THE WHITING FAMILY. November 20: Samuel Whiting was born in Boston in Lincolnshire, England, son of John Whiting, the mayor of that city.

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1 I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. Ouisa, in John Guare s SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION 1539 The buildings and lands of the suppressed nunnery of Gracedieu, near Thringstone in Leicestershire, England, were awarded to the Beaumont family (later, due to dishonorable conduct, this property would be forfeit to the Crown, but the widow would be able to recover the estate and pass it to their son Sir Francis Beaumont). Dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey, with its buildings looted and torched and with Abbot Richard Whiting hanged atop Glastonbury Tor. After this, what was alleged to be the burial cross of King Arthur would (according to a late 17th century document, Bodleian Rawlinson B.416A, folio 10v) be alleged to lie in the Reverstry of St. John Baptist, Glastonbury for approximately an alleged century November 20: Samuel Whiting was born in Boston in Lincolnshire, England, son of John Whiting, the mayor of that city.

2 1613 Samuel Whiting matriculated at Emanuel, the Puritan college of the University of Cambridge Samuel Whiting graduated from Cambridge and entered the ministry. It seems that for a few years, he would serve as chaplain for private families The Reverend Samuel Whiting received his second degree from Cambridge. He would officiate at Lynn Regis in County Norfolk, for three years, as colleague or curate of the rector, until, being disturbed by his diocesan, he would remove to Skirbeck, near his Boston, Lincolnshire home of origin until two prosecutions for nonconformity would drive him from England to New England. While in England he married, and then buried, his 1st wife, by whom he had two sons who died and one daughter whom he would bring with him to America At least by this year, the Reverend Samuel Whiting took as his 2nd wife the daughter of Oliver St. John of Bedfordshire, who was chief justice of England under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. The couple would have a son Samuel Whiting in March 25: Samuel Whiting was born, the son of the Reverend Samuel Whiting with his 2d wife May 26: The Reverend Samuel Whiting arrived in New England in the same ship with Wheelwright, who had been his neighbor in County Lincolnshire. With him were his 2d wife Elizabeth St. John Whiting (daughter of Sir Oliver St. John, Knt., and sister of Oliver, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas of England) and their son Samuel Whiting, who had been born at Shirbeck in England on March 25, 1633, and two daughters, Elizabeth Whiting by his 2d wife and Dorothy Whiting by his deceased 1st wife. 2 Copyright Austin Meredith

3 November 8: The Reverend Samuel Whiting became the first minister of Lynn MA. The Reverend Cotton Mather would assert in his MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA that In his preaching, his design was not to please but to profit; to bring forth, not high things, but fit things. He would serve his congregation in Lynn until his death in December 7: The Reverend Samuel Whiting became a freeman of Lynn MA. (In all probability it would have been at Lynn MA that the couple had John Whiting, who would graduate from Harvard College in 1657.) In Concord, Simon Willard was deputy and representative to the General Court Joseph Whiting was born, who would graduate from Harvard College in The Reverend Samuel Whiting s ORATIO QUAM COMITIIS CANTAB. AMERICANIS. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 3

4 1653 Samuel Whiting graduated from Harvard College (he would not receive the AM degree until 1656). He was on his way to becoming the 1st minister of Billerica in the Bay Colony. In this year Concord subscribed 5 a year for 7 years for Harvard College. In Concord, Simon Willard was again deputy and representative to the General Court. Chelmsford was settled by people from Woburn and Concord. They named their new town in honor of a town in Essex, England Samuel Whiting received his AM degree from Harvard College, from which he had graduated in John Whiting graduated from Harvard College Joseph Whiting graduated from Harvard College. He would assist his father in Lynn MA for several years and then, during 1680, succeed him by ordination. 4 Copyright Austin Meredith

5 1664 The Reverend Samuel Whiting s TREATISE ON THE LAST JUDGMENT The Reverend Samuel Whiting put out a volume of his sermons on the topic Abraham Interceding for Sodom March 3: The wife of the Reverend Samuel Whiting died December 11: Samuel Whiting died in Lynn MA at the age of 82. (Refer to the Elegy on the Reverend Samuel Whiting, of Lynn, by Benjamin Tompson, ye renowned poet of New England, printed in Cotton Mather s MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA. See also William Whiting s MEMOIRS OF REVEREND SAMUEL WHITING AND OF HIS WIFE, ELIZABETH ST. JOHN, WITH REFERENCE TO SOME OF THEIR ENGLISH ANCESTORS AND AMERICAN DESCENDANTS, Boston 1871.) 1680 Joseph Whiting, who had been assisting the Reverend Samuel Whiting in the ministry at Lynn MA for several years before his father s death and was married to Sarah Danforth Whiting, eldest daughter of Deputy- Governor Thomas Danforth, in this year succeed his father by ordination. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 5

6 1682 January 20: John Whiting was born to the Reverend Samuel Whiting and Mistress Sarah Danforth Whiting. In about this year the Whiting family moved from Lynn MA to Southampton, Paumanok Long Island, where according to the Reverend Cotton Mather the Reverend Whiting would make of himself a a worthy and painful minister of the gospel. John Whiting graduated from Harvard College September 16: Joseph Estabrook died on this day after serving his congregation in Concord for nearly half a century. Due to this death, the Reverend John Whiting would be appointed as the minister of Concord. Waldo Emerson would write that: After the death of Rev. Mr. Estabrook, in 1711, it was propounded at the [Concord] town-meeting, whether one of the three gentlemen lately improved here in preaching, namely, Mr. John Whiting, Mr. Holyoke and Mr. Prescott, shall be now chosen in the work of the ministry?... in 1711, it was propounded at the [Concord] townmeeting, whether one of the three gentlemen lately improved here in preaching... shall be now chosen in the work of the ministry? Voted affirmatively. Mr. Whiting, who was chosen, was, we are told in his epitaph, a universal lover of mankind. Mr. Whiting was succeeded in the pastoral office [in Concord] by Rev. Daniel Bliss Samuel Whiting, the 1st minister of Billerica in the Bay Colony, died. 6 Copyright Austin Meredith

7 1717 Thomas Whiting was born. He would become a judge, would live in Concord, and would marry with a granddaughter of Captain Thomas Lake of Boston April 7: Samuel Whiting, the minister at Lynn MA and then at Southampton, Paumanok Long Island, died. In Concord, John Melvin died at the age of According to Clarence S. Brigham s Concord (Mass.) Marriages, 1724 (The American Genealogist, Volume 16, page 23): The manuscript Diary of the Rev. John Whiting for 1724, the leaves being removed from a 1724 Almanac, contains nine marriages in Concord, Mass., which do not appear in the CONCORD VITAL RECORDS. The only marriages recorded by the Town during the period 1720 to 1728 were those performed by Justice James Minott or Justice Houghton. Feb. 5 Amos Rice, Brookfield, and Mary Brabrook, Concord Mch 31 Jonathan Davis and Abigail Brown June 4 David Taylor and [Ruth] Davis June 17 David Russell and Hannah Brown July 9 Timothy Minott and Mary Brooks Oct. 21 Enoch Stratton and Rebecca Fletcher Oct. 29 James Wheeler and Mary Colburn Nov. 2 Nathan Whitney and Sarah Goble Nov. 5 Ebenezer Hubbard and Mary Billings JOHN WHITING February 5: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Amos Rice of Brookfield and Mary Brabrook of Concord were united in marriage. March 31: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Jonathan Davis and Abigail Brown were united in marriage. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 7

8 June 4: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, David Taylor and [Ruth] Davis were on this day united by him in wedlock. William Gilpin was born in Cumberland, a son of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, soldier and amateur artist. From an early age he would be an enthusiastic sketcher and collector of prints, but although his brother Sawrey Gilpin would opt to make of himself a professional painter, William would seek a career in the church. June 17: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, David Russell and Hannah Brown were united in marriage. July 9: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Timothy Minott and Mary Brooks were united in marriage. October 21: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Enoch Stratton and Rebecca Fletcher were united in marriage. October 29: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, James Wheeler and Mary Colburn were united in marriage. November 2: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Nathan Whitney and Sarah Goble were united in marriage. November 5: According to the manuscript diary of the Reverend John Whiting of Concord, Ebenezer Hubbard and Mary Billings were united in marriage October 3: Thomas Whiting was born in Concord, grandson of the Reverend John Whiting by his son Thomas Whiting, Esq. Thomas Whiting [of Concord], grandson of the Rev. John Whiting by his son Thomas Whiting, Esq., was born October 3, 1748, and graduated [at Harvard College] in He taught the grammarschool in Concord several years, and was afterwards a merchant here [in Concord]. He died September 28, 1820, aged 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.) 8 Copyright Austin Meredith

9 1752 May 4: John Whiting died at the age of Aug st 2: According to BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS (Groton, 1894), John Robbins & Sarah Gilson both of Groaton ware marr d by Thomas Whiting November 9: According to BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS (Groton, 1894), David Archabald & Hannah Patch both of Groaton ware marr d by Thom s Whiting Esq Which Thomas Whiting would this have been? Didn t you need to be a reverend in order to conduct a wedding ceremony? 3. Which Thomas Whiting would this have been? Didn t you need to be a reverend in order to conduct a wedding ceremony? Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 9

10 In Concord, Ephraim Wood, Nathan Merriam, and Nehemiah Hunt were Selectmen and Ephraim Wood was again Town Clerk. Abijah Bond was again Town Treasurer James Barrett was Concord s deputy and representative to the General Court. Having relocated to Worcester, Concord s Joseph Wheeler would there make himself a Representative, a Justice of the Peace, and the Register of Probate. These were the appropriations made by the town of Lincoln: 4 Date Minister / / $ $600 $460. Schools 13 1 / / Highways $ Incidental charges 24 1 / Thomas Whiting of Concord, grandson of the Reverend John Whiting and son of Thomas Whiting, Esq., graduated from Harvard College. He would for several years teach at the Concord grammar-school, and then become a local merchant. Thomas Whiting [of Concord], grandson of the Rev. John Whiting by his son Thomas Whiting, Esq., was born October 3, 1748, and graduated [at Harvard College] in He taught the grammarschool in Concord several years, and was afterwards a merchant here [in Concord]. He died September 28, 1820, aged Despite his weak legs due to age, James Barrett became the Colonel in command of the militia regiment, and superintendent of the military stores being gathered at Concord depot. April 28: This would be a day to remember, for a Concord resident named Titus: 4. 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.) 5. Ibid. 10 Copyright Austin Meredith

11 Know all men by these presents that For and in consideration of the sum of Fifty three pounds six shillings and Eight pence to me in hand well and truly paid by Jonas Heywood of Concord in the County of Middlesex and Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England Yeoman I Ann Prescott of Said Concord Widow Have sold and by these presents do sell And make over unto the Said Jonas my named Titus Negro man/servant s time of Service During his Life to be Wholly for the Service of the Said Jonas Heywood his heirs and assigns at the same time I do utterly give up and relinquish unto the Said Jonas all my right and title in Said Negro declaring also that before and at the time of this Sale the Negro Man was mine by virtue of My Late Husband s purchase In Witness whereof I have set my hand and seal to these presents this 28 Day of April 1775 in the 28 year of his Majesty JONAS HEYWOOD Witness ANN PRESCOTT Daniel? Thomas Whiting Ann Prescott THOMAS WHITING THE HEYWOODS OF CONCORD There were some 20 slaves in Concord, including but not limited to the following 11 adult males: Philip Barrett, a slave of Colonel Barrett, who would march in July 1775, enlist in Captain Heald s company in 1779, serve a 6-month tour at West Point in , and never return to Concord Cato, a slave of Duncan Ingraham Bristo (Brister Freeman) and Jem, slaves of Doctor/Colonel John Cuming. Bristo would serve under Colonel John Buttrick at Saratoga in 1777, see Burgoyne surrender, enlist again in 1779, return to Concord, be freed, settle atop Brister s Hill, and marry. He and his wife Fenda would be memorialized by Thoreau in WALDEN. Sippio Brister, a slave to the Hoar family. His burial site in Lincoln next to five British soldiers would be noted by Thoreau in WALDEN. Caesar, a slave of Captain George Minot, who would serve 3 months during and then sign for a 3-year enlistment in 1779, returning to Concord at the end of the war. Casey, a slave of Samuel Whitney, who would flee from his owner s son threats and snowballs to enlist in the army, achieve self-ownership, and return to Concord Frank, a slave of the Reverend William Emerson Caesar, a slave of Deacon Simon Hunt Cato, a slave of Doctor Joseph Lee Titus, the slave of the widow Ann Prescott who was being sold in this year to Jonas Heywood, as above Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 11

12 1776 Thomas Whiting died 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: 1813 March 3: William Whiting was born in Concord to the carriagemaker Colonel William Whiting and Hannah Conant Whiting. This family descended from the Reverend Samuel Whiting, D.D., a non-conformist minister of Lincolnshire, England who came to this country in After preparation at the Concord Academy he would attend Harvard College (Class of 1833) and become an attorney at law. 12 Copyright Austin Meredith

13 1813 March 3: William Whiting was born in Concord to the carriagemaker Colonel William Whiting and Hannah Conant Whiting. This family descended from the Reverend Samuel Whiting, D.D., a non-conformist minister of Lincolnshire, England who came to this country in After preparation at the Concord Academy he would attend Harvard College (Class of 1833) and become an attorney at law A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The brothers Harrison Gray Dyar and Joseph Dyar became apprentices in the Concord clockmaking shop of Lemuel Curtis on the Milldam. According to Alfred Munroe s CONCORD AND THE TELEGRAPH (published by the Concord Antiquarian Society), it would be Harrison Gray Dyar, not any Johnny-come-lately like the American portrait painter Samuel F.B. Morse, who in 1826 erected the first real line and despatched the first message over it by electricity ever sent by such means in America, over half a mile of wire alongside the Causeway or Lowell Road. This was even years prior to the 1837 joint English patent on electric telegraphy taken out by Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone (Munroe acknowledges that This may seem strange to most of our readers, as the credit of this great discovery has been generally conceded to Prof. Morse ). According to Colonel William Whiting of Concord, this line had been hung from the trees along the Causeway or Lowell Road or Red Bridge or Hunt s Bridge (over the Concord River at Gleason E6) road, using for insulators the glass phials of an apothecary, all the way to Curtis s. 6 The Dyar brothers would record the sparks on a ribbon of moistened litmus paper on a spool that revolved by clockwork. The nitric acid that was formed on the litmus paper by the action of the electricity left clearly legible little red marks on the blue litmus paper. His experiment would work 6. And ain t that just great, the home of the brothers George William Curtis and James Burrill Curtis who helped Henry Thoreau raise the frame of his shanty on Walden Pond is not included on the Concord map. Did they reside, then, in some adjoining town? Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 13

14 well enough that he would be able to get some cash backing in New-York and run a line at the Long Island racetrack, and then propose to string a wire across New Jersey between New-York and Philadelphia. However, the New Jersey legislature would condemn him as dangerous and a wizard, and refuse permission for this larger experiment, and then one of his backers would threaten to take him to court to get his money back, and pretty soon it would be all over but the shouting. There is an argument that Samuel F.B. Morse got a lot of his plans for the electric telegraph in America from this Concord experimenter. For instance, Dyar used batteries, and had the idea of sending electric impulses along a wire, and had the idea of spacing the sparks in such a way as to form an alphabetic code, and developed such a code. We know also that the famous Morse would marry a sister of Charles Walker, and that Walker had worked with Dyar on this scheme and had retained many of Dyar s sketches so we may presume that either Walker or his sister might well have showed those sketches to Morse This was the condition of Concord employment: 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 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 7. It has also been established that Morse knew others besides Walker who had worked with Dyer. Is this not much too much of a coincidence? In the case of the electric telegraph, it is now clear that funding and organization and social anthropology were more important ingredients of such a success than any of the credited technological tinkering for a whole lot of people had been developing these technological capabilities without possessing Morse s political and social connections and without attaining the public and private funding and societal legitimation that would get them anywhere. 14 Copyright Austin Meredith

15 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 September 28, Thursday: Birth of Friedrich Engels. Thomas Whiting died at the age of 72. Thomas Whiting [of Concord], grandson of the Rev. John Whiting by his son Thomas Whiting, Esq., was born October 3, 1748, and graduated [at Harvard College] in He taught the grammarschool in Concord several years, and was afterwards a merchant here [in Concord]. He died September 28, 1820, aged Widerschein D.639, a song by Franz Schubert to words of Schlechta, was published in the Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen, Leipzig. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 9 M th day / Our Monthly Meeting this Day held in town was a season of favor. In this first meeting father Rodman & J Dennis were concerned in short testimonys & in the last the buisness was conducted in love & condescention 8. 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.) 9. 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 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.) Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 15

16 We had a number of our Portsmouth friends to dine with us. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 1822 During this year and the two following ones it would be Othniel Dinsmore, hired from elsewhere, who would be 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 Two public school teachers from outside Concord, we learn, had been beating the students and allowing the older boys to terrorize the younger pupils. (Does that piece of information indicate that the Abner Forbes in the chart above prepared by Dr. Lemuel Shattuck in 1835, had been involved?) Therefore Squire Samuel Hoar, Dr. Abiel Heywood, Josiah Davis, Nathan Brooks, and Colonel William Whiting in this year had built a two-story structure on Academy Lane, at about the location at which Middle Street was eventually positioned, to begin there a private college-preparatory school, the Concord Academy. The Academy, built in 1822, is 40 feet long, 30 wide, and 2 stories high. The grammar schoolhouse is of the same size, the lower story being occupied as a school-room, and the upper one as a masonic hall. It was built in place of one burnt December 16 Copyright Austin Meredith

17 31, 1819, and dedicated, with two other new ones, for primary schools, September 7, In 1799, seven new school-houses, one in each district, including the centre, were built at an expense to the town of about $4, We can compare and contrast the schooling which the Thoreau children would be receiving due to the careful concern of their mother Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau and father John Thoreau, Senior in a town near Boston on this side the ocean with the lack of concern for such things in another family of the period in a similar town near London as well as in a similar family financial circumstance. Here is how Charles Dickens, in 1845 or 1846, would be describing his plight in this Year of Our Lord 1822 after having been yanked from the William Giles schoolroom in the dock town of Chatham at the age of approximately ten: [I]n the ease of his [father John Dickens s] temper, and the straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in the work of the little house [on Bayham Street in Camden Town]; and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living. 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 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 [Dr. 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 10. 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 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.) Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 17

18 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, $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. 18 Copyright Austin Meredith

19 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 $ , , , , 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 [Dr. Lemuel Shattuck] have subjoined the names of the teachers of the grammar-school since the Revolution, the year usually beginning in September. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 19

20 1785 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 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, Copyright Austin Meredith

21 And this was before his father John Dickens would fall into the Marshalsea debtors prison south of the river Thames, and before Charles himself would be allowed by his father and mother to fall into the child labor of the Warren s shoe-blacking factory off the Strand! It would not be until the author had reached 48 years of age, in his GREAT EXPECTATIONS, that he would be able to purge himself of the memories of the helpless child of this period, who had been so victimized by fecklessly improvident loving incompetent parents. 1822/1823 was David Henry Thoreau s year five. The Thoreaus moved to Chelmsford MA. Little David Henry first went to infant school while they were living there. Later on in life, in 1851, Thoreau would write about being deprived, during this period, of interesting books : When I was young and compelled to pass my Sundays in the house without the aid of interesting books, I used to spend many an hour till the wished-for sundown, watching the martins soar, from an attic window; and fortunate indeed did I deem myself when a hawk appeared in the heavens, though far toward the horizon against a downy cloud, and I searched for hours till I had found his mate. They, at least, took my thoughts from earthly things. 11. 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 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.) Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 21

22 Per Professor Walter Roy Harding s THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966): A Review From Professor Ross s Seminar WALTER HARDING S BIOGRAPHY 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. (Robert L. Lace, January-March 1986) 1826 May 7, Sunday: The Rensselaer field expedition arrived at Utica, New York too late for morning services. Some of the party would attend afternoon services at the Episcopal church. Frances, a black woman, was engaged to cater for them all at $16 a day (this contract would cover all their food expenses). In the Reverend Ezra Ripley s handwriting in the Concord church s records, there appears the following curious notation: The church tarried by the desire of the pastor, after the communion service, and heard the request, in writing, of our brothers and sisters, John Voss and his wife, David Hubbard, Phebe Wheeler, Martha Whiting, (and others) to be dismissed from this church and recommended to a Council which may be convened for the purpose of organizing them, with others, into a Church of Christ... This request being sudden and unexpected to members of the church, it was thought best not to reply to 22 Copyright Austin Meredith

23 the request without further consideration. What had happened? Deacon John White was leading a dissident group of religious reactionaries out of the church, to form one more to their own liking, to be known as the Trinitarian Congregationalist congregation. THE DEACONS OF CONCORD Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 23

24 1833 Charles Sumner graduated from the Law School of Harvard College. 12 Leonhard Usteri had in 1830 produced at Berm an edition of Friedrich August Wolf s VORLESUNGEN ÜBER DIE VIER ERSTEN GESÄNGE VON HOMER S ILIAS. At this point Professor of Greek Literature Cornelius Conway Felton provided an English-language annotation of Wolf s text of 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.), a volume that would be required at Harvard and would be found in the personal library of Henry Thoreau. William Mackay Prichard, son of the Concord trader Moses Prichard, and William Whiting, Jr., son of the Concord carriagemaker Colonel William Whiting, graduated from Harvard College. WILLIAM MACKAY PRICHARD, son of Moses Prichard, was graduated in WILLIAM WHITING [of Concord], son of Colonel William Whiting, was graduated [at Harvard College] in Just in case you didn t know: Harvard Law School had been founded with money from the selling of slaves in the sugarcane fields of Antigua. 13. 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.) 14. Ibid. 24 Copyright Austin Meredith

25 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 25

26 William Whiting, Jr. would become a lawyer after teaching at Plymouth and Concord, through studying law in Boston and attending the Law School of Harvard College. Manlius Stimson Clarke matriculated, as his father had in 1786, at Harvard. At the age of 15, John Foster Williams Lane returned from his study of the French and Italian languages in Europe and entered Harvard s freshman class. He would attain a high rank of scholarship in his class and graduate in the same year as Thoreau, with distinction. NEW HARVARD MEN Since Francis Bowen had to work his way through Phillips Exeter Academy and then through Harvard, he was not able to graduate until the age of 22 quite old for those days but when he did take his degree, it was summa cum laude and he got a job teaching math at Phillips Exeter Academy. (Then he would teach math at Harvard.) William Henry Channing graduated from the Harvard Divinity School. Benjamin Peirce wrote the first published history of Harvard, and became a professor there. At the Divinity School, the following gentlemen completed their studies: William Ebenezer Abbot (A.B. Bowdoin College) William Andrews William Henry Channing James Freeman Clarke Samuel Adams Devens Theophilus Pipon Doggett Samuel May Albert Clarke Patterson Chandler Robbins Samuel Dowse Robbins Linus Hall Shaw Henry Augustus Walker 26 Copyright Austin Meredith

27 1838 William Whiting graduated from Harvard Law School. He would begin the practice of law in Boston in October, and would become a prominent art collector. (Through his daughter Rose Standish Whiting of Plymouth, a number of pieces from his collection would come to the Concord Free Public Library. Perhaps the best-known is Washington Allston s Romantic Landscape, now hanging in the Trustees Room, which had been exhibited at the Boston Athenæum in 1853.) 1844 After August 1st: Anna Maria Whiting 15 wrote up the events of Concord s annual fair of the Anti-Slavery Society of Middlesex County celebrating the 1st of August liberation of the slaves of the British West Indies and sent them off to Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the Concord, New Hampshire Herald of Freedom. Unfortunately, although it was possible in that day and age to describe how church officials might be timid enough to refuse the use of church facilities for such moralizing purposes, and town officials might be wrongheaded enough to denounce such activities as antislavery oratory as irresponsible and refuse to ring the town bell to summon townspeople to the lectures associated with the booths that had been strung by the antislavery ladies along the corridors of the Middlesex County courthouse in Concord, it was not possible in that day and age to describe how a town squire such as Emerson might be for anti-slavery for all the wrong, racist reasons for Emerson was against the enslavement of blacks in America because he was against the whole idea of allowing people who were obviously inferior as human beings, to be present at all in this New World, the land of the free and the home of the brave, which we should have the intelligence to restrict to those able to benefit from it, that is, to those of us who are brave enough to preserve our freedoms. It is only recently that it has become possible to reconstruct the activities of Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Moses Grandy, and Henry Thoreau in Concord on this day in terms of their respective attitudes toward racism and antiracism on that day on which two black speakers came to town, rather than in the more traditional terms of their respective attitudes toward proslavery versus antislavery. In passing I must recount to you an amusing circumstance. There was an unusual difficulty about ringing the bell of the Unitarian Meeting-house, and those who never hesitated before, now shrunk back, and did not dare attempt it. Five or six individuals who were asked declined for one or another reason. Your friend, David Henry Thoreau, (no foreigner, but one whom Concord should be proud to number among her sons,) seeing the timidity of one unfortunate youth, who dared not touch the bell rope, took hold of it with a strong arm; and the bell (though set in its own way), pealed forth its summons right merrily. This reluctance among those timid gentlemen to ring the bell seems to me very amusing. One of them went to ask leave to ring it of one of the committee who take charge of the meeting-house, but not finding him at home, declined taking action on the subject. 15.According to Marie Birdsall <Marie.Birdsall@fmglobal.com>, Concord s antislavery activist Anna Maria Whiting was the grand-daughter of the William Whiting who was born in Concord, Massachusetts on September 30, 1760 to Thomas Whiting and Mary Lake, and the daughter of the William Whiting who was born in Stirling, Massachusetts on October 20, 1788 to this William Whiting and Rebecca Brown. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 27

28 After August 1: I was once travelling through a distant and mountainous part of the country, along the banks of a stream whose course I followed for several days, through a succession of shady vallies, sunken deep among the hills where dwelt a few mild and hospitable inhabitants while on either hand high up on the level tops of the mountains dwelt a different & less cultivated race who had but little intercourse with themselves so near indeed though inaccessible that I occasionally heard the bleating of their flocks As the day was not yet spent and I was anxious to improve the light though my path was gradually rising to these higher levels I took leave of my kind hosts who directed me to the dwelling of the nearest of the race whom we will call Satyrus, who they said was a rude and inhospitable man. At length as the sun was setting behind the mountains in a still darker and more solitary vale, where the shaggy woods almost joined their tops over the torrent I reached the dwelling of my host. I observed as I drew near to his abode that he was less savage than I had feared, for he kept herds and dogs to watch them, and I saw where he made maple sugar on the sides of the mountains, and detected the voices of children mingling with the murmur of the torrent before the door. As I passed his stable I met one whom I took to be a hired man attending to his cattle, and inquired if they entertained travellers at that house. Some times we do he answered gruffly, and immediately went to the farthest stall from me And I perceived that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the surrounding scenery I bent my steps to the house There was no sign post Before it nor invitation to the traveller though I saw by the road that many went and came there but the owner s name only was fastened to the outside a sort of implied and sullen invitation, as I thought. I passed from room to room without meeting any one, at first, till I came to what seemed the guests apartment, which was neat and even had an air of refinement, and I was glad to find a chart on the wall which would direct me upon my journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step in a distant apartment which was the first I had entered, and went to see if the master of the house had come in, but it proved to be only a child, one of those whose voices I had heard, probably his son, and between him and me stood in the door way a large watch dog, which growled upon me and looked as if he would presently spring, but he boy did not speak to him nor seem to observe the danger. And when I asked him for a glass of water he briefly said It runs in the corner. So I took a mug and went outdoors again and searched round the corners of the house, but could find no well nor spring, nor any water, but the stream I have mentioned which ran all along the front I came back therefore and set down the empty mug thinking to ask if the stream was good to drink saying I could not find it whereupon the child seized the mug and going to the corner of the room where a cool spring trickled through a pipe into the apartment, filled it and drank, and gave it to me empty again then calling to the dog rushed out of the room, and left me alone. This spring was cool and pure and seemed to issue from the mountain behind the house, and was conducted through it in pipes, and thence flowed into the stream in front. At length some of the men came in and drank and washed and combed their hair. And some of them sat down, as if wear; and fell asleep, without having spoken. All the while I saw no females, but sometimes heard a bustle in that part of the house, from which the spring came and whither the child had gone. At length Rice himself came in with an ox whip in his hand, breathing hard, and going to a corner drank some kind of liquor. He sat down not far from me and when I asked if he could give me a bed, he said there wa sons ready, but in such a a tone as if I ought to have known it, and the less said about that the better. I observed that it was a wild and rugged country which he inhabited and worth coming many miles to visit not so very rough neither, said he, and appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and level of his fields, and the size of his crops, And if we have some hills, said he, there s no better pasturage any where. I then asked if this place was not the one I heard of, calling it by the name I had seen on the map or if it was a certain other, and he answered gruffly that it was neither the one nor the other that he had settled it and cultivated it and made it what it was and I could know nothing about it that it was a place between certain other places and the books and maps were all wrong for he had lived there longer than anybody. To tell the truth I was very much pleased with my host s residence, and inclined even to exaggerate the grandeur of the scenery and sought in many ways to make known my contentment. Observing some guns and other implements of hunting one the wall, and his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to change the discourse, and inquired if there was much game in that country and he answered this question more graciously for he was evidently fond of the chace but when I asked if there were many bears, he answered impatiently that he did not loose more sheep than his neighbors he had tamed and civilized that region. After a pause, thinking of my journey on the morrow, and of the few hours of day-light in that hollow and mountainous country, which would require me to be on my way betimes, I remarked that the daylight must be shorter by an hour there than in the neighboring plains, at which he gruffly asked what I knew about it. And affirmed that he had as much light as his neighbors he ventured to say the days were longer there than where I lived as I should find if I stayed that some how or rather as I could nt be expected to understand the sun came 28 Copyright Austin Meredith

29 over the mountains a half an hour earlier and lingered a half an hour later, than elsewhere. Without regarding his rudeness I said with a little less familiarity that he was a fortunate man, and I trusted he was grateful for so much light and rising said I would take a light, and I would pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to commence my journey on the morrow, even as early as the sun rose in his country, but he answered somewhat more civilly as I though that I should not fail to find some of his household stirring however early, for they were no sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them before I started if I chose, as as He lighted the lamp I could see a gleam of true hospitality and ancient civility a beam of pure and even gentle humanity, from his bleared and moist eyes, for the effect of the liquor had in some measure worked off And he led the way to my apartment stepping over the limbs of his men who were sound asleep on the floor, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed. But I arose by star light the next morning and usual, before my host or his men or even his dogs were awake, and having left an ninepence on the counter, was already half way over the mountain with the sun, before they had broken their fast. But before I had quite left the country of my host, while the first rays of the sun slanted over the mountains, as I had stopped by the wayside to gather some wild berries, a very aged man came along with a milking pail in his hand, and turning aside also began to pluck the berries with me, but when I inquired the way he answered in a low rough voice without looking up, or seeming to take any notice of me which I imputed to his years and presently mutturing to himself he proceed to collect his cows in a neighboring pasture, and when he had again returned to the wayside, he suddenly stopped while his cows went on before, and uncovering his head prayed aloud to God for his daily bread, and also that he who letteth his rain fall on the just and on the unjust, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground would not neglect the stranger meaning me And when he had done praying I made bold to ask him if he had any cheese in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered without looking up and as gruffly as before that they did nt make any and went to milking. The stranger who turneth away from a house with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and departeth, taking with him all the good actions of the owner. According to our faithful town history One branch of it rises in the south part of Hopkinton; and another from a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough, and running into Hopkinton, forms the boundary line between that town and Southborough. Thence in a northerly direction it passes through Framingham, and forms the boundary line between Sudbury and East sudbury (where it is sometimes called Sudbury River), and enters Concord at the south part of the town. After passing through it in a diagonal direction, it receives the North River, and, going out at the north east part between Bedford and Carlisle and through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at Lowell. It is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible by the eye. At low water mark? it is from 4 to 15 feet deep, and from 100 to 300 feet wide. Where it enters Concord it is 200 feet, and where it leaves it 330. At the former place it is 114 feet above low-water mark in Boston. In times when the river is highest, it overflows its banks, and is in many places more than a mile wide. LEMUEL SHATTUCK It was at this point that Thoreau was re-drafting some scraps from his earlier essay on Sound and Silence onto three sheets in his Long Book (2, 112-5) [compare this with A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, pages 391-3; it was these three sheets that Linck Johnson used in his reconstruction of the 1845 conclusion of the 1st draft (390-3)]: As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. We go about to find Solitude and Silence, as though they dwelt only in distant glens and the depths of the wood [later Thoreau changed wood back to forest ], venturing out from these fortresses at midnight and do not dream that she is then imported into them when we wend thither As the butcher busied himself with looking after his knife when he had it in his mouth. For where man is there is silence, And it takes a man to make a place silent. It [later Thoreau changed It back to Silence ] is the communing of a conscious soul with itself When we attend for a moment to our own infinity audible to all men at all times in all places It is when we hear inwardly sound when he [illegible: we?] hear outwardly. [after August 1: Silence is ever less strange and startling than noise.] Creation has not displaced her but is her visible frame work and foil She is always at hand with her wisdom, by road sides and street corners lurking in belfries, the cannon s mouth, and the wake of the earthquake, gathering up and fondling their puny din in her ample bosom. Silence is ever less strange and startling than noise. and is any where intense and Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 29

30 profound just in proportion as we find ourselves these. [Thoreau moved first sentence to end of paragraph and added and is any where intense and profound just in proportion as we find ourselves these. ] All sounds are her servants and purveyers, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. The thunder is only the signal of her coming. [Thoreau interlined to attend to her communications but we don t know where he intended to position this phrase.] All sound is nearly akin to silence it is a bubble on her surface which straightway bursts, an evidence of the strength and prolificness of the under current. It is a faint utterance of silence and then only agreeable to our auditory senses [JOURNAL: nerves] when it contrasts itself with and relieves the former. In proportion as it does this, and is a heightener and intensifier of the Silence it is harmony and purest melody. Accordingly every melodious sound is an ally of silence a help and not a hindrance to abstraction. Silence is the universal refuge. The sequel to all dull discourses, and all foolish acts as balm to our every chagrin as welcome after satiety as disappointment. That background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure he [illegible: we?] may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum. Where no indignity can assail no personality disturb us. The orator puts off his individuality and is then most eloquent, when most silent. He listens while he speaks and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to her infinite din? She is Truth s speaking trumpet She is the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodena, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. through her all revelations have been made Just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle they have obtained a clear insight, and their age been marked as an enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been Dark or Leaden. These have been garralous [garrulous] and noisy eras which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent & melodious era, is ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men. A good book is the plectrum with which our silent lyres are struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own unwritten sequel to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the work. Of all books this sequel is the most indispensable part. It should be the authors aim to say once and emphatically he said This is the most the book maker can attain to If he make his volume a foil whereon the waves of silence may break it is well. It were vain for me to interpret the silence she cannot be done into English. For six thousand years have men translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still is she little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her but he too must at last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning he made. For when he at length dives into her so vast is the disproportion of the told to the untold, that the former will seem but the bubble on the surface where he disappeared. Never the less will we go on, like those Chinese Cliff swallows, feathering our nests with the froth, which may one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the sea shore. [Two irrelevant paragraphs on Marlowe in the JOURNAL and one on how water-lily blossoms open simultaneously in the morning sunlight are omitted in this version being prepared for publication.] And now our boat was already grating against the bullrushes of its native port and its keel again recognized the Concord mud where the flattened weeds still preserved some semblance of its own outline having scarce yet recovered themselves since its departure. And we leaped gladly on shore drawing it up and fastening it to the little apple tree whose stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn in the chafing of the spring freshets. 16 As the poet [Charles Cotton, in The Tempest ] says Standing upon the margent of the main, Whilst the high boiling tide came tumbling in, &c * * Soon could my sad imagination find A parallel to this half world of flood. 16.The poet W.H. Auden has in 1962 brought forward a snippet from this day s entry as: THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS, A PERSONAL SELECTION BY W.H. AUDEN... Pg Topic Aphorism Selected by Auden out of Thoreau 278 Writers and Readers It is the author s aim to say once and emphatically, He said. 30 Copyright Austin Meredith

31 An ocean by my walls of earth confined, And rivers in the channels of my blood; Discovering man, unhappy man, to be Of this great frame Heaven s epitome. CHARLES COTTON September 27: Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the Concord NH, New Hampshire Herald of Freedom published Anna Maria Whiting s account of the antislavery fair held in Concord, Massachusetts on August 1, participated in by Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Thoreau. 17 The Reverend Joel Hawes was in this year visiting Europe and points east, spending several months in Asia Minor and Turkey, where his only daughter Mrs. Mary E. Van Lennep, wife of the Reverend Henry J. Van Lennep, was a missionary. MRS. MARY E. VAN LENNEP On May 11th this father had parted from his daughter at Smyrna and headed back toward America. She was then in excellent health. On this day, however, in Constantinople, after having for a few days suffered from an illness that had seemed mild, she died. 17. Wendell Glick. Thoreau and the Herald of Freedom, New England Quarterly XXII (1949). Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 31

32 1849 William Whiting was president and Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau and Mary Merrick Brooks were members of the executive committee of the Middlesex County Antislavery Society. In this year the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson was being expelled from his Unitarian pulpit in Newburyport due to his offensive antislavery sermons. He would be put forward by Friend John Greenleaf Whittier, who was not only a nonviolenter Quaker poet but also an extraordinarily effective behind-the-scenes political manipulator, as the Freesoil candidate for Congress from the 3rd Congressional District. The Reverend s campaign would be based upon the concept of a Higher Law. His platform in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law would be: DISOBEY IT... and show our good citizenship by taking the legal consequences. (In October 1851 his Whig opponent would win the seat sometimes you just can t win for losing. :-) 32 Copyright Austin Meredith

33 January 15, Monday: In downtown Boston where everything that happens of course happens for the greater glory of God Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw lectured Washington Goode for an hour and a half on the habits of intemperance which he had had, the ungodly associates which he had had, the dens of crime which he had frequented, etc., informed him that having led such a life there was simply no hope that the governor of the state might reduce his sentence. The lecture probably was just what Seaman Goode needed. The judge then consigned him to be hanged by the neck, on May 25, Friday, 1849 (this seems to have been a traditional day upon which to conduct public hangings), until he was dead. 18 The opponents of the death penalty, to wit, the Standing Committee of the Massachusetts Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, would have a little more than four months to mobilize public opinion to bring pressure to bear on Governor George Nixon Briggs: Why Sir, even the boys, and they are worth saving, for we have nothing else to make men, and even Governors of, are now saying in our streets, it is only a nigger. During those four months 24,440 signatures would be collected, petitioning the Governor Briggs to commute Seaman Goode s sentence, from death by hanging to life in prison without any possibility of parole. For instance, Friend Joseph Ricketson, Friend Daniel Ricketson s brother who, if I mistake not, was a birthright Quaker in good standing with his Monthly Meeting, reported that: I have exerted myself very much for the last month in behalf of Washington Goode; there were several petitions here and we obtained 746 signatures. In addition to the 24,440 signatures mentioned, there was one petition, from Woburn, Massachusetts, bearing a total of nine signatures, which demanded that Governor Briggs remain steadfast in the plan of exicution. An article would appear in the Boston Republican, pointing up the fact that in France the guillotine had been adopted, after consultation with medical men, as the least painful mode of execution, and that since the last hanging in Boston, the Ether discovery has taken place. The question now arises, how shall the hanging be performed here in Boston... Shall not the convict share also the advantage of this benign discovery? He is to be hanged by the neck. Shall not this be done with the least possible pain? If we follow the spirit of the law, there would seem to be no doubt that it must be done with the least possible pain. And it seems equally clear that it is within the discretion of the Sheriff, to permit any form of alleviating the pain, which is consistent with the one thing imposed upon him by the law; namely, the hanging of Goode, by the neck, until he is dead. We will not undertake to determine, whether Humanity does not require, that the convict, if he chooses, shall be allowed the benefit of ETHER. We content ourselves with saying that it is clearly within the discretion of the Sheriff to permit the pains of the convict to be thus alleviated. 18. In fact, Boston had not hanged anyone for simple homicide since 1826, almost a quarter of a century before, and there was another prisoner, Augustus Dutee, whose sentence to be hanged was being commuted during this period to life in prison but then, we may presume that Augustus Dutee was a white man, not only because his sentence was commuted but also because the documents do not comment on his race as they would most assuredly have commented had he been anything other than white. In addition to Dutee, seven other murderers were then serving life in Massachusetts prison after having had their sentences to be hanged commuted by the state governor. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 33

34 The petition to commute the sentence of seaman Goode to life in prison without opportunity for parole that was being circulated and sponsored in Concord (either by Anna Maria Whiting, one of the town s leading abolitionists, or by Caroline Hoar, the wife of Rockwood Hoar) is still in existence and bears, on the men s side of the sheet, the signature of Henry Thoreau as second in that column. It bears, on the women s side of the sheet, the signature of his younger sister, Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau, as 5th in that column, followed in immediate succession by the signature of his mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, the signature of his elder sister, Helen Louisa Thoreau, the signature of his aunt Louisa Dunbar, and the signature of his Aunt Jane Thoreau. The signature of his father John Thoreau, Sr., however, appears nowhere on this petition. Why not? Thoreau s father was 62 years old at this point and still very actively engaged in his home business. Is one to suppose that he, quite alone in his home, wanted Seaman Goode to dance on air? The full text of that petition, as it came to be circulated in the Prisoner s Friend, had been as follows: 34 Copyright Austin Meredith

35 WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, solemnly protest against the intended execution of Washington Goode, as a crime in which we would under no circumstances participate, which we would prevent, if possible, and in the guilt of which we will not, by the seeming assent of silence, suffer ourselves to be implicated. We believe the execution of this man will involve all who are instrumental in it in the crime of murder of the murder in cold blood of a helpless fellow being. The arguments by which executions are generally defended are wholly wanted here. The prisoner is not one who in spite of good instruction and example, for purposes of avarice, revenge or lust, deliberately planned the murder of a fellow-being. The intended victim of law was a man of misfortune from birth, made by his social position, and still more by the color which God gave him, the victim of neglect, of oppression, of prejudice, of all the evils inflicted upon humanity by man. If in a paroxysm of drunken rage, he killed his opponent, (and this is the utmost alleged against him,) his case comes far short of premeditated murder. But even this fact is extremely doubtful. It is supported only by the most suspicious testimony, and such as would not have weighed with any jury to touch the life of a white man. And since the trial, facts have come to light materially lessening the credibility of the evidence which led to conviction. The glaring unfairness of his mode of trial is of itself sufficient ground for this protest. The maxim which gives to the accused a trial by his peers was essentially violated. In a community where sympathy with a colored man is a rare and unpopular sentiment, the prisoner should have been tried by a jury composed partly, at least, of his own race. This violation of the principles of equal justice demands our solemn protest. We claim also that the petition of more than 20,000 of our fellowcitizens to have this man s life spared, demands respect. Such a number of voluntary petitioners, all upon one side, indicates the will of the sovereign people of the State, that the penalty should be commuted. Our respect for the right of the people to a voice and a just influence in the administration of public justice, also demands this solemn protest against the legal murder of Washington Goode. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 35

36 1853 January: From this point until sometime in May, Louisa May Alcott would be offering home school in her parlor in Concord, for about a dozen pupils. William Whiting became the president of the New-England Historic, Genealogical Society William Whiting s Memoir of Reverend Joseph Harrington was prefixed to a volume of the Reverend s sermons being printed in Boston. 36 Copyright Austin Meredith

37 Our national birthday, the 4th of July, Tuesday: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne s 50th birthday. Rowland Hussey Macy ( ) had gotten started in retail in 1851 with a dry goods store in downtown Haverhill. Macy s policy from the very first was His goods are bought for cash, and will be sold for the same, at a small advance. On this date Macy s 1st parade marched down the main drag of the little New England village. It was too hot and only about a hundred people viewed his celebration. In 1858 Macy would sell this store and, with the financial backing of Caleb Dustin Hunking of Haverhill, relocate the retail business to easier pickings in New-York. (So, have you heard of the New York Macy s department store? Have you shopped there?) When the mayor of Wilmington, Delaware jailed City Council member Joshua S. Valentine for setting off firecrackers, he was mobbed by a group of indignant citizens. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY Henry Thoreau went at 8 A.M. To Framingham. At this abolitionist picnic celebrating our nation s birthday and the Declaration of Independence, attended by some 600, a man the Standard described as a sort of literary recluse, name of Henry David Thoreau, declared for dissolution of the federal union. Sojourner Truth was another of the speakers, although we do not know whether she spoke before of after Thoreau (the newspaper reporter who was present failed entirely to notice that Sojourner took part), nor Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 37

38 whether he sat on the platform beside her. Stephen Symonds Foster and Abby Kelley Foster were present (Abby probably brought her daughter Alla to the pic nic, for it was always a family affair, with swings for the children, boating on a nearby pond, and a convenient refreshment stand since the day would be quite hot, 38 Copyright Austin Meredith

39 and confined her remarks to an appeal for funds), and Lucy Stone, as were Wendell Phillips, Charles Lenox Remond, and William Lloyd Garrison. 19 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 39

40 When the meeting in the shady amphitheater was called to order at 10:45AM by Charles Jackson Francis, the first order of business had to be election of officials for the day. William Lloyd Garrison became the event s president and Francis Jackson of Boston, William Whiting of Concord, Effingham L. Capron of Worcester, Dora M. Taft of Framingham, Charles Lenox Remond of Salem, John Pierpont of Medford, Charles F. Hovey of Gloucester, Jonathan Buffum of Lynn, Asa Cutler of Connecticut, and Andrew T. Foss of New Hampshire its vice presidents. The Reverend Samuel J. May, Jr., of Leicester, William H. Fish of Milford, and R.F. Wallcut of Boston became its secretaries. Abby Kelley Foster, Ebenezer D. Draper, Lewis Ford, Mrs. Olds of Ohio, Lucy Stone, and Nathaniel B. Spooner would constitute its Finance Committee. Garrison then read from Scripture, the assembly sang an Anti-Slavery hymn, and Dr. Henry O. Stone issued the Welcome. 19. There was an active agent of the Underground railroad on that platform, we may note, and it was not the gregarious Truth but the sort of literary recluse Thoreau. That is, please allow me to state the following in regard to the existence of eyewitness testimony, that the Thoreau home in Concord was in the period prior to the Civil War a waystation on the Underground Railway: we might reappraise Thoreau s relationship with Sojourner Truth, of whom it has been asserted by Ebony Magazine that she was a Leader of the Underground Railroad Movement (February 1987), by asking whether there is any comparable eyewitness testimony, that Truth ever was involved in that risky and illegal activity? Her biographer refers to her as a loose cannon, not the sort of close-mouthed person who could be relied upon as a participant in a quite secret and quite illegal and quite dangerous endeavor, and considers also that no such evidence has ever been produced. The Thoreaus, in contrast, not only were never regarded as loose in this manner, but were, we know, regarded as utterly reliable and in the case of the Thoreau family home the evidence for total involvement exists and is quite conclusive. 40 Copyright Austin Meredith

41 I will quote a couple of paragraphs about the course of the meeting from the Foster biography, AHEAD OF HER TIME: Heading the finance committee, Abby made her usual appeal for funds, Stephen called on the friends of liberty to resist the Fugitive Slave Law, each one with such weapons as he thought right and proper, and Wendell Phillips, Sojourner Truth, and Lucy Stone held the audience in thrall with their soul-eloquence. After an hour s break for refreshments Henry Thoreau castigated Massachusetts for being in the service of the Slaveholders and demanded that the state leave the Union. I have lived for the last month and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. Thoreau s speech is still reprinted, but William Lloyd Garrison provided the most dramatic moment of that balmy July day. Placing a lighted candle on the lectern, he picked up a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law and touched it to the flame. As it burned, he intoned a familiar phrase: And let all the people say Amen. As the shouts of Amen echoed, he burned the U.S. commissioner s decision in the Burns case. Then he held a copy of the United States Constitution to the candle, proclaiming, So perish all compromises with tyranny. As it burned to ashes, he repeated, And let all the people say Amen. While the audience responded with a tremendous shout of Amen, he stood before them with arms extended, as if in blessing. No one who was present ever forgot the scene; it was the high point of unity among the Garrisonian abolitionists. This biography of Abby Kelley, with its suggestion that Thoreau s speech, which it condenses to three sentences, must have been significant because it is still reprinted, overlooks the fact that Thoreau had not been granted an opportunity to read his entire lecture. A contemporary comment on the speech was more accurate: Henry Thoreau, of Concord, read portions of a racy and ably written address, the whole of which will be published in the Liberator. That is, Thoreau delivered a 4th-of-July oration at Framingham MA on SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, criticizing the governor and the chief justice of Massachusetts who were in the audience. But, he was not Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 41

42 allowed the opportunity to read his entire essay. The whole military force of the State is at the service of a Mr. Suttle, a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom he calls his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers, all this training has been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico, and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters? These very nights, I heard the sound of a drum in our streets. There were men training still; and for what? I could with an effort pardon the cockerels of Concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had not been beaten that morning; but I could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the trainers. The slave was carried back by exactly such as these, i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best you can say in this connection is that he is a fool made conspicuous by a painted coat. Note that on paper, at least, if not verbally as well, he made a reference to martyrdom by hanging: I would side with the light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to follow. Here is another account of the actual speech, as opposed to what was printed later, from one who was there in the audience standing before that platform draped in mourning black: He began with the simple words, You have my sympathy; it is all I have to give you, but you may find it important to you. It was impossible to associate egotism with Thoreau; we all felt that the time and trouble he had taken at that crisis to proclaim his sympathy with the Disunionists was indeed important. He was there a representative of Concord, of science and letters, which could not quietly pursue their tasks while slavery was trampling down the rights of mankind. Alluding to the Boston commissioner who had surrendered Anthony Burns, Edward G. Loring, Thoreau said, The fugitive s case was already decided by God, not Edward G. God, but simple God. This was said with such serene unconsciousness of anything shocking in it that we were but mildly startled. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMORIES, AND EXPERIENCES OF MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY (Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), Volume I, pages [Moncure Daniel Conway] DISUNION ANTHONY BURNS EDWARD GREELEY LORING At the end of the morning meeting Thoreau was on the platform while William Lloyd Garrison, the featured 42 Copyright Austin Meredith

43 speaker, burned the federal Constitution on a pewter plate as a covenant with death because it countenanced the return of runaway slaves to their owners Margaret Fuller s grandfather Timothy Fuller Sr., who had refused to consent to that document when it was originally promulgated because of its ridiculous mincing about slavery, would have been proud of him! Thoreau s inflammatory oratory was less inflammatory than addresses made on that occasion by Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Charles Lenox Remond, for their speeches drew comments but Thoreau s did not. On our nation s birthday the platform had been draped in black crepe as a symbol of mourning, as at a state funeral, and carried the insignia of the State of Virginia, which stood as the destination of Anthony Burns, and this insignia of the State of Virginia was decorated with with, in magnificent irony, ribbons of triumph! Above the platform flew the flags of Kansas and Nebraska, emblematic of the detested new Kansas/Nebraska Act. As the background of all this, the flag of the United States of America was hung, but it was upside down, the symbol of distress, and it also was bordered in black, the symbol of death. I think no great public calamity, not the death of Daniel Webster, not the death of Charles Sumner, not the loss of great battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns. William Lloyd Garrison placed a lighted candle on the lectern, and touched a corner of the Fugitive Slave Law to the flame. As it burned, he orated And let all the people say Amen and the crowd shouted Amen! Then he touched a corner of the US commissioner s decision in the Burns case to the candle flame. Then he touched a corner of a copy of the federal Constitution to the candle flame, and orated So perish all compromises with tyranny. As the paper was reduced to ashes, he orated And let all the people say Amen Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 43

44 and stood with his arms extended as if in blessing. William Lloyd Garrison (in 1865) Moncure Daniel Conway s comment, later, about the moment when William Lloyd Garrison set the match to the constitution, and the few scattered boos and hisses were drowned out by the thunderous Amen of the crowd, was: That day I distinctly recognized that the antislavery cause was a religion. In the afternoon Moncure Daniel Conway spoke, as a Virginian aristocrat, a child of position and privilege. Look at me! It was his 1st antislavery attempt at identity politics grandstanding. Leaning on the concept, he insisted that the force of public opinion in his home state was so insane and so hotheaded that every white man with a conscience, or even the first throbbings of a conscience, was a slave to this general proslavery public posture. He offered that to resist this Southern certitude, each Northerner would need to abolish slavery in his 44 Copyright Austin Meredith

45 heart. 20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II (So, you see, the white man has been self-enslaved: the problem is not so much that slavery harms the black man as that slavery harms the white man, shudder.) Then Wendell Phillips spoke. We know that Sojourner Truth spoke from that mourning-draped platform after a white man from Virginia had described his being thrown in jail there on account of his antislavery convictions, because in her speech she commented on this: how helpful it was for white people to obtain some experience of oppression. She warned that God would yet execute his judgments upon the white people for their oppression and cruelty. She asked why it was that white people hated black people so. She said that the white people owed the colored race a debt so huge that they would never be able to pay it back but would have to repent so as to have this debt forgiven them. Nell Painter has characterized this message as severe and anguished, and has commented that despite the cheers and applause, Her audiences preferred not to grapple with all she had to say. Her humor must have been such, Painter infers, as to allow her white listeners to exempt themselves from this very general denunciation: They did not hear wrath against whites, but against the advocates of slavery. It is understandable, no doubt, that Truth s audiences, who wanted so much to love this old black woman who had been a slave, found it difficult to fathom the depths of her bitterness. 20. We may note how different this was from the Reverend Theodore Parker s kill the Negro in us. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 45

46 Carleton Mabee s BLACK FREEDOM Americans at large often held the abolitionists responsible for the war. They argued that the abolitionists long agitation, strident as it often was, had antagonized the South into secession, thus beginning the war, and that the abolitionists insistence that the war should not end until all slavery had been abolished kept the war going. In 1863 the widely read New York Herald made the charge devastatingly personal. It specified that by being responsible for the war, each abolitionist had in effect already killed one man and permanently disabled four others. While William Lloyd Garrison preferred voluntary emancipation, during the war he came to look with tolerance on the abolition of slavery by military necessity, saying that from seeming evil good may come. Similarly, the Garrisonian-Quaker editor, Oliver Johnson, while also preferring voluntary emancipation, pointed out that no reform ever triumphed except through mixed motives. But the Garrisonian lecturer Pillsbury was contemptuous of such attitudes. Freeing the slaves by military necessity would be of no benefit to the slave, he said in 1862, and the next year when the Emancipation Proclamation was already being put into effect, he said that freeing the slaves by military necessity could not create permanent peace. Parker Pillsbury won considerable support for his view from abolitionist meetings and from abolitionist leaders as well. Veteran Liberator writer Edwin Percy Whipple insisted that true welfare could come to the American people only through a willing promotion of justice and freedom. Henry C. Wright repeatedly said that only ideas, not bullets, could permanently settle the question of slavery. The recent Garrisonian convert, the young orator Ezra Heywood, pointed out that a government that could abolish slavery as a military necessity had no antislavery principles and could therefore re-establish slavery if circumstances required it. The Virginia aristocrat-turned-abolitionist, Moncure Daniel Conway, had misgivings that if emancipation did not come before it became a fierce necessity, it would not reflect true benevolence and hence could not produce true peace. The Philadelphia wool merchant, Quaker Alfred H. Love, asked, Can so sublime a virtue as freedom be the offspring of so corrupt a parentage as war? The long-time abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster the speak-inner and Underground Railroader predicted flatly, if the slave is freed only out of consideration for the safety of the Union, the hate of the colored race will still continue, and the poison of that wickedness will destroy us as a nation. Amid the searing impact of the war the burning fields, the mangled bodies, the blood-splattered hills and fields a few abolitionists had not forgotten their fundamental belief that to achieve humanitarian reform, particularly if it was to be thorough and permanent reform, the methods used to achieve it must be consistent with the nature of the reform. What abolitionists often chose to brush aside was that after the war most blacks would still be living in the South, among the same Confederates whom they were now trying to kill. 46 Copyright Austin Meredith

47 July 9, Sunday: The Reverend Thomas Starr King of the Universalist Church in Charlestown, Massachusetts thanked James Thomas Fields for a luscious copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. 21 TIMELINE OF WALDEN The Reverend would review the gift for the Christian Register: A young man, eight years out of college, of fine scholarship and original genius, revives, in the midst of our bustling times, the life of an anchorite. By the side of a secluded pond in Concord, he builds with his own hands a hut which cost him twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents; and there he lived two and a half years, cultivating poverty, because he wanted to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and suck out all its marrow. Here he found that the labor of six weeks would support him through the year; and so he had long quiet days for reading, observation, and reflection, learning to free himself from all 21. James T. Fields. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND PERSONAL SKETCHES. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 188, page 89. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 47

48 the hollow customs and false shows of the world, and to pity those who by slavery to inherited property seemed to be doing incredible and astonishing penance. In the account he gives us of his clothes, house, food, and furniture, we find mingled many acute and wise criticisms upon modern life; while in his descriptions of all living things around him, birds, fishes, squirrels, mice, insects, trees, flowers, weeds, it is evident that he had the sharpest eye and the quickest sympathy. One remarkable chapter is given to the sounds that came to his ear, with suggestions, full of poetry and beauty, of the feelings which these sounds awakened. But nothing interested him so much as the Pond, whose name gives the title to his book. He describes it as a clear sheet of water, about a mile in circumference; he bathed in it every morning; its cool crystal depths were his well, ready dug; he sailed upon its bosom in summer, he noted many curious facts pertaining to its ice in winter; in short, it became to him a living thing, and he almost worshiped it. But we must not describe the contents of this book any farther. Its opening pages may seem a little caustic and cynical; but it mellows apace, and playful humor and sparkling thought appear on almost every page... Rarely have we enjoyed a book more, or been more grateful for many and rich suggestions... As we shut the book up, we ask ourselves, will the great lesson it teaches of the freedom and beauty of a simple life be heeded? Shall this struggle for wealth, and this bondage to the impedimenta of life, continue forever? Will the time ever come when it will be fashionable to be poor, that is, when men will be so smitten with a purpose to seek the true ends of life that they will not care about laying up riches on the earth? Such times we know there have been, and thousands listened reverently to the reply, given in the last of these two lines, to the inquiry contained in the first; O where is peace, for thou its path hast trod? In poverty, retirement, and with God. Who can say that it is impossible that such a time may come round, although the fashion of this world now runs with such a resistless current in the opposite direction. 48 Copyright Austin Meredith

49 In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went to Hubbard s Bathing-Place (and from there to Fair Haven). This day saw the first meeting of Concord s Vigilance Committee, organized in the wake of Anthony Burns s return to slavery earlier that year (Thoreau doesn t mention such a meeting in his journal entry for the day). Attendees were: Mary Merrick Brooks, Waldo and Lidian Emerson, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau and John Thoreau, Mary Rice, Charles Bowers, Joshua R. Brown, Nathan B. Stowe, Nathan Henry Warren, James Weir, Stearns Wheeler, and William Whiting. Since, at this informal meeting, the attenders signed a pledge that they would do whatever was in their power to aid fleeing slaves, some incautious commentators have presumed that this meeting, and this new committee, had something to do with the Underground Railroad! What the attenders did, however, was merely to agree to sponsor a weekly series of public meetings on the topic of slavery. Emerson for instance agreed to invite the Reverend Theodore Parker to deliver an opening lecture. Of course they would honor their pledge, but of course, the Emersons couldn t be expected to invite persons of color to enter their home, so it wouldn t be within their power to interpret this pledge as including the aiding of any actual fleeing slave individuals. Surely such a pledge should be categorized as pious attitudinizing, or as righteous posturing, or as good public relations proselytizing, rather than as some incautious historians have supposed, the sort of Underground Railroad activism in which Cynthia and John and Henry Thoreau, were involved, for which they were putting their own persons and the assets of their family on the line. (I cannot presently cite any occasion on which any person of color ever was allowed to enter the Emerson home in Concord at any point during the 19th Century, before or after the Civil War, even as a servant. If a person is to be categorized as vomit on the basis of the color of his or her skin, would they then proceed to allow such a vomit person through the door just because they were in need?) My guess would be that we can take a clue from the fact that Thoreau hadn t bothered to attend this meeting, and recognize from that, that actually this meeting didn t have one doggone thing to do with the Underground Railroad. (If it did have something to do with such covert agendas then this would be the very first instance of which we have any record of anyone ever putting anything having to do with that clandestine operation into incriminating ink on an incriminating piece of paper other than Bronson Alcott scribbling in a voluminous personal journal that he could be quite confident nobody but himself would trouble themselves to glance at.) We need constantly to bear in mind that there were two very distinct types of white abolitionist, the non-racist abolitionist and the racist abolitionist. The non-racist abolitionists wanted to help improve the lives of black Americans and were opposed to race slavery because it harmed the lives of black Americans. The racist Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 49

50 abolitionists didn t think there even ought to be such a thing as a black American, and were opposed to race slavery because it created a place for black people in America, where they ought not to have any place at all. Likewise, there were two reasons for being in favor of the Underground Railroad, because it helped black people who needed help, and because it helped remove black people from the local area by shuffling them off toward the north where there might or might not be a place for them and that didn t matter. (The genius of the abolition movement was to make strange bedfellows of these two very different sorts of personality, the nonracist Thoreau personality and the racist Emerson personality, enabling them to work together at a common task.) The point is that people like Thoreau, who wanted to help improve people s lives, would sometimes be willing to place their own homes at risk of confiscation, but people like Emerson who just wanted weeds to grow somewhere else than in their own vicinity would never place their fine homes at risk of confiscation. That, to mix a metaphor, would be to risk throwing the clean white baby out with the dirty black bathwater! 1855 Louisa Whiting (Anna Maria Whiting s sister) returned to Concord from a visit to the South, to author a pamphlet The Influence... in which she detailed what she had seen there. 50 Copyright Austin Meredith

51 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. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 51

52 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: 52 Copyright Austin Meredith

53 1860 January 24, Tuesday: The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson spoke in Concord in opposition to Henry Thoreau s prejudice for Adamhood. After the lecture, the Reverend Higginson and Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott and Anna Maria Whiting, walked home with Waldo Emerson to continue the discussion. Higginson s emphasis was on the making of a contrast between a state of barbarism and a state of civilization, but Thoreau s was on the use of the figure of the Indian to provide needed continuity between the human of civilization and the idea of nature. It was disjunctors vs conjunctors that night. Bronson Alcott s record of the conversation amounts to the following: My wife accompanies me to the Lyceum this evening, and we hear Higginson lecture on Barbarism and Civilization. He defends civilization against Thoreau s prejudice for Adamhood, and celebrates its advantages of health chiefly, among the rest. After the lecture Thoreau and I go to Emerson s and talk further on it. Anna Whiting is there. I ask if civilization is not the ascendency of sentiment over brute force, the sway of ideas over animalism, of mind over matter. The more animated the brain, the higher is the man or creature on the scale of intelligence. The barbarian has no society; this begins in sympathy, the perception and sentiment of personality Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 53

54 54 Copyright Austin Meredith

55 binding the general in one. Thoreau defends the Indian from the doctrine of being lost or exterminated, and thinks he holds a place between civilized man and nature, and must hold it. I say that he goes along with the woods and the beasts, who retreat before and are superseded by man and the planting of orchards and gardens. The savage succumbs to the superiority of the white man. No civilized man as yet, nor refined nations, for all are brute largely still. Man s victory over nature and himself is to overcome! the brute beast in him. Elizabeth Buffum Chase wrote in a letter that Last night, Wendell Phillips lectured at Lonsdale, & he came here, and we carried him up, and then he returned with us, and spent the night. We had a nice time. He told us about his visit to North Elba, when he went with the body of John Brown; relating many little incidents which were not published in the papers. January 24: 2 P.M. To Tarbell, river, via railroad. Thermometer 46. Sky thinly overcast, growing thicker at last as if it would rain. Wind northwest. See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder [Vide the 29th]) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. They are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast. They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse. The Assabet is open above Derby s Bridge as far as I go or see, probably to the factory, and I know not how far below Derby s. It opens up here sooner than below the Assabet Bath to its mouth. The blue vervain stands stiffly and abundant in one place, with much rather large brown seed in it. It is in good condition. Scare a shrike from an apple tree. He flies low over the meadow, somewhat like a woodpecker, and alights near the top twig of another apple tree. See a hawk sail over meadow and woods; not a hen-hawk; possibly a marsh hawk. A grasshopper on the snow. The droppings of a skunk left on a rock, perhaps at the beginning of winter, Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 55

56 were full of grasshoppers legs. As I stand at the south end of J.P.B. s moraine, I watch six tree sparrows, which come from the wood and alight and feed on the ground, which is there bare. They are only two or three rods from me, and are incessantly picking and eating an abundance of the fine grass (short-cropped pasture grass) on that knoll, as a hen or goose does. I see the stubble an inch or two long in their bills, and how they stuff it down. Perhaps they select chiefly the green parts. So they vary their fare and there is no danger of their starving. These six hopped round for five minutes over a space a rod square before I put them to flight, and then I noticed, in a space only some four feet square in that rod, at least eighteen droppings (white at one end, the rest more slate-colored). So wonderfully active are they in their movements, both external and internal. They do not suffer for want of a good digestion, surely. NO doubt they eat some earth or gravel too. So do partridges eat a great deal. These birds, though they have bright brown and huff backs, hop about amid the little inequalities of the pasture almost unnoticed, such is their color and so humble are they. Solomon thus describes the return of Spring (Song of Solomon, ii, 10-12): Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. 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: 22 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 Franklin Benjamin 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 22. 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. 56 Copyright Austin Meredith

57 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 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 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 57

58 and then chairman of the Selectmen, had insisted I should take. I slept peacefully all the rest of that night. 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 58 Copyright Austin Meredith

59 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 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 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 59

60 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 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 July 30: In Concord, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar had Sherman Hoar. When 2-month-old Ethel Abbot died of cholera, her mother Katie Loring Abbot wrote from Winona, Minnesota to her husband Francis Ellingwood Abbot: Our little one is no more. Weep, Frank, weep! 60 Copyright Austin Meredith

61 July 30, Monday: 2 P.M. To Martial Miles s Swamp. WILLIAM WHITING Fimbristylis capillaris, probably several days in some places. See very pretty pink yarrow, roadside opposite Whiting s orchard. See hen-hawks perched. Are they not more at liberty now, their young being better able to shift for themselves, some of them? Am glad to press my way through Miles s Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red, alternating with young birches and raspberry, high blueberry andromeda (high and low), and great dense flat beds of Rubus sempervirens. Amid these, perhaps in cool openings, stands an island or two of great dark-green high blueberry bushes, with big cool blueberries, though bearing but sparingly this year. In a frosty hollow in the woods west of this and of the blackberry field, find a patch of amelanchier, probably oblongifolia (??), full of fruit now in its prime. Comparing it with the Botryapium of the Cliffs, it appears to be the oblong, being much more obtuse and very little serrate, and not heart-shaped like the Botryapium. It is an open sedge hollow surrounded by woods, with some shrubs in it rising above the sedge which have been killed by frost formerly. Here grows a pretty thick patch of the shad-bush, about a rod and a half long, the bushes about three feet high, and quite interesting now, in fruit. Firm dark-green leaves with short, broad, irregular racemes (cluster-like) of red and dark dull-purplish berries intermixed, making considerable variety in the color, of peculiar color among our small fruits. The ripest and largest dark-purple berries are just half an inch in diameter. You are surprised and delighted to see this handsome profusion in hollows so dry and usually so barren and bushes commonly so fruitless. These berries are peculiar in that the red are nearly as pleasant-tasted as the more fully ripe dark-purple ones. I think this crop is due to the wetness and coolness of the summer. Though an agreeable berry, they are hardly so grateful to my palate as huckleberries and blueberries. These conspicuous red for most are red [BERRIES] on rather high and thin-leaved bushes, growing open and airy, remind you a little of the wild holly, the berry so contrasts with the dark leaf. Returning, we come through the midst of the nearly quite dry J. P. B. s Cold Pool. Excepting a little pool in the middle, this is now one great dense bed of Cyperus diandrus, well out, and Juncus Conradi, as I call it, now in prime (together with Juncus acuminatus). The lower and internal part of this bed is yellow, bright-yellow like sedge, i. e. the cyperus stems and leaves, while the spikes of this and the rest form a soft reddish-brown crust, as it were, over all. Mixed with these over the whole area is literally a myriad of gratiola (say in its prime); a most remarkable sight, countless yellow dots, and occasionally you see a perfectly white one among them. Quite a sultry day, and smells mustyish, as if dog-days were beginning. Is it not the height of summer when the locust is heard? Hear the sound of the first flail, some farmer, perchance, wishing to make room in his barn, or else wanting the grain. Is it wheat or rye? It may be either. As I come through Hosmer s potato-field, I see the great clusters of potato-balls on the sandy ground, bespattered with sand, on each side. Methinks they are unusually abundant this year. Somebody has hung up one great cluster at the post-office. Is it owing to the wet and coolness? Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 61

62 August 30/31: Henry Thoreau surveyed George Minott s seven acres on Mill Brook. He jotted down that the land was sold by John Whiting to Abel Prescott in 1746, and that it bounded Ebenezer Hubbard s land to the southwest, Deacon Samuel Merriam s land to the southeast, the Mill Brook to the north and northeast, and John Whiting s own property called Dam Pasture to the west. Shannon, Mrs. Bigelow, Collier, and Warren were abutters. 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: During this year the 42d Indiana Volunteers participated in battles at: 1861 Mustered-in 1862 Wartrace TN Perryville KY Murfreesboro TN 1863 Elk River TN Chickamauga GA Lookout Mountain GA Missionary Ridge GA 1864 Ringgold GA Rocky Face Ridge GA Resaca GA Altoona Mountains GA Kennesaw Mountain GA Chattahoochee River GA Peachtree Creek GA Atlanta GA Jonesboro GA 1865 Savannah GA Charleston SC Averysboro NC Bentonville NC Mustered-out 62 Copyright Austin Meredith

63 William Whiting became solicitor of the War Department in Washington DC, a capacity in which he would serve for three years. His THE WAR POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE LEGISLATIVE POWERS OF CONGRESS IN RELATION TO REBELLION, TREASON, AND SLAVERY, in which he declared the attitudes that he had begun to urge at the start of the civil war that the United States government had full belligerent rights against the inhabitants of the states which had seceded and could, without going beyond the Constitution, treat these citizens as public enemies, confiscating their property and emancipating their slaves was printed in Boston during this year. His advice, although at first taken with a grain of salt by most public men, would eventually become the northern government s official policy. For the duration of the American Civil War, Isaac Israel Hayes would be in command at a Union army 4,500- bed temporary hospital camp just to the west of Philadelphia, designated as Satterlee U.S.A. General Hospital. He had been chosen by President Lincoln himself. Although he had secured a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, his work at this largest hospital facility in the world would be largely administrative. He would rise during the war from the rank of major to the rank of brevet-colonel. In 1852 a law had been passed restricting the flogging of seamen of the US Navy, and in this year such flogging was entirely outlawed. During the civil war the man who had been most responsible for this easing of brutality, Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, would be unable to reside on his country estate, Monticello, with his child bride, not only because as a sympathizer with the North he was barred from the South, but also because the estate had been confiscated by the Confederate States of America and its contents mostly auctioned off. President Abraham Lincoln (it is said, perhaps with a quiet smile) appointed this often-courtmartialed Jew to the US Navy s Court-Martial Board. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 63

64 J.B. Jones, in his A REBEL WAR CLERK S DIARY, would recount how during this year his detachment had found that they had been awed by a few quaker guns logs of wood in position, and so painted as to resemble a cannon (such phony cannon were referred to as Quaker cannon because they would not speak). The Union soldier typically went into combat with a rifle musket manufactured in the federal arsenal at Springfield MA, that cost $ each and was accurate enough for long-distance shooting, up to about 300 yards, because its projectile, a Minié ball, was imparted with spin as it passed through the barrel. This muzzleloading weapon could discharge no more than two such projectiles per minute, due to an alarmingly complicated and lengthy loading procedure: 1.) The infantryman was to draw the ramrod from its position of storage under the weapon, 2.) bring the end of the weapon s barrel within his reach, 3.) use his teeth to rip open a paper cartridge containing powder and ball, 4.) pour the powder down the barrel, 5.) pop the ball into the end of the barrel with his thumb, 6.) push the ball down the barrel with the ramrod, 7.) remove the ramrod from the barrel, 8.) pull back the hammer three clicks, 9.) fish around and retrieve a percussion cap from wherever he was carrying these items, 9.) place the percussion cap on the nib beneath the hammer, 10.) take aim, and 11.) on command for volley, or at will, pull the trigger. 64 Copyright Austin Meredith

65 In the noise and smoke and terror of combat, quite often, firing volleys, such an infantryman might suppose that his rifle had discharged when it had not, and might ram a second charge of powder and a second ball down the barrel, and a third charge of powder and a third ball on top of that, etc. One such rifle was recovered from a Civil War battlefield, with the condition of its barrel indicating that had been thus charged six times in succession before its rifleman had been killed by the approaching enemy. Not everybody in Indiana had gone off to the war. Some had stayed to engage in hand-to-hand combat of a sort, at home on the farm. OHNE MICH! Here is a description of Quaker events in Indiana during the Civil War from the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALLEN JAY, Philadelphia PA: John C. Winston, pages 95-7: Those in charge of conducting the war proposed that a draft be made upon those who were conscientiously opposed to fighting and that they thus be called upon either to enter the service or pay the sum of three hundred dollars to carry forward the war. When the draft was made, my name was one that was drawn along with those of several other young Friends, two others in our little meeting. It created a good deal of excitement among some of our Friends. The two other young Friends paid their three hundred dollars each, but I felt it right to do nothing, feeling that I could not go myself nor give money to hire others to go. The proper military officer came out and notified me that I would be expected to report in the military training camp at Lafayette, Indiana, for training, on a certain day. I told him that I could not conscientiously be there, that as I could not fight it would not do any good for me to report. Then he demanded three hundred dollars. To this I replied: If I believed that war was right I would prefer to go myself rather than to hire someone else to be shot in my place. I said that I believed our Saviour meant what he said when he said: Thou shalt not kill, and My kingdom is not of this world, and therefore his followers could not fight, and that I took the position of the Christians during the first century, when called upon to bear Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 65

66 arms, whose simply reply was, I am a Christian and therefore cannot fight. After a long conversation he left. A few days later he returned and asked me to reconsider my decision and place three hundred dollars so be could find it [here he is suggesting that Jay leave the amount of money on the table, so that he could pick it up but Jay wouldn t actually have given it to him]. He came the third time, to the orchard where I was gathering apples, and told me I would either have to come or pay the three hundred dollars, or he would be forced to sell my property and collect the money. As I was firm in my decision, he went into the house and tried to get my wife to tell him where he could find the money. She told him she felt as I did and that she could do nothing but suffer. He then went out and looked over the farm, selecting the stock that he proposed to sell and then sat down and commenced writing bills for the public sale of our horses, cattle and hogs. While he was writing, dinner was ready, and when we sat down at the table we insisted on his eating with us. We tried to keep up a pleasant conversation on various subjects, making no reference to the work he was engaged in. After dinner he turned to me and said, If you would get made and order me out of the house, I could do this work much easier, but here you are feeding me and my horse while I am arranging to take your property from you. I tell you it is hard work. We told him we had no unkind feelings toward him, as we supposed he was only obeying the orders of those who were superior to him. I went out again to my work and when he had prepared the sale bills he placed one on a large tree by the roadside in front of the house and then rode around and placed the others in different places in the neighborhood. A few days before the time had arrived for the sale, I was at Lafayette. He came to me and said, The sale is postponed. I don t know when it will be. You can go on using your horses. I heard nothing more about it for several years. After the war closed I learned that Governor Morton, who was in Washington about that time, spoke to President Lincoln about it and he ordered the same stopped. My dear wife and I never worried a moment about it, for we felt that we were doing the will of Him who had condemned all war. So we were kept in peace and quietness though it all. But some of our neighbors who were not Friends were much troubled, and when the war was over we were informed that three or four of our wealthy farmer neighbors had agreed among themselves that when the sale came off they would buy up the horses for three hundred dollars, pay the money over to the officer and leave the horses on the farm as mine, so that we should not be at a serious loss on account of our religious principles. 66 Copyright Austin Meredith

67 September 29, Monday: William Whiting died in Concord. The body would be placed in Concord s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery William Whiting s THE WAR POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE LEGISLATIVE POWERS OF CONGRESS IN RELATION TO REBELLION, TREASON, AND SLAVERY, which had been printed in Boston in 1862, reached its 10th edition, with large additions. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 67

68 1864 July 20, Wednesday: There was fighting at Peachtree Creek, and fighting at Rutherford s Farm. The Springfield, Massachusetts Daily Union offered a review of Henry Thoreau s THE MAINE WOODS. Thoreau s style is so well known that it is hardly necessary to say that tourists and lovers of nature generally will find this a pleasant book, even though the sketches first published should be re-perusals. Lovingly and almost adoring Nature in her wildness, sights, sounds and incidents are all graphically detailed, and the reader s only regret will be that he too cannot traverse the same ground. William Fairfield Whiting was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a son of William Whiting. In 1924 he would be a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Massachusetts. In 1928/1929 he would be the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He would die on August 31, 1936 and the body would be interred somewhere in Holyoke, Massachusetts. William Whiting served as a presidential elector William Whiting s THE WAR POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE LEGISLATIVE POWERS OF CONGRESS IN RELATION TO REBELLION, TREASON, AND SLAVERY, which had been printed in Boston in 1862, reached its 43d edition. US CIVIL WAR William Whiting s MEMOIRS OF REVEREND SAMUEL WHITING AND OF HIS WIFE, ELIZABETH ST. JOHN, WITH REFERENCE TO SOME OF THEIR ENGLISH ANCESTORS AND AMERICAN DESCENDANTS was printed privately in Boston. 68 Copyright Austin Meredith

69 1872 William Whiting was elected to the US Congress as a Republican (he would die before being able to take his seat) June 29, Sunday: John Wells Foster died at his home in Hyde Park outside Chicago, Illinois after a long struggle with the gout. Just prior to his final illness he had completed a manuscript Pre-Historic Man on the mounds found in various places in the midwest. At the age of 60, late in the afternoon William Whiting was resting at his home on Montrose Avenue in Roxbury near Boston and experienced sharp pains about the heart, and died (the body would be placed in Concord s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery). WILLIAM WHITING [of Concord], son of Colonel William Whiting, was graduated [at Harvard College] in MEMOIR OF THE HON. WILLIAM WHITING, LL.D. (D. Clapp & Son). MEMOIR OF WM. WHITING 23. 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.) Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 69

70 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, 20 Miles Avenue, Providence RI Please contact the project at <Kouroo@brown.edu>. 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: June 19, 2013 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 70

71 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, upon someone s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 71