradle of revolutionary spirit, shunted aside with mere words when he had come to fetch big bucks for a new military campaign, the Hungarian hero responded to the American sage that the doors and shutters of oppression were not to be opened by mere example or by mere moral influence but must be opened by bayonets. Nathaniel Hawthorne, as ever too easily impressed by political rhetoric, commented to Emerson that he had said the only word that has yet been worthily spoken to Kossuth. Thoreau confided to his journal merely P.M. Kossuth here. (He then wrote that The best men that I know flatter and study effect, only more finely than the rest. I accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity. ) Within precisely this timeframe, Hawthorne found himself reflecting upon the sort of purpose which was represented by such a purposive, argumentative, self-legitimating confidence artist of revolution as Kossuth, and upon how an excess of this ingredient might warp a person s

140 soul, and how a deficit of it, as represented for instance in himself, and in his persona Miles Coverdale, could do harm to a person s soul, and found him modifying the conclusion of his all-but-completed Hollingsworth manuscript accordingly: As Hollingsworth once told me, I lack a purpose. How strange! He was ruined, morally, by an overplus of the very same ingredient, the want of which, I occasionally suspect, has rendered my own life all an emptiness. I by no means wish to die. Yet, were there any cause, in this whole chaos of human struggle, worth a sane man s dying for, and which my death would benefit, then provided, however, the effort did not involve an unreasonable amount of trouble methinks I might be bold to offer up my life. If Kossuth, for example, would pitch the battle-field of Hungarian rights within an easy ride of my abode, and choose a mild, sunny morning, after breakfast, for the conflict, Miles Coverdale would gladly be his man, for one brave rush upon the levelled bayonets. Farther than that, I should be loth to pledge myself. June 15, Tuesday: John Shepard Keyes broke a leg. During the June term finding that some cases of mine were in order I started of a pleasant Sunday noon with Geo. Heywood to notify my clients to be ready with their witnesses. As the best we could get we took Staples old sorrel plug and his open wagon and drove through Stow to Marlboro, where we rested and took a drink at Wetherbees Pond. Returning we had climbed the long hill this side of Marlboro, when the old horse started at a stray pig, and ran kicking up down the hill. We laughed at his antics and when his leg came into the wagon I tried to hold it there with my foot. As we reached the bottom, his leg caught one rein and that pulled him & the wagon on to the bank, and tipped us over. I as cool as I am now, attempted to step over the wheel, but at that instant the transit bolt slipped out the wheel flew up and instead of alighting on my feet, I was caught by the wheel and came down in a heap Trying to stand, I found the sole of my boot turned up and that my leg was broken So I sat down pulled off my boot, and true enough my ancle was dislocated & the large bone broken above the ancle joint. I crawled back to the nearest house on my hands & knees sent Heywood for a Dr. who came set the bone, and the man of the house brought us home at midnight Wife and Mother had been anxious and were frightened badly on our arrival I was carried up to a bed a little faint and exhausted with the ride and injury Dr Bartlett summoned and the leg examined He insisted it was not broken and that I could stand on it. I declared I coulnt, but the Dr. told of a case he had recently had just like mine, where the man took off his splints & walked home from the office. I thought it wouldnt happen twice, but he added that I didnt want to be laid up six weeks at court time. And as I certainly didnt, I put my foot to

141 the floor & bore my weight The broken bone shot by. Its broke by Faith said the Dr. and he set it again, not nearly so well as before, for the limb was swollen and it never came straight again. I was laid up with it six weeks, confined to my room and bed for part of it, and only crawled on crutches about the house for the latter portion. It was long & tedious not very painful, and gave me a good chance to get acquainted with home wife and babies. While shut up in my chamber the officers of the Regt. were at the Middlesex, and came over, and sent up a glass of champagne, & then as I leaned up at the window they drank my health in a bumper, in the street below. It was slightly fast I admit I was able to go to class supper at commencement by the aid of a cane, and got on very comfortably, but my leg troubled me for a long time, at any mistep or bad storm. I walked for many months with a limp & feared my dancing & marching days were over. In fact I never had a sound good leg after it and it was all the Dr s fault.! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

142 August 16, Monday: The shipwrecked Alfred Russel Wallace was rescued but all his biological specimens had been lost at sea, and the cargo vessel that had rescued the contents of their two leaking lifeboats off the face of the ocean was itself in bad shape and very slow. In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went rowing on the river with George Partridge Bradford. JOHN S. KEYES August 16, 1852: Pm Down river in boat with Geo. Bradford Zizania aquatica Ind. or Canadian rice or Water oats like slender corn. How long? Hibiscus Moscheutos(?)Marsh Hibiscus ap. N Barrets. Perchance has been out a week. I think it must be the most conspicuous & showy and at the same time rich colored flower of this month It is not so conspicuous as the sun flower but of a rarer color pale rose-purple they call it like a holly-hock. It is surprising for its amount of color & seen unexpectedly amid the willows & button bushes with the mikania twining around its stem you can hardly believe it is a flower So large & tender it looks like the greatest effort of the season to adorn the august days & reminded me of that great tender moth the atticus luna which I found on the water near where it grows. I think it must be allied to southern species It suggests a more genial climate & luxuriant soil It requires these vaporous dog days. Galeopsis Tetrahit common Hemp nettle in road side by Keyes How long? flower like hedge nettle Apios tuberosa Ground nut a day or two. These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street but cannot tell where they are loud is their song drowning many others but men appear not to distinguish it though it pervade their ears as the dust their eyes. The river was exceedingly fair this afternoon and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore At sunset the glow being confined to the north it tinges the rails on the cause-way lake color, but behind they are a dead dark blue. I must look for the Rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clarks.

143 1853 John Shepard Keyes was elected sheriff of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. July 8, Friday: Mary Keyes was born to Martha Prescott Keyes and John Shepard Keyes. Early in July we had another daughter Mary, born on the 8. th and Martha got up nicely from her confinement, and was soon able to enjoy the shorter drives with me J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY On the Oregon Trail, some camping utensils, a powder horn, and fragments of clothing were discovered. In a pocket of the pantaloons there was a gold watch and key. To all appearances someone had been killed there, but no papers giving a clue to a name were to be discovered. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry s flagship USS Mississippi and its squadron of three accompanying ships appeared on the horizon, off Edo Bay. That night the watch officer, Lieutenant John K. Duer, observed a puzzling sky object: During the watch from midnight to 4 A.M. a very remarkable meteor was seen. It made its appearance in the south and west and illuminated the whole atmosphere. The spars, sails and hulls of the ships in company as well as our own reflected its glare as distinctly as though a blue light were burning from each at the same time. From the south and west about 15 degrees above the horizon it pursued a north-easterly course in a direct line for a long distance, when it fell gradually toward the sea and disappeared. Its shape was that of a large blue sphere with a red wedge-shaped tail, which it could be easily observed was formed of ignited particles, and resembled the sparks of a rocket as they appear upon its explosion. The black vessels would lie in Tokyo Bay, menacing and silent, for a period of time, and then suddenly the Commodore would open negotiations by giving representatives of the Emperor three days to deliver a letter to their supreme leader or else. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

144 1855 June 13, Wednesday: Five men reported that while boating on Silver Lake they had sighted a giant lake serpent. Ellery Channing spotted a peetweet s [Spotted Sandpiper out to Henry Thoreau. Actitis macularia] nest that he would want to point Alicia M. Keyes was born, a daughter of John Shepard Keyes and Martha Prescott Keyes. The birth of Alicia in the summer was the event of the household, and we got through it well and enjoyed another daughter. She was named for Aunt Alicia and has taken from the beginning after and for me. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY June 13. C. finds a pigeon woodpecker s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground; could squeeze your hand in. Also a peetweet s, with four eggs, in Hubbard s meadow beyond the old swamp oak site; and two kingbirds nests with eggs in an apple and in a willow by riverside. September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau was sent, by Ticknor & Co. in Boston, a royalty payment for the sale of 344 copies of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS in the amount of $ along with an expression of corporate condolences: H. D. Thoreau In a/c with W.D. Ticknor & Co Walden On hand last settlement 600 Cops. Sold Since last a/c 344 remaining on hand 256 Cops Sales is $51.60 Boston, Sept. 29, 1855 Dear Sir, We regret, for your sake as well as ours, that a larger number of Walden has not been sold. We enclose our check for Fifty One 60 / 100 Dollars for sales to date. Ever Respy W. D. Ticknor & Co. Henry D. Thoreau Esq Concord Mass. On this day Thoreau was studying James Ellsworth De Kay s MOLLUSCA OF NEW YORK. MOLLUSCA, VOLUME V

145 Men who regretted for Thoreau s sake as well as their own that a larger number of Walden has not been sold.

146 Soon he would be reading in George Bancroft s A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT, BANCROFT S US, I BANCROFT S US, II BANCROFT S US, III in Richard Hildreth s THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE CONTINENT TO THE ORGANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT UNDER THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 82, Cliff Street, ), HILDRETH S US, I HILDRETH S US, II HILDRETH S US, III in the 4th volume of the Reverend Samuel Purchas s HAKLUYTUS POSTHUMUS OR PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMES, CONTAYNING A HISTORY OF THE WORLD, IN SEA VOYAGES, & LANDE TRAVELS, BY ENGLISHMEN AND

147 OTHERS, or perhaps A RELATION OR IOURNALL OF THE BEGINNING AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE ENGLIſH PLANTATION ſettled AT PLIMOTH, IN NEW-ENGLAND, BY CERTAINE... (Imprinted at London for Henry Fetherstone at ye Signe of the Rose in Pauls Churchyard, 1625), or perhaps THE PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS, VOYAGES, TRAFFIQUES & DISCOVERIES OF THE ENGLISH NATION: MADE BY SEA OR OVERLAND TO THE REMOTE & FARTHEST DISTANT QUARTERS OF THE EARTH AT ANY TIME WITHIN THE COMPASSE OF THESE 1600 YEARS BY RICHARD HAKLUYT VOLUME FOUR (London: J.M. Dent & Co.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.) PURCHAS S VOLUME IV and in the 26th volume of Sir William Jardine s edition THE NATURALIST S LIBRARY, a volume on whales and other mammals that had been authored by Robert Hamilton, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.E., M.W.S., Etc. 44 (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars; London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852 [that edition being electronically unavailable, I am forced to render for you the previous edition, of 1843]). MAMMALIA. WHALES, ETC. 44. Some of this material on whales would find its way into CAPE COD.

148 Additional cemetery land was consecrated in Sleepy Hollow adjoining Concord s New Burial Ground, the Middlesex County Courthouse, the Concord Townhouse, and the grounds of the Agricultural Society. Waldo Emerson dedicated the new garden cemetery as the palm of Nature s hand. Address at the Consecration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery... They have thought that the taking possession of this field ought to be marked by a public meeting and religious rites: and they have requested me to say a few words which the serious and tender occasion inspires... The life of a tree is a hundred and a thousand years; its decays ornamental; its repairs self-made: they grow when we sleep, they grew when we were unborn. Man is a moth among these longevities when these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history...

149 Our use will not displace the old tenants. The well-beloved birds will not sing one song less, the high-holding woodpecker, the meadow-lark, the oriole, the robin, purple finch, bluebird, thrush and red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern will find out the hospitality and protection from the gun of this asylum, and will seek the waters of the meadow... We shall bring hither the body of the dead, but how shall we catch the escaped soul? [Also (Baker, Charles, EMERSON AMONG THE ECCENTRICS, Penguin Books, New York, 1996, pp ): I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce the belief in Immortality. The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in propositions All sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction, namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue, it will continue; if not best, then it will not. In this quiet valley, as in the palm of Nature s hand, we shall sleep well when we have finished our day. ] Thoreau had measured for the new artificial pond in the cemetery, termed Cat Pond. John Shepard Keyes had been active in the creation of this cemetery. During this summer and fall almost alone and unaided I laid out the cemetery according to Clevelands plan, so far as was feasible, and with my own hands drove the stakes for the lots and saved as many trees as possible from cutting. Made all the arrangements for dedication and had a memorable address from Emerson a poem from Sanborn, an ode by Channing all delivered on a lovely September day in the glen by the lot I afterwards selected. This was followed by a sale of lots the choice for the first bringing $50. from W m Monroe and realizing more than I expected some fifty lots sold, and the undertaking successful Thanks to me we have a Sleepy Hollow cemetery I am quite content to take my long sleep in and for my only epitaph The Founder of This Cemetery J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Friend Daniel Ricketson had been scheduled to visit Concord again and spend time with Henry, but had canceled the visit when he learned that Ellery Channing had moved to Dorchester and would not be available in Concord. So Henry, not standing on dignity, went off to New Bedford: Clear fine day, growing gradually cooler. Henry D. Thoreau of Concord arrived about 1 1 / 2 o clock. September 29: Go to Daniel Ricketson s, New Bedford.

150 At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing, very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts. De Kay, in the New York Reports, thus describes the blackfish [The quotation is somewhat abridged.] FAMILY DELPHINIDÆ. Genus Globicephalus. Lesson. The Social Whale. Globicephalus melas. Delphinus melas. Trail, Nicholson s Journal. D. globiceps. Cuvier, Mem. Mus. Vol. 19. D. deductor. Scoresby, Arct. Regions. D. intermedius. Harlan. Phocena globiceps. Sampson, Am. Journal. Length 15 to 20 feet; shining, bluish black above; a narrow light-gray stripe beneath; remarkable for its loud cries when excited. Black Whale-fish, Howling Whale, Social Whale, and Bottle-head. Often confounded with the grampus. Not known why they are stranded. In 1822 one hundred stranded in one herd at Wellfleet. First described in a History of Greenland. In the Naturalists Library, Jardine, I find Globicephalus deductor or melas, The Deductor or Ca ing Whale. First accurately described by Trail in Sixteen to twenty-four feet long. In 1799 two hundred ran ashore on one of the Shetland Isles. In the winter of , one thousand one hundred and ten approached the shore of Hvalfiord, Iceland, and were captured. In 1812 were used as food by the poor of Bretagne. They visit the neighborhood of Nice in May and June. Got out at Tarkiln Hill or Head of the River Station, three miles this side of New Bedford. Recognized an old Dutch barn. R. s sons, Arthur and Walton, were just returning from tautog fishing in Buzzard s Bay, and I tasted one at supper, singularly curved from snout to tail. 45 THE SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY OLD GRAVES (Franklin Benjamin Sanborn) My arrival to reside in Concord was at the time when old customs were changing for new ones. The settlement of Waldo Emerson here in 1834, after his return from Europe, and his first acquaintance with Thomas Carlyle, had something to do with these changes, especially after his friends began to gather round him here the Thoreaus, John and Henry, in 1836; Alcott in 1840; Hawthorne in 1842; Ellery Channing in 1843; Margaret Fuller from 1836 to 1845 (though she never resided but only visited in Concord); and the Ripley family in 1845, inheriting the Old Manse, and receiving there Mrs. Ripley s brother, George Bradford, who had been with Hawthorne at Brook Farm, and at Plymouth with Marston Watson at his garden and nursery of Hillside, which Thoreau surveyed and mapped for the Watsons in Mrs. Marston Watson (Mary Russell, a sister of William and Thomas Russell, Boston lawyers) had also lived in the Emerson family before her marriage, and was The Maiden in the East to whom Thoreau inscribed an early poem. These friends and among the Concord residents, the Hoar, Whiting and Bartlett families, and Edmund Hosmer, a sturdy farmer, with his daughters and kindred, all made up a circle especially intimate with Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau, though by no means all agreeing with the social, religious and political reformers, to which 45. [Refer to DANIEL RICKETSON AND HIS FRIENDS, page 337.] WALTON RICKETSON

151 class belonged Garrison, Phillips, Theodore Parker, the Brook Farm and Fruitlands residents, and many visitors from America and Europe. Among these soon appeared Henry James, Charles Newcomb, the May family, Frederick Douglass, and other fugitive slaves, whom Mrs. Brooks, the Thoreaus, and other anti-slavery households received and cherished helping them on their way to freedom, when pursued, as they sometimes were. My school grew in numbers during its first term, and much more in its first full year, , near the beginning of which, in September, 1855, I was called on to make my first public appearance as a citizen not as a voter; for I still had a voting residence in New Hampshire, where my brother and I had aided in voting down the pro-slavery Democratic party, whose leader at the time was Hawthorne s college friend, Gen. Pierce, then President of the United States. One evening, early in September, I was sitting in our Channing apartment with my sister, when Mr. Emerson called for an errand surprising to me. The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery had been purchased and was to be dedicated, and Emerson was to give the address. He was also on the Town Committee to arrange for the exercises at the grove, where the prayers, hymns and poems were read and sung; and it was in that capacity he called on me. He said, I asked Mr. Channing for a poem on this occasion, and he has sent me a good poem, but they tell me it cannot be sung. Now will you not write for us verses that will go to some familiar tune? He had seen some of my college verses, and others which were made to be sung, and had been sung, and he inferred from that, a capacity to do the same for Concord. I assented, and presently showed him these lines: Ode. Shine kindly forth, September sun, From heavens calm and clear, That no untimely cloud may run Before thy golden sphere, To vex our simple rites today With one prophetic tear. With steady voices let us raise The fitting psalm and prayer; Remembered grief of other days Breathes softening in the air: Who knows not Death who mourns no loss, He has with us no share. To holy sorrow, solemn joy, We consecrate the place Where soon shall sleep the maid and boy, The father and his race, The mother with her tender babe, The venerable face. These waving woods, these valleys low, Between the tufted knolls, Year after year shall dearer grow To many loving souls; And flowers be sweeter here than blow Elsewhere between the poles. For deathless Love and blessed Grief Shall guard these wooded aisles, When either Autumn casts the leaf, Or blushing Summer smiles, Or Winter whitens o er the land,

152 Or Spring the buds uncoils. The day proved to be that prayed for; these lines were sweetly sung to the tune of St. Martin s; and in the choir I recognized the voices of some of my new friends. Mr. Emerson liked them, and printed them afterward in his Parnassus, as he did Channing s poem, which as poetry was much better, and which also appears in Parnassus, and in the XIth volume of the Centenary edition of Emerson, as here: Sleepy Hollow. (W.E. Channing) No abbeys gloom, no dark cathedral stoops, No winding torches paint the midnight air; Here the green pine delights, the aspen droops Along the modest pathways, and those fair Pale asters of the season spread their plumes Around this field, fit garden for our tombs. And thou shalt pause to hear some funeral bell Slow stealing o er thy heart in this calm place; Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell, But in its kind and supplicating grace It says, Go, Pilgrim, on thy march! be more Friend to the friendless than thou wast before: Learn from the loved one s rest, serenity! Tomorrow that soft bell for thee shall sound, And thou repose beneath the whispering tree, One tribute more to this submissive ground: Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride! Nor these pale flowers, nor this still field deride. Rather to those accents of Being turn, Where a ne er-setting sun illumes the year Eternal: and the incessant watch-fires burn Of unspent holiness and goodness clear, Forget man s littleness, deserve the best, God s mercy in thy thought and life confest! Seldom has a finer poem been read on such an occasion. My own verses were favorably received, and the late Judge Keyes, whose daughter Annie had become one of my pupils, said that I was now a citizen of Concord, and, like some French poet whom he named, as rewarded with a grave at Pere la Chaise, ought to have a burial lot granted me wherever I chose. Long afterward I bought my present lot, in which my poet-son is buried with a slab of marble from Athens above him, inscribed with a Greek line from a Roman tomb in Boetia, of the early Christian period.

153 Winter: In the valley of the Connecticut River, this was one of the severest winters on record, with many roads remaining impassable for the entire long winter. There were a total of 32 snowstorms. On the American great plains, so many prairie elk would starve in the blizzards that the season would become known as Massacre Winter. At Philadelphia, the Delaware River froze, leading to the following Currier & Ives engraving by J. Queen, entitled Souvenir of the Coldest Winter on Record. Scene on the Delaware River at Philadelphia : So many prairie elk would starve in the blizzards this winter, on the American great plains, that the season would become known as the Massacre Winter. This winter of 56-7 was terribly severe lots of drifting snow storms, high winds and bitter cold days breaking up even the court for days at a time, freezing up the harbor so that we had a good track over Charles River on the ice, driving & walking across to Boston without paying tolls I remember going down the harbor on the ice for miles alongside the canal cut for the Cunard steamer, and watching her progress to sea through a crowd of curious people lining the edges as the great ship slowly forged ahead. I forget whether I rode or skated on this occasion for I think it had happened once before and that then or this time I skated to the light ho. and I hardly think I should have

154 done that as sheriff, more likely when at Cambridge! J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Waldo Emerson offered his journal another of his weary captious self-justifying paradoxes, by alleging in effect that all Henry Thoreau wants to do in a conversation is to dominate the other person with biting argument while he, Emerson, is attempting in a loving spirit to turn the encounter toward the pursuit of Truth and Beauty and Joy. All his life Emerson was capable of projecting his own faults onto other people in this blatant manner, in order to unselfconsciously and contemptuously condemn them in that external projection: If I knew only Thoreau, I should think cooperation of good men impossible. Must we always talk for victory, & never once for truth, for comfort, & joy? Centrality he has, & penetration, strong understanding, & the higher gifts the insight of the real or from the real, & the moral rectitude that belongs to it; but all this & all his resources of wit & invention are lost to me in every experiment, year after year, that I make, to hold intercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fight you with, & the time & temper wasted. Also: A.B.A. [Bronson Alcott] saw the Midsummers Night s dream played, & said, it was a phallus to which fathers could carry their daughters, & each had their own thoughts, without suspecting that the other had the same.

155 1857 April 24, Friday: In India, the British colonel in charge of the 3d Light Cavalry ordered his riflemen to use the Enfield cartridge which they suspected had been greased with a mixture of cow fat and pig fat. When 85 of the Hindu and Moslem riflemen refused, they were convicted of disobedience to a lawful order, to serve at hard labor. In the early morning, before daybreak, Henry Thoreau sailed down the Concord River to Ball s Hill. Then he surveyed, for his Concord Academy classmate John Shepard Keyes, a pasture belonging to Dennis. At some point during the day he walked with Ellery Channing.

156 1858 March 26, Friday: Prescott Keyes was born, a son of John Shepard Keyes and Martha Prescott Keyes (he would in 1881 get married with Alice Reynolds, a daughter of Grindall Reynolds). Waldo Emerson wrote from Concord to Henry Stephens Randall of New York 46 that Thoreau s study seems at present to be equally shared between natural and civil history, adding he reads both with a keen and original eye. He solicited (and would obtain) another copy of a four-volume free state-published documentary history that he had in his library, that Thoreau had already consulted. Either Emerson s 4-volume set or Henry Thoreau s 4-volume set (I don t know for sure which) is now safely in the possession of the Concord Free Public Library: Lately, a friend of mine comes occasionally to my library to explore [THE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK: ARRANGED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE HON. CHRISTOPHER MORGAN, SECRETARY OF STATE. By Dr. Edmund Bailey O Callaghan (Albany: Weed, Parsons, & Co., public printers, 1849/1851, four volumes)], and finds them to contain much valuable matter to his purpose. His estimation is the most valuable, that he under estimated them when he first looked at them, a good while since; & he is a very curious & very instructed scholar in early American History, especially in all that concerns the Indians... He is Henry D. Thoreau, a landsurveyor in this town, a good scholar, and though far less known than he ought to be, very well-known in this region as the author of a book called A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers, and 46. Henry Stephens Randall had been born on May 3, 1811 as a son of General Roswell Randall and Harriet (Stephens) Randall, of Shelburne, Vermont. He had come as a young boy from Madison County, New York to Cortland, New York. He was the author of many articles for agricultural periodicals, and of the monograph SHEEP HUSBANDRY. He had gotten married on February 4, 1834 in Auburn, New York with Jane Rebecca Polhemus, daughter of the Reverend Henry Polhemus and Mrs. Jane Anderson Polhemus. He had run for Secretary of State in November 1849 on the Democratic ticket, but had on his first try been unsuccessful. In November 1851 he succeeded, and had then served as Secretary of State for New York from 1852 to He had authored a 3- volume THE LIFE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON in 1858, in which he had nicely managed the outrageous rumors of racial miscegenation by allowing that it might have been not President Jefferson but his nephew Peter Carr who had been doing the dirty for so many years with Monticello house slave Sally Hemings (we don t know that Thoreau ever saw this bio of Jefferson). Randall would be a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina and would die at the age of 66 on August 14, 1876 at his residence in Cortland, New York after years of bad health, with the body being placed in the Cortland Rural Cemetery.

157 Walden, or Life in the Woods. HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I HISTORY OF NEW YORK, II HISTORY OF NEW YORK, III HISTORY OF NEW YORK, IV

158 (Thoreau would copy from this source into his Indian Notebooks #6 and #8, his Fact Book, and his Canadian Notebook for the period.)

159 1859 BY-LAWS OF CORINTHIAN LODGE, OF ANCIENT, FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS, OF CONCORD, MASS., WITH CHARTER GRANTED JUNE 16, 1797; CATALOGUES OF THE OFFICERS, MEMBERS AND INITIATES OF THE LODGE, FROM ITS ORGANIZATION TO 1859; A SYNOPSIS OF THE WORK OF TWENTY-TWO PAST MASTERS; A LIST OF THE MEMBERS IN 1858; BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL THE PAST MASTERS; AND A HISTORY OF THE LODGE, INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, AND A RECORD OF THE DEATHS OF ITS MEMBERS AND INITIATES FROM 1797 TO TO WHICH IS ADDED AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF MASONRY, BY LOUIS A. SURETTE, MASTER OF CORINTHIAN LODGE FROM OCTOBER, 1851, TO OCTOBER, 1858 was printed up by Benjamin Tolman in Concord.

160 A copy of this would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, very possibly because it contained valuable factual material about the lives a considerable number of Concord citizens:

161

162 November 28, Monday: Old and full of years, the beloved American author Washington Irving died of a heart attack in his home, having earned a sum total of $205, from his writings during the course of his life. Here are two sentiments he had recently penned: I hope none of those whose interests and happiness are dear to me will be induced to follow my footsteps, and wander into the seductive but treacherous paths of literature. There is no life more precarious in its profits and fallacious in its enjoyments than that of an author. I shouldn t mind about the Niggers if they only brought them over before they had drilled out their tails. John Goodwin told Henry Thoreau that Alek Therien, who was living in Lincoln in a shanty of his own construction, was drinking only checkerberry-tea. In the evening, at the Concord Town Hall, Thoreau addressed a planning meeting for the services to be enacted upon the day of the killing of the prisoner John Brown, attended by Bronson Alcott, Dr. Josiah Bartlett, Simon Brown, Waldo Emerson, John Shepard Keyes, and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Alcott noted in his journal that Thoreau had taken a prominent part in this movement, and arranged for it chiefly. November 28. P. M. To E. Hubbard s Wood. Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it ivory-leaf. ) Is it not singular that probably only one tea-drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberrytea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard s old lot. This has been Hubbard s practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them. Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, therefore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.

163 November 30, Wednesday: Abraham Lincoln spoke at Elwood in Bleeding Kansas. According to the Elwood Free Press for December 3rd, the senatorial candidate s remarks were received there with great enthusiasm: He stated the reasons why he was unable to make a speech this evening. He could only say a few words to us who had come out to meet him the first time he had placed his foot upon the soil of Kansas. Mr. Lincoln said that it was possible that we had local questions in regard to Railroads, Land Grants and internal improvements which were matters of deeper interest to us than the questions arising out of national politics, but of these local interests he knew nothing and should say nothing. We had, however, just adopted a State Constitution, and it was probable, that, under that Constitution, we should soon cease our Territorial existence, and come forward to take our place in the brotherhood of States, and act our parts as a member of the confederation. Kansas would be Free, but the same questions we had had here in regard to Freedom or Slavery would arise in regard to other Territories and we should have to take our part in deciding them. People often ask, why make such a fuss about a few niggers? I answer the question by asking what will you do to dispose of this question? The Slaves constitute one seventh of our entire population. Wherever there is an element of this magnitude in a government it will be talked about. The general feeling in regard to Slavery had changed entirely since the early days of the Republic. You may examine the debates under the Confederation, in the Convention that framed the Constitution and in the first session of Congress and you will not find a single man saying that Slavery is a good thing. They all believed it was an evil. They made the Northwest Territory the only Territory then belonging to the government forever free. They prohibited the African Slave trade. Having thus prevented its extension and cut off the supply, the Fathers of the Republic believed Slavery must soon disappear. There are only three clauses in the Constitution which refer to Slavery, and in neither of them is the word Slave or Slavery mentioned. The word is not used in the clause prohibiting the African Slave trade; it is not used in the clause which makes Slaves a basis of representation; it is not used in the clause requiring the return of fugitive Slaves. And yet in all the debates in the

164 Convention the question was discussed and Slaves and Slavery talked about. Now why was this word kept out of that instrument and so carefully kept out that a European, be he ever so intelligent, if not familiar with our institutions, might read the Constitution over and over again and never learn that Slavery existed in the United States. The reason is this. The Framers of the Organic Law believed that the Constitution would outlast Slavery and they did not want a word there to tell future generations that Slavery had ever been legalized in America. Your Territory has had a marked history no other Territory has ever had such a history. There had been strife and bloodshed here, both parties had been guilty of outrages; he had his opinions as to the relative guilt of the parties, but he would not say who had been most to blame. One fact was certain there had been loss of life, destruction of property; our material interests had been retarded. Was this desirable? There is a peaceful way of settling these questions the way adopted by government until a recent period. The bloody code has grown out of the new policy in regard to the government of Territories. Mr. Lincoln in conclusion adverted briefly to the Harper s Ferry Affair. He believed the attack of Brown wrong for two reasons. It was a violation of law and it was, as all such attacks must be, futile as far as any effect it might have on the extinction of a great evil. We have a means provided for the expression of our belief in regard to Slavery it is through the ballot box the peaceful method provided by the Constitution. John Brown has shown great courage, rare unselfishness, as even Gov. Wise [Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia] testifies. But no man, North or South, can approve of violence or crime. Mr. Lincoln closed his brief speech by wishing all to go out to the election on Tuesday and to vote as became the Freemen of Kansas.

165 Maria Black of Rock Island, Illinois wrote to Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia: Rock Island Illinois Novr 30th 59 Gov r Wise Dear Sir My two daughters have left with a party of young women who purpose to effect the rescue of John Brown. They number about sixteen & wear large petticoats filled with powder, having slow matches attached. If caught they intend to set themselves off & (so effective is the inflammable material about them) the consequence will be awful. In fact, Virginia will be blown sky high. My anxiety about my two children aforesaid & my affectionate concern for your welfare induce me to forewarn you of the imminent peril that awaits you. If you find the girls, send them back before the blow up & send some chivalry along. There is none of your kind up north. Truly yrs Maria Black William L. Taylor, James J. Rankin, and Cambridge Ritter also were writing this governor: Newyork Nov 30/59 to Dishonorable Gov Wise [image of skull and crossbones] death to you if John Brown not pardoned Look for our Band it is dress in Black in name of Black Band of NewYork Pres William L. Taylor Sec James J. Rankin Tres Cambridge Ritter Bronson Alcott recorded in his journal that he had seen Henry Thoreau again, and Waldo Emerson, in regard to the Brown Services that they were planning for that Friday: We do not intend to have any speeches made on the occasion, but have selected appropriate passages from Brown s words, from the poets, and from the Scriptures, to be read by Thoreau, Emerson, and myself, chiefly; and the selection and arrangement is ours. The reason for this is obvious. In case there is an infiltrator at this meeting in the Concord Town Hall, and they are charged with treason, they will be able to defend themselves by pointing out that no treasonous remark of any sort was uttered, and that they had merely been a literary group meeting to read to one another from the classics, and from records of current events! November 30: I am one of a committee of four, viz. Simon Brown (Ex-Lieutenant-Governor), R.W. Emerson, myself, and John Keyes (late High Sheriff), instructed by a meeting of citizens to ask liberty of the selectmen to have the bell of the first parish tolled at the time Captain Brown is being hung, and while we shall be assembled in the town house to express our sympathy with him. I applied to the selectmen yesterday. Their names are George M. Brooks, Barzillai Hudson, and Julius Smith. After various delays they at length answer me to-night that they are uncertain whether they have any control over the bell, but that, in any case,

166 they will not give their consent to have the bell tolled. Beside their private objections, they are influenced by the remarks of a few individuals. Dr. Bartlett tells me that Rockwood Hoar said he hoped no such foolish thing would be done, and he also named Stedman Buttrick, John Moore, Cheney (and others added Nathan Brooks, senior, and Francis Wheeler) as strongly opposed to it; said that he had heard five hundred (!) damn me for it, and that he had no doubt that if it were done some counter-demonstration would be made, such as firing minute-guns. The doctor himself is more excited than anybody, for he has the minister under his wing. Indeed, a considerable part of Concord are in the condition of Virginia to-day, afraid of their own shadows. I see in E. Hubbard s gray oak wood, four rods from the old wall line and two or three rods over the brow of the hill, an apparent downy woodpecker s nest in a dead white oak stub some six feet high. It is made as far as I can see, like that which I have, but looks quite fresh, and I see, by the very numerous fresh white chips of dead wood scattered over the recently fallen leaves beneath, that it must have been made since the leaves fell. Could it be a nuthatch or chickadee s work? [EDITORIAL COMMENT: PROBABLY A DOWNY WOODPECKER S WINTER QUARTERS.] This has been a very pleasant month, with quite a number of Indian-summer days, a pleasanter month than October was. It is quite warm to-day, and as I go home at dusk on the railroad causeway, I hear a hylodes peeping. DR. JOSIAH BARTLETT

167 December 2, Friday morning: A life-size effigy of Captain John Brown was found tied to a large tree in front of the Concord Town Hall and quickly cut down. It bore a note: Last Will and Testament of Old John Brown, of Jefferson County, Virginia. I bequeath to Hon. Simon Brown my execution robe, the emblem of spotless purity and an unswerving politician. I bequeath to Hon. John S. Keyes my execution cord, made of material warranted to last to hang all the aiders and abettors of Old John Brown. I bequeath to H.D. Thoreau, Esq., my body and soul, he having eulogized my character and actions at Harper s Ferry above the Saints in Heaven. I bequeath to my beloved friend, Charles Bowers, my old boots, and emblems of the souls of those I have murdered. I bequeath to Ralph Waldo Emerson all my personal property, and my execution cap, which contains nearly all the brains I ever had. I bequeath to Dr. Josiah Bartlett the superintending of the ringing of the bells, and flags at half-mast, union down. WALDO EMERSON DR. JOSIAH BARTLETT Both the effigy and the note were quickly destroyed, but a copy of the will would appear the next day in the Boston Post, with a synopsis of the day s events in Concord. Henry Thoreau would later remark in his journal: Certain persons disgraced themselves by hanging Brown in effigy in this town on the 2d. I was glad to know that the only four whose names I heard mentioned in connection with it had not been long resident here, and had done nothing to secure the respect of the town. Pages of Henry Mayer s ALL ON FIRE: Friday, December 2, 1859, broke clear and summerlike over a nation solemn and awed by the grim business taking place in Virginia. Southerners put up a facade of business-as-usual, but in the free states church bells tolled morning, noon, and night from Cape Cod to Kansas.

168 In Concord, Thoreau argued with the narrow-minded selectmen who [were refusing] to endorse the ringing and [were threatening] to fire off the town s minute guns [in celebration of this traitor s execution] as a countermeasure, but in Albany the council authorized a one-hundred-gun salute in tribute to Brown and in Syracuse the great fire bell in City Hall rang mournfully all through the day. In Hartford three men climbed to the top of the state capital s dome and draped a statue of Liberty in mourning. Cleveland residents hung crepe banners in its streets, bankers closed their doors in Akron, and public prayer meetings took place in churches in New York and Philadelphia, the tabernacles of black congregations from Detroit to New Bedford, and the clapboard meetinghouses of New England and the Western Reserve. In Boston an interracial union service ran all day in the Twelfth Street Baptist Church, and when at four in the afternoon the telegraph confirmed that the execution had taken place a little before noon, many business places, black and white, closed and people put on mourning bands or rosettes studded with a likeness of the martyred Brown. Willie Garrison that afternoon received a private shock. Stopping by the Phillipses to meet his friend Phoebe Garnaut, he discovered her deep in conversation with George Hoyt, the young attorney who had defended Brown, and he unavoidably caught the information that Francis Meriam was in Boston. Let in on the secret, Willie learned that his old schoolmate had endured an eight-day escape on foot, pursued by baying hounds around him, hiding in thickets, and stumbling along a railroad track in a snowstorm before gaining fresh clothes and shelter among friends who helped him to Canada. Where he grew restless and struck out for home under the insane idea that he must revenge Brown s death. Hoyt was convinced that the unstable young man had to be gotten out of the way forthwith, and Phillips had gone to consult with Mr. Jackson about the arrangements. Overwrought, eyes filmed over, babbling incoherently, Meriam was a pitiable sight, but the old abolitionists dispatched him that night to Concord, where a nervous Sanborn, certain that Meriam would yet expose them all, got a friend later identified as Thoreau to drive the agitated young man to an out-of-the-way station and muscle him onto a westbound train and a second exile in the black community at Chatham, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit. If the editor [William Lloyd Garrison] knew that day of Meriam s presence, he never acknowledged it, but spent the afternoon overseeing the arrangements for the meeting at Tremont Temple. Lydia Maria Child had come in from Wayland the day before expressly to help him, and the two old apostles recalled their pioneering years in the movement as they decorated the platform and positioned placards and slogans around the barn-like auditorium Saint Paul s Remember them in bonds..., Jeremiah s Execute justice in the morning..., Jefferson s I tremble for my country..., Henry s Give me liberty..., and other key statements of the American civil and spiritual litany. No funeral drapery, no black crepe, they decreed, and they made instead a lectern centerpiece of Brown s portrait supported by a cross and wreathed in evergreen and amaranth. Above the stage they hung a bright painted banner bearing the Great Seal of

169 Virginia with its insurrectionary image of Liberty s soldier bestride a vanquished oppressor and the confident motto Sic Semper Tyrannis. Just before the program began half an hour early owing to the crush of four thousand people in the seats and three thousand more crowded in the street outside a young man unfurled a banner from the gallery reading, He dies by the mandate of the Slave Power, yet still lives by virtue of his heroic deeds, and the temple erupted in an immense shout that gave the keynote for the evening. There were many speakers, including the militant young fugitive slave John Sella Martin, who had recently assumed the pastorate of the Belknap Street Church. He first stunned the audience by charging that America had delivered up the Barabbas of Slavery and crucified the John Brown of Freedom, and then brought the crowd to its feet by exclaiming that as a Christian and peace man, he would not quibble with John Brown for taking the revolutionary means extolled by white men and using them for black men instead. There were poems and tears and prayers and a collection for the Brown family taken up by a cadre of young men that included Willie Garrison. The meeting, however, was his father s idea, and though the subject was Brown, the night belonged to the editor. It was Garrison who read aloud the victim s now-celebrated address to the court, and it was Garrison who, upon rising once more to give the eulogy, basked in the overwhelming affection the emanated from every part of the hall and fused the aura of Brown s martyrdom and the radiant energy of the pioneer into a beam of truth illuminated. December 2, 2PM, Friday: According to Bronson Alcott s journal, most of the people who came to the Concord Town Hall at 2PM were from Concord itself, although there were some from adjoining towns: Simon Brown, Chairman Readings by Thoreau, Emerson, Bowers, Keyes, and Alcott, and Sanborn s dirge is sung by the company standing. The bells are not rung, I think not more than one or two of Brown s friends wished them to be. I did not... The services are effecting and impressive; distinguished by modesty, simplicity, and earnestness; worthy alike of the occasion and of the man. WALDO EMERSON FRANKLIN B. SANBORN John Shepard Keyes would report that although he had insisted, in the preparations for this meeting, that the proceedings must be limited to the reading of other people s writings in order to avoid any suggestion of treason, Henry Thoreau saw fit to disregard his instructions: This reminds me that I forgot the John Brown excitement of last year and I must recall one of its peculiar episodes in Concord. When the day of his execution arrived we had arranged for a gathering in the Town Hall, and had a wonderful meeting. I had insisted at the preliminary talks that all the speakers should be confined to reading other peoples writings, as there was too much danger of our giving way to treasonable utterances if we allowed ourselves to speak our own sentiments and the plan was cordially assented to. The hall was crowded, I think Hoar or Fay

170

171 in the chair, Mr Reynolds read from the Bible Mr. Emerson from Milton, Mr Alcott from some heathen philosopher, I read the Execution of Montrose, from Aytonns ballads, and never saw a more effective impression made on an audience than did those stirring lines. DH Thoreau with his usual egotism broke the agreement and said some rambling incoherent sentences, that might have been unfortunate if they had not been unintelligible. Sanborn read something and so did Hoar but Ive forgotten what. A hymn was sung perhaps written by Channing and the ceremonies serious and sober as a funeral were over. All of us knew Old John, all admired him, and many rejoiced in his attack on slavery and there was a profound feeling of sorrow for his death. If I hadnt been sheriff I should have gone to the trial to defend him I was so strongly moved by his courage and manliness J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY On this evening, in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, Phebe Townley Dod would record in her diary: Uncommon weather for this time of year. Thermometer stood at 65 at half past five tonight. We have had the door open this afternoon. Brown was hung in Baltimore to-day.

172 1860 April 3, Tuesday: Frederik van Eeden was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands. On assurances by Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar that the John Brown flap was over and that he was no longer in danger of arrest by Senator James Mason s special investigatory committee of the US Senate, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret Six conspiracy had returned to Concord, Massachusetts. Hoar proved to be quite mistaken as on this day US marshals appeared in Concord with a warrant for this conspirator s arrest. As Sanborn would later recount the incident, a police sergeant who knew that he had come back home from exile in Canada took four men and went that night to his home in Concord: 47 An attempt was made to drag me in irons from my house here to Washington. This was on the night of 3 April On the next day, having been released from these wretches by my neighbors who acted under the laws of Massachusetts as a sheriff s posse to enforce a writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge Hoar, I appeared before the Supreme Court of this Commonwealth, and was declared at liberty to go where I pleased. I went home to my ordinary way of life, and was not further molested by Mason or Davis. Senator James Mason would comment in regard to this altercation that Sanborn, already in handcuffs, had been rescued by a tumultuous body of people, whom I call a mob. Anna Maria Whiting in particular, bless her, got really physical during the struggle, fending off the deputies with a cane: Annie Whiting got into the kidnapper s carriage so that they could not put Sanborn in. One grabbed her and said, Get out. I won t, said Annie. I ll tear your clothes. Tear away, they said. We ll whip up the horses and make them run away if you don t get out. So let them run to the devil, I won t stir. She didn t budge until it was all over. Sanborn s schoolboys rushed about like heroes. After so long an interval, with no effort at arresting me, I had fairly concluded the Senate officials had given up their idea of taking me to Washington. This they would have done, had they been wise. But on the evening of April 3rd, after I had been out making calls in the village of Concord, and was sitting quietly in my study on the first floor, after nine o clock, my door-bell rang. Julia had gone to bed. Sarah was in her room. Without anticipating any harm, I went down into the front hall in my robe and answered the bell. A young man presented himself, and handed me a note, which I stepped back to read by the light of the hall lamp. It said the bearer was a person deserving charity. When I looked up from reading the note, four men had entered my hall. One of them came forward and layed his hand on me, saying, I arrest you. I said, By what authority? If you have a warrant read it, for I will not go with you unless you show your warrant. He began to read the order of the Senate for my arrest. Sarah, who had feared, as I did not, what this visit meant, now rushed down the stairs, opened the other door of the hall, and began to cry out to the neighbors. Seeing they were 47. This illustration Arrest and Rescue of Frank B. Sanborn, Esq., at Concord, Massachusetts, on the Night of April 3, 1860 is courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.

173 likely to be interrupted in their mission, my five callers slipped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists and forced me from the house. I was young and strong and I resented this indignity. They had to lift me and carry me to the door, where my sister stood, screaming. I braced my feet against the doorposts and delayed them. I did the same at the posts of the veranda. The church bells were ringing a fire alarm, the people were gathering by tens. I braced my feet against the stone posts of the gateway, checking their progress once more. When the four rascals lifted me to insert me, feet foremost, in their covered hack, an anxious driver on the box, I braced myself against the sides of the carriage door and broke them in. They then realized it was my unfettered feet that made all this trouble, so one of the four grasped my feet and brought them together, so that I could no longer use them in resistance. They got me into the hack only as far as my knees, when my sister, darting forward, grasped the long beard of my footman and pulled with so much force he lost his grasp. My feet felt the ground again, outside the carriage. A great crowd had collected, among them Colonel Whiting and his daughter Annie. With his stout cane, the Colonel began to beat the horses. My bearers were left a rod or two behind the hack into which they had not been able to force me. Still they held me, hatless and in my evening slippers, in the street in front of my house. At that moment, my counsel, J.S. Keyes, appeared by my side, asking if I petitioned for a writ of Habeas Corpus. By all means, I told him. Keyes hurried over to Judge Hoar s house. Hearing the tumult, and suspecting what it was, he had already begun filling out a writ of personal replevin. In less than ten minutes, the writ was in the hands of Concord s deputy sheriff, John Moore, who made the formal demand on my captors to surrender their prisoner. Stupidly, they refused. So the sheriff called on the 150 men and women present to act as his posse comitatus, which some twenty of the men gladly did, and I was forcibly snatched from senatorial custody. At the same time, my Irish neighbors rushed upon them and forced them to take to their broken carriage, and make off toward Lexington, the way they had come. They were pursued by twenty or thirty of my townsmen, some of them as far as Lexington. I was committed to the custody of Captain George L. Prescott, and spent the night in his house, armed, for my better defense, with a six-shooter, which Mr. Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape and then chairman of the Selectmen, had insisted I should take. I slept peacefully all the rest of that night.

174 After Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar had issued his writ and the marshals had gone away, arrangements were made for Sanborn to hide for the rest of the night with a pistol at Captain George L. Prescott s home, while Henry Thoreau spent the rest of the night at Sanborn s home so his sister Sarah E. Sanborn would not be alone. Louisa May Alcott would record: Sanborn was nearly kidnapped for being a friend of John Brown; but his sister rescued him when he was handcuffed, and the scamps drove off. A meeting and general flurry. Here is John Shepard Keyes s account of the incident: Sanborn had I never doubted full knowledge of his plans, and Concord subscriptions had helped his cause without however knowing its purpose. So that when Mason of Virginia began in the U.S. Senate the investigation Sanborn was summoned to testify. He was afraid and unwilling to trust himself in Washington and refused to attend. He consulted with me, and I had a correspondence with Mason on the subject endeavoring to induce the comtee to take his deposition here. I think that was one object I had in going to Washington myself but do not recall any interview with Mason. At length the U.S. Marshal made the attempt to take Sanborn and carry him off as a witness. I was sitting quietly in my house of a moonlight evening when Grace Mitchell one of Sanborns scholars came wildly rushing in with the news that they were carrying him off. I ran to his house next to the high school house to find him handcuffed in the carry all with the 3 depy marshals holding him, and an excited crowd of 30 men & women holding the horse and stopping the road in

175 front. Sanborn terribly excited, and waving frantically his manacles and calling for help and rescue I enquired of the officers who recognized me their purpose and authority which they gave and then telling the crowd to detain them till I got back, rushed off to Judge Hoar s house where I found him quietly smoking in his library to which the cries and shouts of the scene almost penetrated. I applied to him for a writ of Habeas Corpus for Sanborn and as soon as he understood the matter he granted it. I writing the petition therefore while he filled out the writ. Armed with this I hastened back to find the crowd swelled to a mob of hundreds, in which some Democrats had mingled trying to take the part of the officers, and getting roughly handled for so doing. Shouting for my old deputy Capt Moore, the crowd gave way he came forward served the writ by taking Sanborn from the wagon and releasing him from the officers and the handcuffs. They who were thoroughly alarmed for their safety, gladly drove off after hearing the writ saluted with a parting volley of stones & groans and when the town clerk had shoved the collector Col Holbrook into the gutter as the fit place for his pro slavery remarks, the women helped Sanborn to his house, the men walked off and when I got through a short consultation with him, and turned homeward Concord street were quiet and the excitement over save that Rufus Hosmer had fallen dead of heart disease in the tumult that had been going on there. My coolness and legal instinct alone prevented a dreadful row. Carleton & Freeman & Coolidge the officers were armed, and but for my prompt interference would have made sad work and a terrible result, instead of the quiet surrender I brought about by means of the writ. It was the best instance of presence of mind I can recall in my whole experience! Byron like, I woke the next morning to find the newspapers full of the encoutre and myself famous for my interposition. In the excited state of feeling over slavery and the John Brown invasion, it was almost a declaration of war. I appeared before the Supreme Court hastily collected in full bench with Gov. Andrew as senior counsel for Sanborn while the Marshal with the U.S. District Atty was on the other side. The Court House was crammed the excitement red hot, I suggested the point when the warrant was produced under which the officers were acting that as it was addressed only to the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, he could not deputize his authority to a bailiff for want of any such direction in the warrant and therefore the service by such bailiff was utterly void and nugatory, and cited the decision of our Supreme Court to that effect in the case of a writ directed to a sheriff and served by a constable. Charley Woodbury the Dist Atty, replied. Andrew closed and the court after consultation sustained the point and discharged Sanborn. The crowd cheered Sanborn was the hero of the hour, and though for a month he had been hiding in Concord garrets and writing to me from Patinas, he must make the most of his notoriety by the aid of newspapers, interviews, and cards of thanks. I came home at night to find Concord stirred to its depths, with reporters and emissaries of all kinds, and more foolish stories in circulation of attacks, and captures, than could be imagined The papers here and in N.Y. Washington were filled with it. Congress got excited, Mason threatened and it

176 seemed as if war might actually begin. Sanborn was carefully guarded, and the story that the Marines were to be sent out in the night to take him, came so straight from Mrs Jackson who was connected with the Emerson & Bartlett family that videlles [?] were sent out mounted to watch and give the alarm. Altogether it was another 19th of April and I sat on horseback for hours on the Lincoln hill watching. I had the officers arrested brought to Concord tried before Ball Justice for assault & battery, & bound over to criminal term. Brought a suit for Sanborn in the Supreme Court for $10000 damages, and with the Atty. Gen appeared in the U.S. Court where the comtees case was carried by Woodbury & in short had lots of business growing out of the affair. The Legislature took it up, and Congress got excited over it, and it was a great row! Meantime politics must be attended to and I went to the State Convention at Worcester where I helped elect the Andrew ticket for delegates to Chicago, and was chosen the member of the State Convention from the Midx Senatorial District, also was chosen with Sweetzer at the District Convention in Concord a district delegate to Chicago after a hard fight, in which my friends rallied to pay me for my defeat as sheriff, and thus I was busy again in political movements. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

177 May 18, Friday: John Shepard Keyes was among the delegates to the national convention of the Republican party when it nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois (soon Keyes would be made a United States marshall and would serve as a bodyguard during the Inauguration ceremony and be present also for the delivery of the Gettysburg Address). But we are getting ahead of ourselves here, for before that could come about, this party s nominee would need to campaign against and triumph over the Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglass and the Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge. May 18. P. M. To Walden. The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, inaugurating the summer. Gold-thread out, how long? by Trillium Woodside. Trientalis. The green of the birches is fast losing its prominence amid the thickening cloud of reddish-brown and yellowish oak leafets. The last and others [?] are now like a mist enveloping the dark pines. Apple trees, now, for two or three days, generally bursting into bloom (not in full bloom), look like whitish rocks on the hillsides, somewhat even as the shad-bush did. The sand cherry flower is about in prime. It grows on all sides of short stems, which are either upright or spreading, forming often regular solid cylinders twelve to eighteen inches long and only one and a half inches in diameter, the flowers facing out every way, of uniform diameter, determined by the length of the peduncles. Pretty wands of white flowers, with leafets intermingled. The remarkably dry weather has been both very favorable and agreeable weather to walkers. We have had almost constant east winds, yet generally accompanied with warmth, none of the rawness of the east wind commonly. We have, as it were, the bracing air of the seashore with the warmth and dryness of June in the country. The night-warbler is a powerful singer for so small a bird. It launches into the air above the forest, or over some hollow or open space in the woods, and challenges the attention of the woods by its rapid and impetuous warble, and then drops down swiftly into the tree-tops like a performer withdrawing behind the scenes, and he is very lucky who detects where it alights. That large fern (is it Aspidium spinulosum?) of Brister Spring Swamp is a foot or more high. It is partly evergreen. A hairy woodpecker [Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus] betrays its hole in an apple tree by its anxiety. The ground is strewn with the chips it has made, over a large space. The hole, so far as I can see, is exactly like that of the downy woodpecker, the entrance (though not so round) and the conical form within above, only larger. The bird scolds at me from a dozen rods off. Now for very young and tender oak leaves and their colors. April 4, Wednesday: On the day after the attempt to seize Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Henry Thoreau made a typically laconic comment about this in his journal: Lodged at Sanborn s last night after his rescue, he being away. His entry is so subdued, one wonders that he bothered to mention the incident at all unless he was using this laconic entry as a reminder to himself of the relative weight which should be assigned in one s life to events of such nature: April 4: Wednesday morning. Lodged at Sanborn s last night after his rescue, he being away. It is warmer, an April-like morning after two colder and windy days, threatening a moist or more or less showery day, which followed. The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages, robins, tree sparrows, and methinks I heard a purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check. Thoreau as Ornithologist

178 Walt Whitman, who had come to Boston to republish his book, was present at the Supreme Court hearing in the Sanborn matter. The record made by Louisa May Alcott was somewhat more succinct than Sanborn s but nowhere near as laconic as Thoreau s: Sanborn was nearly kidnapped for being a friend of John Brown; but his sister rescued him when he was handcuffed, and the scamps drove off. A meeting and general flurry. At the meeting in Concord which Louisa May Alcott mentions above, Thoreau had spoken for resistance to unjust law. None of our three diarists here, not Sanborn, not Alcott, and not Thoreau, considered this worthy of mention. John S. Keyes, John Andrew, Samuel E. Sewall, and Robert Treat Paine, acting together as legal counsel on Sanborn s behalf, went before Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. Walt Whitman, who had come to Boston to republish his book, was present at the Supreme Court hearing, as was Wendell Phillips. The court room was filled with my Concord and Boston friends, including the always elegant Mr. Wendell Phillips and, in his workingman s outfit, Mr. Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman would allege later that he had been at the hearing specifically to help rescue Sanborn had this become necessary. There were plenty of others, Whitman would indicate, who also had come to take action should the hearing go sour. With Whitman were his publishers, Charles Thayer and William Eldridge, at whose place of business an abolitionist group known as the Black Strings sometimes held their meetings. Another of their authors, James Redpath, was present also. The journalist Richard J. Hinton who had recommended LEAVES OF GRASS to Thayer and Eldridge was present. William Douglas O Connor, who had received an advance on his forthcoming antislavery manuscript HARRINGTON, was in attendance. When Judge Lemuel Shaw declared that no one but an officer of the Senate had the legal authority to undertake such an arrest, it became clear that violence would not be appropriate. Sanborn returned to Concord a hero, lauded by the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Waldo Emerson at a spontaneous homecoming celebration held at Town Hall. Thoreau received applause when he opinioned that the government ought to have been out arresting slave kidnappers, rather than attempting to kidnap Sanborn.

179 June 29, Friday: As soon as the Hawthornes were ensconced in their The Wayside again, the Emersons hosted an evening strawberries-and-cream reception which the Alcotts and Thoreaus attended (Bronson Alcott, in his journal, would continue to refer to the place as Hillside ). Also present were Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, John Master Cheney, the painter William Morris Hunt, and John Shepard Keyes. (Hawthorne was at this time renovating his home, adding a three-story tower from the top floor of which he imagined, beyond his stand-up desk, he would be able to obtain a desired Paul Pry view of Concord. Unfortunately, such an unshaded writer s garrett would prove not only to be much too hot for the finicky author in the summer, but also much too stuffy in the winter.) Soon after the Hawthornes had returned to their home in Concord from overseas, Una Hawthorne had to be tied down and subjected to electric shocks, something which in that period was being termed electrotherapy. Her father Nathaniel was so impressed by the result of these shock treatments that, in an effort to overcome his bouts of depression, he had them repeated upon himself. However, as usual, he refused to consult a medical doctor.

180 At about this point in time (perhaps it was early in the next month), when Nathaniel made a call at the Emerson home specifically to speak with his daughter Una s friend Ellen Emerson, she was already in bed. So he stayed awhile to chat with the other Emerson children. Edward Emerson reported later that to cover his shyness he began to look through a stereoscope at stereo photographs of Concord Court and Concord Common, the Milldam, and various houses of the town, and expressed surprise at these photographs. Edward assumed that the interest he showed indicated either that he had never been through the center of the town or that he had always been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he had never noticed what he was passing. Robert H. Byer has suggested, however, that what Hawthorne had been struck by was simply how this apparatus alone, quite distinct from his length of time away from home, had succeeded in making unfamiliar what had been for many years the familiar context of his life. 48 Having been oriented for so long in his imagination to creating defamiliarizing perspectives of the real in juxtaposition to its more self-evident appearances, Hawthorne may well have felt a bemused, perhaps wearied shock of recognition at the effects of the stereoscope on his immediate, intimate world: for the moment, anyway, this apparatus may have seemed to actualize his deepest, most private inward eye (and need). Or it may have struck him as an uncanny reenactment of his often tiring, abrasive, estranging experience as a European traveler. The affinity and analogy suggested by this anecdote between the effects of stereoscopic viewing and the kind of reader responsiveness produced by THE MARBLE FAUN are worth exploring further. 48. Nathaniel s comments on photography are to be found in Chapter 6 of THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES.

181 September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Daniel Shattuck, on a portion of the estate which would eventuate in the Colonial Inn on Concord Common near Monument Street. His sketch shows as neighbors Joseph Reynolds, Aunt Maria Thoreau, John Shepard Keyes, and Mrs. Charles W. Goodnow. View Henry Thoreau s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: (The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.) View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: Also, Thoreau was working on his natural history materials. He posted to editor Horace Greeley his SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES for publication in the New-York Weekly Tribune. Concord Sep 29 th 1860 Friend Greeley,

182 Knowing your interest in whatever relates to Agriculture, I send you with this a short Address delivered by me before The Middlesex Agricultural Society, in this town, Sep. 20 th ; on The Succession of Forest Trees. It is part of a chapter on the Dispersion of Seeds. If you would like to print it, please accept it. If you do not wish to print it entire, return it to me at once, for it is due to the Societys Report a month or 6 weeks hence Yrs truly Henry D. Thoreau September 29, Saturday: Another hard frost and a very cold day.

183 In the hard frost of September 29th and 30th and October 1st the thermometer would go all the way down to 20 and all Ephraim Wales Bull s Concord grapes, some fifty bushels of them, would be frozen. Theodore Henry Hittell s THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES CAPEN ADAMS, 49 MOUNTAINEER AND GRIZZLY BEAR HUNTER, OF CALIFORNIA (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee and Company. 117 Washington Street. San Francisco: Towne and Bacon). The book contained a dozen woodcuts by Charles Nahl. JAMES CAPEN ADAMS 49. Hittell had completely bought into Grizzly Adams s story that his real name was James Capen Adams rather than John Adams.

184 The following tabulation would be Horace Rice Hosmer s sarcastic take on a Franklin Benjamin Sanborn piece of eugenic engineering (and piece of typical Concord conceit), to wit, Perpetuity, indeed, and hereditary transmission of everything that by nature and good sense can be inherited, are among the characteristics of Concord : The Harvard Apples that do or do not fall far from the Tree CLASS NAME FATHER SON 1834 George Moore Abel Moore, the county sheriff in Concord, came from Sudbury a rich farmer Mason by trade and rich 1835 Hiram Barrett Dennis came from Boston because he was a drunkard died a drunkard s death when about Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar Judge Samuel Hoar came from Lincoln a rich lawyer 1837 Henry D. Thoreau little, deaf pencil maker never free from pecuniary difficulties the greater part of his life 1841 John Shepard Keyes John Keyes, founder of The Republican during the 1840 election, came from Westford Lawyer [State Senator, District Judge] 1844 George M. Brooks came from Lincoln Lawyer [Judge] 1844 Edward Sherman Hoar came from Lincoln a rich lawyer brother of Ebenezer R. Hoar 1845 Gorham Bartlett Dr. Josiah Bartlett, the Thoreau family physician, came from Chelmsford [a pupil in Concord Academy who became a] Doctor 1846 George Frisbie Hoar came from Lincoln a rich lawyer brother of Ebenezer R. Hoar 1847 George Haywood Dr. Abiel Heywood, long term town clerk and chairman of the Concord Board of Selectmen was a Doctor, and wealthy, of Concord 1849 Joseph Boyden Keyes brother of Thomas L. Keyes became a lawyer 1851 Nathan H. Barrett Captain Nathan Barrett was a rich farmer of Concord Nathan Henry Barrett became a government clerk

185 1861 March 4, Monday: The sovereign state of Texas seceded from the Union as Abraham Lincoln was being inaugurated as President of the United States. In the face of all the talk about preventing the President-elect from taking the oath of office, Lieutenant- General Winfield Scott had taken on the task of protecting his person in the most critical and hazardous event with which I have ever been connected (Scott himself was receiving death threats). As Lincoln s open carriage moved toward the Capitol, it was closely surrounded on all sides by marshals and cavalry, so as almost to hide it from view, one of these protective bodies being that of John Shepard Keyes (in addition, green-coated sharpshooters were stationed on the roofs above Pennsylvania Avenue). The grim reality was that two weeks earlier Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as the President of a newly constituted Confederate States of America. On the East Portico of the Capitol building, Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the executive oath for the 7th time (the Capitol building was sheathed in scaffolding because its copper and wood Bulfinch dome was in process of being replaced with a cast iron dome designed by Thomas U. Walter). I looked about for a day or two, found Major French in charge as chief marshal of the inaugural ceremonies, who at once secured me to take charge of the President with such aids as I should choose. It was the most dangerous duty of the day. Fears of an attack, assassination were rife, and rumors of real war were in the air. I accepted without hesitation, secured a dozen Massachusetts men on whom I could rely. Col. NA Thompson Gen Devens, Col Rogers, I.P. Hanscom &c I cant recall all of them, engaged our horses, and badges, conferred with my namesake Col Keyes of Scotts staff and Capt Stone of Mass in command of the local troops as to the details of the march &c. &c. &c. As the magnitude and danger of the occasion grew on me I couldnt sleep, and after tossing all night I came down at Willards very early and was sitting in the hall when who should arrive but Lincoln in a cap and cloak, looking worn and haggard with a night ride, and with only Lamon with him. No one was about but the night clerk to whom it was whispered who the guest was and he retired to his room. I recognized him from seeing him in N.Y. and he & his friend Lamon eyed me suspiciously as the only guest of the house visible at that strange hour of day down. With Lamon I soon became well acquainted, and was introduced by him to Mrs Lincoln in the evening at a sort of reception she gave after her arrival to the ladies &c at Willards. Though she tried to be agreeable she was very distasteful to me, reminding me strongly of Aunt Hannah Leland whom she resembled exactly except in not being lame, but with a thoroughly southern manner I detest. On Sunday I had my first interview with Lincoln, in his parlor where Lamon took me to confer about his wishes as to the next day. I shook hands with the long, lank, lean rough looking ill dressed president elect, and telling him my purpose in calling, was struck with his reply, as throwing his long leg over the top of the centre table he answered My only wish is to go to the Capitol take the oath and return to the White House as directly as possible to begin the duties of the office. Then we talked of details, and he left all to me to arrange, with the committee of the Senate Baker and Collamer, while Lamon with Phillip the Dist U.S. Marshal were to see to Buchanan the out going

186 President. After half an hours talk in which Lincoln told several good stories, and made me feel very comfortable I retired to try my saddle horse. Riding very leisurely over the route seeing the positions Scott had assigned for the troops, I met Col Butler Bens brother an old frontier Indian campaigner whom I had seen before and who asked me what I was trying that horse for. I told him to escort Lincoln tomorrow. The devil said he Ive been in lots of fights but I dont envy you. Why said I. Because Id rather take my chances in any Indian scrimmage than be in your place. Then we talked and he gave me some points for which I thanked him and rode off. It was a lovely quiet afternoon but the quiet was ominous, and foreboding There was a hushed expectancy in the city that betokened anything but a festival for the morrow and yet I had a pleasant ride and liked my horse. It was the last night of Congress which had nominally been in session all that day and in the evening I went to the Capitol to see the sights usually attending the close. Here too was the same foreboding, knots of members anxiously conferring, every one sober, and serious, nothing of interest doing only waiting in gloom and distrust for what the morrow might bring. There were but few visitors in the corridors or galleries, only some haggard claimants for legislation hoping against hope. It was dispiriting enough and I went back to Willards wrote a long letter of goodbye to Martha and slept an hour or two. Rising early the bright sun, the busy throng of sightseers occupying every favorable point, the moving troops, and the general bustle of the great day in Washington, drove away the clouds and fears of the night before. Mounting our horses at Willards we waited the arrival of President Buchanan from the Capitol, where he had been signing the last bills, and we waited long. The escort & procession were drawn up on Pennsylvania Avenue Major French and his aids in the advance and at last Buchanan arrived. He went in shook hands with Lincoln and they came out together, Lincoln and he taking the back seat of the carriage L. on the left with the Senate Committee on the front seat. Lamon and the U.S. Marshal on Buchanans side of the carriage I and my aids on Lincolns side, I so near I could have touched him by extending my arm. Col Thompson in front of me with Col Rogers, Gen Devens at my left and the others in the rear. Thus we slowly moved down the avenue, between files of troops and troopers keeping the wide street clear from curb to curb, with detachments of artillery posted on all the side streets with their horses mounted canons loaded & post fires lit. The sidewalks windows and house tops crowded with a dense mass of humanity chiefly men. In comparatively silence we passed along occasionally a faint cheer from a knot of Republicans on the walk, or a waving of handkerchiefs from a bevy of ladies at a window, no enthusiasm no warmth of greeting In the carriage Buchanan nervous faint almost collapsed, rode silent and trembling as if to his execution. Lincoln calm cool quiet bowing to every greeting from the crowd and occasionally speaking to the committee men on the front seat. Baker on my side vigilant but anxiously watching every motion or pause scrutinizing every group, while I keeping my horse exactly between the wheels of the carriage, shielded Lincoln all I could the entire way. All went without incident till we got to the foot of Capitol Hill, where the crowd was densest, and there was some delay while the troops were taking their places in front of the eastern portico. Baker got very

187 nervous & excited called on me to push on and clear the way while Buchanan shrank into his corner as haggard and frightened as if his doom had come. Old Collamer and Lincoln cool and collected talked on unconcernedly, while I sent Col T. ahead to see what caused the obstruction. As he returned a sudden sway of the crowd caused the carriage horses to start, and the pole as it lifted catching the Cols saddle unhorsed him instantly This added to the confusion, but was soon righted and before Baker s order to Drive on Drive on was repeated we advanced and alighted at door of the Senate wing. Here the Major Chief Marshal met us, and escorted the presidential party to the Presidents room. After a brief tarry here we entered the Senate Chamber, where we found places, and after some proceedings there formed a procession and marched to the east portico where Lincoln took the oath and delivered his famous inaugural to a vast crowd filling the steps and front square, and amid profound silence. As a part of my duty I stood within 10 feet of him hearing every word, and greatly impressed by the good sense and homely strength of his phrases. It was not very well received, his awkward appearance was not favorable and it hardly elicited a cheer, though he had a rather warm greeting from the ladies and the friends close to him as he first appeared on the platform. This over we returned to the Senate Chamber & the Presidents room, the procession reformed and Lincoln escorted by us as before resumed his place in the carriage, and we returned over the route. Lincoln was relieved and so were all others, I forget whether Buchanan came back to Willards with Lincoln or left him at the Capitol. At any rate the chat of the party was lively the crowd was relieved that all had gone well the greetings were more enthusiastic, and the return much pleasanter than the advance. As we turned up the Treasury building there was a great cheering and much heartiness shown, and in front of the White House we reviewed the society s & delegations which composed the escort who being all Republicans were very enthusiastic. I recall with pleasure the praise Lincoln and Baker bestowed on me for keeping so exactly in my place the whole route, and it well paid for all my trouble work and anxiety. The White House reached we dismounted were invited by the President inside, warmly thanked by him for our attentions, introduced severally by Col Lamon, and then forming a body guard staid for an hour or two while he received all that desired to be introduced of the waiting crowd outside. This over the President again made his acknowledgments to the Marshals and we took our leave of him, ready to begin his duties. I was entirely delighted with the success of the day, satisfied with my horse my aids my position and myself, and felt as relieved, as assured that I had helped inaugurate a Republican President who would appoint me his marshal for Mass. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

188 In his inaugural address, the new president offered that although he wasn t planning to end slavery in those states where it already existed, he wasn t going to hold still for any secessions. The question would be, can this be resolved without warfare? [following screens] [THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR MARCH 4]

189 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: Fellow citizens of the United States: In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, to be taken by the President before he enters on the execution of his office. I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety, or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves, and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. I now reiterate these sentiments: and in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause as cheerfully to one section, as to another. There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions: No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

190 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, shall be delivered up, their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath? There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. if the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him, or to others, by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath shall go unkept, on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept? Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and human jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well, at the same time, to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarranties that The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all previleges and immunities of citizens in the several States? I take the official oath to-day, with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws, by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest, that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to, and abide by, all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional. It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our national Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens, have, in succession, administered the executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many perils; and, generally, with great success. Yet, with all this scope for precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years, under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade, by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

191 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in It was further matured and the faith of the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was to form a more perfect union. But if destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union, that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend, and maintain itself. In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided in me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion no using of force against, or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States, in any interior locality, shall be so great and so universal, as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable with all, that I deem it better to forego, for the time, the uses of such offices. The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed, unless current events, and experience, shall show a modification, or change, to be proper; and in every case and exigency, my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles, and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections. That there are persons in one section, or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm or deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union, may I not speak?

192 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step, while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from, have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from? Will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? All profess to be content in the Union, if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted, that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If, by the mere force of numbers, a majority should ever deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution certainly would, if such a right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities, and of individuals, are so plainly assured to them, by affirmations and negations, guarranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories. The Constitution does not expressly say. From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government, is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union claim to secede from it. All who cherish disunion sentiments, are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession? Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissable; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left. I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration, in all paralel cases, by all other departments of the government.

193 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections, than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction, in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all, by the other. Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy, and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor, rather than oppose, a fair oppertunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that, to me, the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take, or reject, propositions, originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such, as they would wish to either accept or refuse.

194 President Abraham Lincoln s First Inaugural Address: I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable. The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal hope, in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth, and that justice, will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue, and vigilence, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well, upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in host haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied, hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

195 1863 John Shepard Keyes purchased the Bullet Hole House on Monument Street in Concord. Out for a walk on the Old Carlisle Road (now Estabrook Road), Ellery Channing was hiking past what remained of Whelan s (Emerson s, Thoreau s) shanty out standing in the field where the Clarks had neglected it after their son James had gone insane and then died and noted that the windows of that structure were missing.

196 1866 At this point at the conclusion of civil war, upon his relocation back to Concord for a prolonged retirement in the renovated Bullet House, the autobiography of John Shepard Keyes leaves off and his journal begins (John Shepard Keyes, Autobiography, transcribed from ms. in John Shepard Keyes Papers, William Munroe Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Mass., Concord Free Public Library website, Having got my plan perfected for the house alterations, I began work on it with Nathan S. Hosmer as a carpenter in the spring of I had got Darby moved out into the house at the corner of the roads north of the bridge beyond my house, and I found mine as I proceeded very dilapidated and rotten. So much so that after a few days work by the men tearing away the decayed timbers, I was strongly advised to pull it all away and build new. This was such sensible advice that after conferring with Gov r Brown, I went home and confessed to my wife that I ought to do it but that it would take away all my interest in it, and I fairly cried over the disappointment she comforted me, by rather suggesting that I could afford to do what I pleased with it and after a nights sleep over it or rather a nights sleeplessness I decided to stick to my original purpose, carpenters masons and practical men to the contrary I had new sills put in all round had the old oak parts spliced down where they were rotten then as the chambers were barely 6½ ft high I gave up the attic entirely and removing the cross beams raised them into the garret 2½ ft with a slant on the sides of the upper 2 ft. The old lean to on the east side was so far gone that I tore it all away and rebuilt in its place the back parlor and the chamber over it to the same height as the others putting on a hip roof to agree with the rest outside By adding a dormer window on the north lean to I got headway for the back stairs I bought the old porch of the Thoreau house with its flat stone floor and fluted pillars, in which I had spent so many pleasant hours of my boyhood and moved it over the front door. I moved the old shed that held the quintals of fish in 1775, up to and joined it to the main house, raised [?] the roof so as to get a chamber over it for clutter & place for a bowling alley for the children. Then on the front side I put on a sheathing over the old clapboards, and leaving the old plastering for back plaster, got five thicknesses between the rooms and the cold outside. Cutting down the front windows to the floor, adding a bay window on the south, and French windows in the back parlor, that George gave me from his old cottage with the side lights to the front door I had before fall the outside completed the inside plastered, the chimneys built of the old brick in the huge structure with its four different sized fire places in the living room, each made smaller than its predecessor by partially bricking up as the wood grew scarcer. Inside and out we searched carefully for a date to fix the age of the house. But no sign of one could be found any where. The house as early as the first settlers was standing across the road from its present site. Whether to judge by the outside boarding of the present dinning room, it was moved from its first site or taken down and rebuilt is quite undetermined. The whole structure was not built

197 at once, first the dining room & the room over it were built against the front of the great chimney, the rest of the chimney being out doors, the side of this room next the front stairs showing the weathering of the boards by many years exposure. Then the lean to on the north was added, then at a later time the Holland front parlor, and last the lean to over the east side of the south end. Approximately these dates from the best information I can obtain, and from the character of the work are 1650, 1700, 1730 & At any rate it was an old house when the Manse was built and when the British came here in In the oldest room now the dining the ceiling was originally made of oak studding planed and the wide floor boards above the joists also planed smooth, and certainly cut from the first growth, the original forest. This was blackened by a century of use and smoke, and had then been lashed and plastered, the laths made of splits of oak and nailed with hand wrought nails. I wished much to restore this wooden ceiling but the nails had so rusted into the oak that it was impossible to draw them out or hide their marks. I had early decided to have no painted finish inside but to use the natural woods. The upper rooms were finished in pine oiled The parlors in butternut, the dining room in chestnut the front hall in oak the end entry in birch, the bedroom in curled maple and my room in chestnut stained with lime. The kitchen was chestnut, and the doors of the several rooms corresponded to the wood. It was the first house in Concord in which natural wood without paint was used for finish, and all these except the butternut and maple, grew in Concord. For the parlor mantel and fire place I was lucky enough to secure when in Washington one of the old marble that stood in the recess behind the speakers desk in the old Hall of the House of Representatives in the Capitol. This was being removed to make room for the steam heating apparatus, in the Statuary Hall as it is now called, and was to be sold for old marble I was the purchaser, at a song, and shipped it on by water to Boston. Old marble was such a dreg in Washington in those war times, that a part of another mantel from the speakers room adjoining this recess was shipped with the one I bought. After vain efforts to get the two to go together as one, I had the second placed in the back parlor, where with a new frieze and shelf it answers for a companion to the first. If these marbles could only repeat the talks they have heard if they had not been stone deaf every prominent man from the war of 1812 to the war of the Rebellion has sat by this fire place, toasted his shins and spit his tobacco into its capacious jaws. Madison & Monroe Jackson and Van Buren, Calhoun & Clay Benton and Berrien, Woodbury and Wright, Webster and Winthrop, M c Duffn & Hayne. Adams J.Q. died in front of it, and all the secretaries senators and representatives may from its position, have chatted or chawed before it. It is in itself a good illustration of the art of the country in The pilasters have the fasces surmounted by a liberty cap, with a sheaf of wheat heads for the capitals. The frieze on each side has the thirteen stars in a circle around the suns rays, and in the centre an elaborate piece of sculpture showing America or the Goddess of Liberty crowning with olive wreaths with her right hand a female figure in a flowing veil,

198 holding a book in her hand with her foot on the globe, and a bale of merchandise behind her intended for both science and commerce, and with the left hand wreathing another female figure holding the mallet and square, and resting her foot on the plough, meant for agriculture & mechanics. There are bas reliefs wrought undoubtedly by the artists imported to finish the Capitol from Italy, on tablets of solft cream white Italian marble, and very well done, the figures only 6 inches high, but very distinctly executed. Commerce is touching with her hand the wreath while agriculture more modestly waits the gift. Was that intended also to be typical of the nation. For my own sanctum which looks out on the field and the barn, as a farmers office should I secured at an auction in Boston, an elaborate carved black Irish marble mantel quite old but never used, and so hard that the work on it must have cost many times what I paid for it $25.00, and for the other rooms in each of which is an open soap stone fireplace I selected white marble mantels, plain and simple, but safe, as wooden ones are not! The great difficulty to be overcome was how to effect the discharge of the water from the back roof, a wide valley being required and this was a last got over by making it a top of the closet in a back chamber. I spent as much time morning and night on the work, but it was not in many particulars as well done as I wished. It was finished off in the winter. Messer doing the bathing room, and Hosmer the rest, including the chestnut doors to the kitchen, while the others were bought of the manufacturers. The old milk cellar of brick outside the house was converted into a cistern for rain water and the old well in front supplied water to the kitchen sink. Drain pipe were laid to the barn cellar and a cesspool built in it under the horse stalls for all the house drainage. It was a very perfect & complete farm house, containing a score of rooms ample for our present and future wants. With this work and the business of the office I spent the summer and fall mainly at home taking only rather short business trips going I recall to Berkshire county and driving its whole length to serve some processes and seeing all its glorious hills and streams in a lovely sunshiney day, and again with Martha to Pittsfield and North Adams by rail road and up to Williams College with Tucker and then over the Hoosac Mountain stopping at the tunnel works to see that expensive result of N o 14 Tremont House and finishing our drive at Greenfield after a nice dinner at Charlemont in a well kept old fashioned country inn For the winter I had in my keeping as US Marshal a partly furnished house in West Newton Street, on which I had an attachment and that was unoccupied. We decided that it would answer for us as well as we needed, as Mother wanted to stay in our house at Concord, and Lily wanted to spend the winter at the Emersons with Miss Ellen. So we packed up before cold weather, and moved to the city Here the winter was much like the other one in Boston, we found the house very comfortable, large enough, and quite as pleasant though not as fashionable, as the one in Chester Sq. We saw many of our old friends made a few new ones the Robbinses, Bassetts, Stones &c. Had the opera concerts theatres &c. I got into a habit of spending an hour at noon in Music Hall listening to the great organ, to compose my brain when confused by the worry of business

199 and politics, for these last were getting ugly again under Andy Johnson. I went on to Washington at the opening of the new Congress in December, and heard Sumner s attack on Grant for his report on the condition of the South. I foresaw then the quarrel this would inevitably follow and which is sure to come by the change of administration from a president to a vice. I saw the new cabinet officers and new men On my return I had Phil bring my colt and sleigh to Boston and tried to use her with Nelly in double harness, but it was no use. The colt had inherited all the vice of the grandmother and none of the quietness of the mother, and as we were driving down Hancock Street she bolted onto the sidewalk, broke the pole and had to be sold for an unbroken colt at auction for what I could get. Phil Dolan who had been captured and in Libby prison, came home to recruit and was with us much of the winter Geo. Brooks was [word undeciphered] at Thanksgiving and lived at Concord and made us a visit as did some of our Concord neighbours. This helped away a busy winter, and at the Court House I planned and executed some important alterations of rooms that accomodated Judge Clifford & Judge Lowell who had taken Judge Spragus place, getting by this a new light court room, a better clerks office, and a pleasant private room on the front for my own use instead of the little closet that was all I had for my private office before. This kept us in great confusion while it was going on, and with the political troubles made me quite willing to give up the marshalship. There were plenty of applicants but as yet none that were fit for the place. So I held on till my new paper commission was about to expire, having qualified under it with Col Thompson and my brother George as bondsmen, though I did not like going to farming with the income of the office to increase the extravagance of my living I had planned to give up and wholly change my active busy life for the quiet farm when the spring came, and though Dana resigned and Hillard was appointed dist. atty, and Lathrop doubled the wisdom of my making such a change, I wished much to bring it about. Complications of my successorship prevented and I was still in office. Spring came early that year 1866, and we had got the house done, the furniture for it all ready and the family were anxious to move home. At last we started, and on a pleasant day the 4 th of April Marthas birthday went up settled ourselves in the renewed farm house and began an entirely different life. It was quite a change for all of us, only Mother decided to remain in the house down town, on the corner where she had so long lived and keep house for herself. I had two men for the work outdoors and Martha two girls in the kitchen and we interested ourselves in the quiet work of the fields and the dairy. We enjoyed it more than we anticipated, had our friends to visit us, and our only trouble was Lily s health. This had always been delicate & as Dr Ruppaner had moved to New York after we were well settled we took Lily to that city to consult him about her throat. The Dr was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a pleasant set of rooms in full practise We staid a fortnight doing New York very thoroughly and getting much relief for Lily. After our return all went on quietly at home and at the office for some time I going to Boston usually everyday to look after Joe who could run the office well enough

200 alone, and spending the rest of the day driving about Concord. I bought at J.B. Farmers auction his horse General, that he had raised and used on his farm till then when he was a dozen years old and found he ll make a very good mate for my Nelly. General was a very perfect specimen of the Morgan breed, had been the smartest horse on the road among the market teams. Would do any kind of work, and knew more than most men. He would without guiding turn up to the church on Sundays and to the Post Office on week days, and he was said to have once drawn the wagon over the sleepers of the bridge when the planks were up without accident. I never could tell which was the fastest he or Nelly though they often had sharp trots to decide it for themselves in double harness. They made a capital tandem team as he was a good leader, and I drove them many thousand miles, in long and short journeys I had in my stable these two, an old black workhorse Phillis, and the Belle Boyd stallion Comet, who was a very fast runner going his mile in about 2 o. 10, a Jersey herd of 6 cows and a bull, a young ram, and an old sheep, a Suffolk boar, and a sow with a young litter, a flock of hens, and a brace of ducks and was well started in fancy farming The farm had ten acres of mowing and meadow land in front of the house, in which was the garden and a pear orchard, ten acres more behind the house, with an apple orchard and a vineyard on the hill, then half a dozen acres of brook meadow back of the hill that was pretty much grown up to alders &c and beyond that at some distance a scrub woodlot of twenty acres, recently bent over. It was large enough for all the experiments I cared to try, and it needed all I could make for it had been hardly used for a generation. I studied the books, worked hard on it myself expended some money and improved it to my satisfaction, and that of some of my neighbours. At last in midsummer Gen l George H Gordon who had received the West Point appointment I wanted instead of going to college, turned up as a candidate for marshal. He was a friend of Trains had done good service in the war, was a lawyer before the rebellion, and I thought fitted for the place. I resigned in his favor But there were hitches in his appointment. I had brought the office into such good repute that the department sent all the new marshals in N.E. to learn my ways and take pattern by mine in their methods. The secretary and Atty Gen were very friendly and wished me to remain Even Andy to whom I was known through Major French didnt like to make a change though he knew I did not entirely agree with his politics So Train and Gordon went to Washington to see to the appointment, and soon telegraphed for me to come on and join them. It was in the middle of haying, and I hated to go in the hot weather, it seemed hard to have to go so far to get rid of so good an office. But I went, and staid several days in the hottest weather I ever experienced, about July 4 th. and I found Washington en dishabille The Cabinet were in [ms torn: their short] sleeves, the [ms torn: President] in a linen coat, the hotels deserted, and even the clerks idle from exhaustion. I staid several days dining with the Atty Gen l &c, calling on all those of influence and trying hard to keep comfortable and jolly. I helped Gordon at last to the promise of the place though I found it very difficult to make any one understand why I wanted

201 to give it up and at last came home successful in resigning. During the summer we made a pleasant drive to Wachusett Mountain that is in sight from our windows and is an excellent barometer, stopping at Lancaster on our way both going and coming and finding after all that these driving trips are far more enjoyable than railroad rides. We climbed the mountain, saw the fine view and had good attendance and fare at the Mountain House. Then the summer ended almost before Gordon got his commission and I was relieved at last from office He retained Joe, and all my subordinates and I was at last a private citizen. I felt more relieved than I could have thought possible. It was the schoolboys feeling at the end of school, I was free and had no longer any responsibilities. It was fortunate that I was wise enough to know when to stop, a few months more of it and I should have stopped entirely Life was getting too fast I could not have borne it much longer. I had not till it was ended realized the strain of the five years and a half of the war. It was time to rest, and the rest was welcome, I was content with my situation and surroundings and philosopher enough to enjoy what was left of health and life. It was young to retire but on my forty fifth birthday I felt that my work was done and I had earned rest. With that date my journal begins, and this ends. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY

202 1874 John Shepard Keyes became a judge of the District Court of Eastern Middlesex, Massachusetts.

203 1875 October 20, Wednesday: When Frederic Hudson called upon his friend, Judge John Shepard Keyes, they decided to go out for a ride through Concord in a carriage. The Judge was holding the reins and they were deep in conversation as they approached the Monument Street crossing of the Middlesex Central Railroad. Struck by the train, their carriage was dragged down the track. The horse became detached, and would be saved. Judge Keyes was thrown from the carriage and hurt, but was able to seek help on foot for Hudson, who had serious internal injuries and was entangled in the wreckage. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

204 1876 Our national birthday, Tuesday the 4th of July: There was a well-publicized celebration in Concord of the 100th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. The trains out from Cambridge past Walden Pond were so crowded that two of the expected dignitaries, Mark Twain (who had just published TOM SAWYER) and William Dean Howells, were unable to board and would miss the oration by Waldo Emerson, the ode by James Russell Lowell, and under the weight of all this profundity the spectacular collapse of the speakers platform. It was unusually cold, the dinner tent was inadequate to the occasion, and a lot of the visitors would need to deal with the difficulties by getting drunk. The Boston Daily News would comment, about this fiasco, that There is no difficulty now in understanding the hurried retreat of the British from Concord and Lexington. Judge John Shepard Keyes orated at Concord s 1850 Townhouse that the hill extended beyond where we meet tonight to the road leading to the north bridge. In the ragged curb where that road wound around the side of the hill was buried one of the British soldiers who died of wounds received in the fight at the bridge (John S. Keyes Papers, Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library). Centennial celebrations (many are three-day celebrations, 3-5 July) were occurring throughout the United States and abroad. In Philadelphia at Fairmount Park, two separate celebrations included the German societies unveiling a statue of Baron Alexander von Humboldt and the dedication, including an address provided by John Lee Carroll, Governor of Maryland, of the Catholic Temperance Fountain. Meanwhile, Bayard Taylor s National Ode, July 4, 1876, was read at Independence Square, while Susan B. Anthony and others belonging to the National Woman s Suffrage Association presented and read their Declaration of Rights for Women at the Centennial Celebration. In Philadelphia as well, General Sherman reviews the troops as they paraded. In Washington DC, at the 1st Congregational Church, the poem Centennial Bells, by Bayard Taylor was read by the poet. The long-standing tradition of Navy vessels participating in July 4th celebrations in Bristol, Rhode Island, began in this year with the presence there of the sloop USS Juniata. In Washington, 11 couples celebrated the 4th by getting married, while a committee of 13 members of Congress attended a celebration of the Oldest Inhabitants Association, and 300 artillery blasts were fired: 100 at sunrise, 100 at noon, and 100 at sunset. In Richmond, Virginia, the US and Virginia flags were raised together on the Capitol, for the first time on the 4th in 16 years. The Richmond Grays, an African-American regiment, was in Washington celebrating. In New Orleans, the monitor Canonicus fired a salute from the Mississippi River. In Hamburg, South Carolina, black militiamen attempted to march in the parade and white townspeople killed some of them. (These white murderers would of course be found innocent by a white jury.) In Montgomery, Alabama, the Declaration of Independence was read by Neil Blue, the oldest citizen of Montgomery and the only survivor of those who voted for delegates to the territorial convention which had adopted the Constitution under which Alabama had been admitted into the Union in In San Francisco, a mock engagement with the iron-clad Monitor occurred and there was a parade that

205 stretched over 4 miles in length, boasting fully 10,000 participants. The city provided its citizens with a 1st public exhibition of electric light. In Chicago, at the Turners and Socialists celebration, a revised Declaration of Independence from the socialist s standpoint was distributed. In Joliet and Quincy, Illinois, the cornerstone of a new Court House was laid. In Freeport, Illinois and Chicago, the Declaration of Independence was read in both English and German. In Evanston, Illinois, a centennial poem The Girls of the Period was publicly read by Mrs. Emily H. Miller. In Wilmette, Illinois, a woman (Miss Aunie Gedney) read the Declaration of Independence. In Savannah, Georgia, a centennial tree was planted, accompanied by appropriate speeches. In New-York, on the eve of the 4th, an Irish couple had named their baby American Centennial Maloney. In Rochester, New York, a centennial oak was planted in Franklin Square. In Utica, New York, 30 veterans of the War of 1812 joined in a parade along with a couple of Napoleon s soldiers for good measure. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

206 1882 April 26, Wednesday: The Emerson family struggled to keep Waldo Emerson in his bed. He was befuddled and was declaiming unintelligible poetry. Different persons began sitting up with him all night, on one night John Shepard Keyes, on another night William Hathaway Forbes (Edith Emerson s husband, the telephone company executive).

207 1885 For Concord s 250th Celebration of Incorporation, Judge John Shepard Keyes compiled for the reenactors a list of historic locations. This list included Burial place of... a British soldier wounded at the North Bridge. 50 The location indicated was on the northeast side of the Courthouse on Monument Street, where the Keyes family home had stood before it burned in the 1849 Courthouse fire (John S. Keyes Papers, Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library). 50. Of the three stricken soldiers of the 4th Regiment Light Infantry Company, Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall, two had died and were buried at the North Bridge itself, while the third was carried toward town before succumbing to his wounds.

208 1888 October: MEMOIRS OF MEMBERS OF THE SOCIAL CIRCLE IN CONCORD; SECOND SERIES, FROM 1795 TO PRIVATELY PRINTED, by John Shepard Keyes and Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson (Cambridge: Privately Printed, The Riverside Press [includes a book-length memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson by his son, entitled EMERSON IN CONCORD, separately paged but bound in following the other memoirs of this series]). CONCORD S SOCIAL CIRCLE

209 1890 This inkwell was created in about The base represents a hollow stump and the cap is a bulldog s head, glaring out of this stump. Inside, the ink is in a glass bottle: Not to be outdone, Middlesex County in Massachusetts issued its official biography: HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX This set of two massive volumes, edited by D.H. Hurd, contained histories of the various towns (here I have, for your convenience, torn the volumes into town chunks ). The historical sketch of the town of Concord was authored by Judge John Shepard Keyes, and also got published as a separate volume of 612 pages by J.W. Lewis & Co. of Philadelphia:

210 ACTON, MIDDLESEX ASHBY, MIDDLESEX AYER, MIDDLESEX BEDFORD, MIDDLESEX BILLERICA, MIDDLESEX BOXBOROUGH, MIDDLESEX BURLINGTON, MIDDLESEX CAMBRIDGE, MIDDLESEX CARLISLE, MIDDLESEX CHELMSFORD, MIDDLESEX CONCORD, MIDDLESEX DRACUT, MIDDLESEX DUNSTABLE, MIDDLESEX GROTON, MIDDLESEX LEXINGTON, MIDDLESEX LINCOLN, MIDDLESEX LITTLETON, MIDDLESEX LOWELL, MIDDLESEX NATICK, MIDDLESEX N. READING, MIDDLESEX READING, MIDDLESEX SHERBORN, MIDDLESEX SHIRLEY, MIDDLESEX STONEHAM, MIDDLESEX STOW, MIDDLESEX

211 SUDBURY, MIDDLESEX TOWNSEND, MIDDLESEX TYNGSBOROUGH WAKEFIELD, MIDDLESEX WAYLAND, MIDDLESEX WESTFORD, MIDDLESEX WESTON, MIDDLESEX WINCHESTER, MIDDLESEX WOBURN, MIDDLESEX

212 1895 Martha Lawrence Prescott Keyes died. The body was interred in the Keyes family plot at Concord s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Publication of the town of Concord s vital statistics as CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS PRINTED BY THE TOWN (Beacon Press: Thomas Todd, Printer, 7-A Beacon Street, Boston). BIRTHS MARRIAGES DEATHS

213 1898 John Shepard Keyes remarried.

214 1910 May 15, Sunday: John Shepard Keyes died in Boston. The body would be interred in the family plot at Concord s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. In St. Paul s Cathedral in London, Canon Henry Scott Holland delivered a sermon Life Unbroken in memory of Albert Edward, King Edward VII: Death is nothing at all. December: John M. Keyes wrote Ex-District-Attorney [Arthur D.] Hill in Boston upon being belatedly informed that either a deed or lease has been procured from the Ripley heirs allowing the installation of the slate slab over the British soldiers grave on behalf of a donor who was extremely desirous to remain anonymous for the present. Keyes s ostensible message in this missive was that as Chairman of the Road Commissioners and Public Grounds, he was obligated to protect the Town s interests in every way. (Actually, the Concord officials had been embarrassed at being bypassed.) MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project John Keyes and John Shepard Keyes

215 COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: November 12, 2014

216 ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in