William Morgan and the Anti-Masons

Extracted From :A HISTORY

OF TIIR
PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATE.S,
FROM THE REVOLUTlON TO THE ClVlL WAR.
BY
JOHN BACH McMASTER,
UNiVKi1HiTY OP PBSMSYLVANiA.
IN SEVEN VOLUMES.
VOLUME V.
1821-1830.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
73 FIFTH AVENUE.
1901.

182ft WILLIAM MORGAN. 109
Of all the political parties that have ever attained importance in our country, the most remarkable was the Anti- masonic. The events which brought it into existence, the rapidity with which it rose to power, the limitation of its power to the New England belt of emigration, its sudden decline, and the traces of its existence left on our political institutions, all combine to make its history of no common interest. Some time in the spring of 1826 rumors were current in western New York that William Morgan, a stone-mason of Batavia, had written a book revealing the secrets of freemasonry, and that David C. Miller, a printer in that village, was putting the work to press. Morgan was a native of Cul- peper County, Virginia, where he was born in 1776. By trade he was a stone-mason and bricklayer, and, having by industry and frugality saved a little money, he began business as a small shopkeeper at Richmond. Wearying of this, he moved to York, in Upper Canada, where, in 1821, he became a brewer, and was fast acquiring a competence when fire consumed his brewery, reduced him to poverty, and led him to remove first to Rochester and then to Batavia. There he once more became a bricklayer, was made a member of the lodge •of Royal Arch Masons at Le Roy in 1825, and in 1826 signed a petition praying for the establishment of a chapter at Batavia. Before the petition was presented some objection was made to his signature, because if a charter were granted he would in consequence become a member of the new lodge, where his presence would be most undesirable. A second petition was therefore written and presented without the signature of Morgan, who, when the charter arrived and the chapter was organized, was deeply mortified to find that he was not a member. Then it is probable he determined to be avenged not only on his fellow-townsmen who had excluded him from their lodge, but on the whole masonic fraternity, and formed the plan of writing a book revealing the secrets of masonry. However this may be, it is certain that in March, 1826, a contract was made with David C. Miller, editor of the Republican Advocate, a weekly newspaper published at Batavia, binding Morgan to write a book which Miller was pledged to print and publish.
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1829. LABOR JOURNALS. 105
port charging us with being disciples of Miss Wright, and connecting religious points with our contention, as a base fabrication propagated by our enemies; we disclaim all adherence to Miss Wright's principles, and hold them foreign to our views, and appeal to the fact of the existence of the Working-men's party on the principles it now professes for nearly a year before she appeared among us." But it mattered little whether the working-men avowed or disavowed sympathy with the Free Enquirers. The fact remained that a serious reform movement was well under way, and was spreading and gaining in importance daily. All over the country journals were appearing to advocate it, and societies were forming to labor in its behalf. In New York city the Telescope was busy exposing the designs of the clergy, and holding up to public view the dangers of ecclesiastical encroachment. At Rochester the Spirit of the Age was denouncing imprisonment for debt and capital punishment, and calling loudly for a mechanics' lien law. At Canton, in Ohio, the Fanners' and Mechanics' Society of Stark County had been founded to spread the new doctrines and agitate for co-operation and reform. At St. Louis there was a Society of Free Enquirers. In Alabama " The Ladies Bill," to give women the right to hold after marriage property which belonged to them before, was warmly debated in the Legislature, and in Tuscaloosa another Spirit of the Age upheld the cause of the people as vigorously as its Rochester contemporary. The Southern Free Press, of Charleston, South Carolina, announced its principles to be " No sect, no creed, open to all," and declared that it would collect such information as was useful to mechanics and working-men, and would look to them for support. " Our great object," said the editor in his prospectus, " will be to urge you to break down the barrier which separates your children from those of lordly aristocrats by the establishment of national schools." At New Castle, in Delaware, an Association of Working People was formed with a membership open to any person twenty-one years of age who was engaged in any branch of productive labor. How is it, said the preamble to their constitution, that all classes save the laboring are heard in the Legislature? The commercial, the
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176 STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1825 TO 1829. CHAP. xuv.
a wild speculation in land swept over the South, the popular feeling against the Indians rose to such a height that the Legislature, in 1819, made the immediate acquisition of the Creek and Cherokee territories the subject of a memorial to Congress. In it the United States was so flatly charged with bad faith that the House bade a special committee examine and report whether the agreement of 1802 had been faithfully executed according to its terms, and what ought to be done to complete it.* The committee was of the opinion that the United States had not been careful to keep its pledges. By one treaty with the Creeks the Government had accepted land in Alabama, whereas it ought to have insisted on a cession of territory in Georgia. By another treaty with the Cherokees, it bought a great tract in Tennessee, though duty required it to extinguish the Cherokee title in Georgia. Nay, more, it granted six hundred and forty acres to each head of an Indian family, which was an attempt to give lands in fee simple within the limits of Georgia, in violation of the rights of the State; and it permitted Cherokees to become citizens of the United States, which was an unwarrantable disregard of the right of Congress. If the agreement was to be honestly executed, the United States must abandon its policy, in Georgia at least, of civilizing the Indians and keeping them on their lands, and must negotiate such treaties as might be necessary to extinguish all Indian title to land within the State. f Though the report had small effect on the House, it had much on the Executive, and three commissioners were promptly appointed \ to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokees and secure such a piece of territory as would pacify the State of Georgia. But nine months dragged by before the Senate confirmed the appointments,* and seven more ere the commissioners met the council of the Cherokee Nation at their capital. 1 Three propositions were made. One, that the •January 7, 1822. f Reports of Committees, No. 10, Seventeenth Congress, First Session, vol. i, 12 pp., January 7, 1822. \ June 15 and August 24, 1822. * Approved by the Senate, March 17, 1823. | October 4, 1823.
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1826. DISCOMFORT OF TRAVEL. 151
room with nine other men. " I secured a bed to myself," said he, " the narrow dimensions of which precluded the possibility of participation, and plunged into it with all possible haste, as there was not a moment to be lost." His companions " occupied by triplets the three other beds which the room contained." * When you alight at a country tavern, says another, it is ten to one that you stand holding your horse, bawling for the hostler, while the landlord looks on. Once inside the tavern, every man, woman, and child plies you with questions. To get a dinner is the work of hours. At night you are put with a dozen others into the same room, and sleep two or three in a bed between sheets which have covered twenty wayfarers since they last saw the tub. In the morning you go out-of-doors to wash your face, and then repair to the bar-room to behold your countenance in the only looking-glass the tavern contains. f Much allowance must indeed be made for the tales of travellers. Yet the combined testimony of them all is that a night in a wayside inn was something to be dreaded, and to this the western highways afforded no exception. Saving the inns and such discomfort as came from rising at three o'clock in the morning and sitting for sixteen hours in a crowded coach, still made on the pattern of twenty years before, a ride from Baltimore to Wheeling was most enjoyable. The road-bed was hard, the horses were fine, and the scenery as the road crossed the mountains was magnificent. Beyond the mountains every year wrought wonderful changes. In the river towns and on the farms bordering the Ohio and its tributaries life had become much easier. The steamboats supplied the large settlements already claiming to be cities, while smaller craft carried goods, wares, and merchandise to every farmhouse and cluster of cabins. The Ohio was now dotted with floating shops. At the sound of a horn the inhabitants of the village or the settler and his family would come to the river to find a dry-goods boat fitted with counters, seats, and shelves piled with finery of every sort making fast • Personal Narrative of Frederick Fitzgerald Do Boos, 1826, pp. 6, 85, 86. f Miner's Journal, November 28, 1825.
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1825. SUCCESS OP THE CANAL. 135
miles TJtica was reached in just twenty-four hours. According to the inscription on the china plates of the packet boats, Utica, the site of which thirty years before was a wilderness, was then " inferior to none in the western section of the State in population, wealth, commercial enterprise, active industry, and civil improvements." At this thriving town other packets were taken to Lockport, whence passengers bound for Niagara went by stage to the Falls. At the end of the fourth day from Schenectady the jaded traveller reached Buffalo, three hundred and sixty-three miles by canal from Albany. The debt entailed on the State by this noble work, and by another joining Lake Champlain and the Hudson, was a trifle under eight millions of dollars, carrying an annual interest of four hundred and twenty-eight thousand, to meet which the State had pledged a duty on salt and sales at auction.* But, to the astonishment of the most eager advocates of inland navigation, before the canal was finished the tolls began to exceed the interest charges. In 1825 five hundred thousand, and in 1826 seven hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, were paid in tolls. Fifty boats starting westward from Albany day after day was no uncommon sight. During 1826 nineteen thousand boats and rafts passed West Troy on the Erie and Cham- plain Canals. The new business created by this immense movement of freight cannot be estimated. Before the Cham- plain Canal was opened there were but twenty vessels on the lake. In 1826 there were two hundred and eighteen bringing timber, staves, shingles, boards, potashes, and giving employment to thousands of men in navigation, shipbuilding, and lumbering. Rochester became a flour-milling centre, and turned out one hundred and fifty thousand barrels a year. Even Ohio felt the impetus, and boats loaded with pig-iron * Governor Clinton, in his message in 1826, stated that the debt created by the Erie and Champlain Canals was (7,944,770.90, on which the interest was $4^7,673.55, and that the fund available for the extinguishment of the debt was: Tolls $771,780 10 Auction duties 200,737 81 Salt duties ; 77,405 88 Other sources 7,635 19 Total $1,057,558 48
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SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. run.
imprisonment in the common jail of Ontario County. Sheldon stood trial, was found guilty, and was confined in the jail for three months. Had the men been acquitted, the disgust and indignation of that part of the community which owed no allegiance to masonry could not have been greater. In its opinion the whole masonic fraternity was now in league to shield the murderers of Morgan. The sentence of the court was described as an insult to an enlightened people; the newspapers were accused of suppressing facts, of holding back information, and of taking no notice of any public proceeding concerning Morgan. At Seneca the people, in mass meeting assembled, resolved that all secret societies were dangerous to freedom; that masonry was especially so, as Masons had now shown themselves ready to murder their fellow-men in the interests of their order; that no Mason should be supported for any public office; and that every newspaper which did not publish full accounts of Morgan meetings must be proscribed. The committees appointed by the towns, convinced that the trial had been a farce, that the pleas of guilty were to stop investigation, and that the affidavits of Chesebro, Sawyer, and Lawson did not begin to disclose all they knew, called for a convention at Lewiston for the purpose of determining what steps should be taken to restore Morgan to his country, his freedom, and his family; to discover and punish those who had by violence and fraud deprived him of Jiis liberty and perhaps of his life; to disclose the extent o^the conspiracy; and to make known to the public the motives which prompted the conspirators to acts ruinous to our free restitutions. While the Lewiston committee was gathering information, all manner of guesses as to the fate of Morgan were made. One newspaper asserted that he was kept at Fort Niagara a few days and then put to death. Another maintained that three men took him into Canada; that Captain Brant, a son of the Mohawk chief whose name is forever joined with the massacres in Wyoming and Cherry Valley, was asked to send him to the northwest coast; that when Brant refused, some British officers were urged to take him down the St. Lawrence, and that when they declined Morgan was killed and his body flung into the river. Yet another version represents him as
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1625. CONDITION OF THE WORKING-MAN. 85
and petitions. New York, as a great commercial city, was full of anti-tariff men, and by them a meeting was called and held in the City Hall. But a band of weavers from Paterson, from Westchester, and from the mills in the city marched to the Hall, took possession, interrupted the proceedings with cries of " No British goods! " " Tariff, tariff! " " American manufactures ! " " Protection to domestic industries ! " smashed some chairs, tore up some benches, broke lamps and windows, and went away. The rioters, it was said in explanation, were aliens, weavers imported from Great Britain, men who had not been long enough in the United States to acquire citizenship. The statement was true, and, trifling as was the affair, it showed that the time had come when the ranks of labor were being recruited abroad; that the importation of foreign operatives had begun; and that a new element was introduced to still more complicate the industrial questions pressing for settlement. The condition of the working-man stood in need of betterment. In the general advance made by society in fifty years he had shared but little. Many old grievances no longer troubled him, but new ones, more numerous and galling than the old, were pressing him sorely. Wages had risen within ten years, but not in proportion to the increase in the cost of living. In some States he was no longer liable to imprisonment for debt, unless the amount was larger than fifteen dollars, and in others than twenty-five. If he was so fortunate as to save a few cents out of the pittance he earned, and lived in either of the four great cities, there were savings banks in which he might with reasonable safety deposit the fruits of his economy and receive interest thereon. These were decided gains. Nevertheless, his lot was hard. The hours of labor were still from sunrise to sunset. Wages were not always paid weekly or monthly, but often at long and irregular intervals, and frequently in bad money. His ignorance of finance and of the tricks of business men made him the recipient of counterfeit notes and bills of broken banks, or of institutions of such doubtful soundness that the paper he was forced to receive at its face value would not pass with the butcher or the baker save at a heavy discount. When
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106 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. XLIH.
agricultural,. the manufacturing ask for protection, and it is granted. But what is accorded the working-man? Nothing. Yet who needs protection more? The price of labor is hourly going down because of the numbers thrown out of employment by labor-saving machinery. The cost of every article of consumption meantime is increased by taxation. " Does not the present system under such circumstances tend to increase the poverty of the poor and add to the riches of the rich?" Let us then be represented in the Legislature. Let us unite at the polls and give our votes to no candidate who is not pledged to support a rational system of education to be paid for out of the public funds, and to further a rightful protection of the laborer. At Wilmington, Delaware, was another Free Press likewise pledged " to be open to all for the free, chaste, and temperate discussion of subjects connected with the welfare of the human family." Its mission was " to arouse the attention of working-men to the importance of co-operation in order to attain the rank and station in society to which they are justly entitled by virtue of industry, but from which they are excluded by want of a system of equal republican education." In New York city two new journals of a strongly agrarian sort began their career early in 1830. The one, The Friend of Equal Rights, demanded the equal division of property among the adults of a family at the age of maturity. The other, the Daily Sentinel, was devoted " to the interests of mechanics and other working-men," and at once became a political power. Indeed, it was started for the sole purpose of becoming such a power. The late election in the city made it clear that the working- men had, in the language of our time, bolted their party, had supported a ticket which was not put forward by any political faction, and had done so because they were discontented, and because they did not believe that their grievances would ever be removed by the men then in power. Six thousand votes cast solidly for or against any of the three parties then struggling for control in the city and State was too serious a matter to be treated lightly, and each of the three began to strive eagerly for the support of the working-man. These three parties were the friends of Adams and Clay,
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SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. run.
imprisonment in the common jail of Ontario County. Sheldon stood trial, was found guilty, and was confined in the jail for three months. Had the men been acquitted, the disgust and indignation of that part of the community which owed no allegiance to masonry could not have been greater. In its opinion the whole masonic fraternity was now in league to shield the murderers of Morgan. The sentence of the court was described as an insult to an enlightened people; the newspapers were accused of suppressing facts, of holding back information, and of taking no notice of any public proceeding concerning Morgan. At Seneca the people, in mass meeting assembled, resolved that all secret societies were dangerous to freedom; that masonry was especially so, as Masons had now shown themselves ready to murder their fellow-men in the interests of their order; that no Mason should be supported for any public office; and that every newspaper which did not publish full accounts of Morgan meetings must be proscribed. The committees appointed by the towns, convinced that the trial had been a farce, that the pleas of guilty were to stop investigation, and that the affidavits of Chesebro, Sawyer, and Lawson did not begin to disclose all they knew, called for a convention at Lewiston for the purpose of determining what steps should be taken to restore Morgan to his country, his freedom, and his family; to discover and punish those who had by violence and fraud deprived him of Jiis liberty and perhaps of his life; to disclose the extent o^the conspiracy; and to make known to the public the motives which prompted the conspirators to acts ruinous to our free restitutions. While the Lewiston committee was gathering information, all manner of guesses as to the fate of Morgan were made. One newspaper asserted that he was kept at Fort Niagara a few days and then put to death. Another maintained that three men took him into Canada; that Captain Brant, a son of the Mohawk chief whose name is forever joined with the massacres in Wyoming and Cherry Valley, was asked to send him to the northwest coast; that when Brant refused, some British officers were urged to take him down the St. Lawrence, and that when they declined Morgan was killed and his body flung into the river. Yet another version represents him as
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HO SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. XLUL
As reports of the intended publication passed from mouth to mouth the respectable part of the community gave them no heed, or regarded the forthcoming book as a catchpenny for hawkers and pedlers. But there were among the Masons a few hot-heads, who took alarm, and, having made up their minds that the book should never appear, went on to carry out their decision, and began with intimidation. Many patrons of Miller's newspaper suddenly withdrew their subscriptions; suits were commenced against him to enforce the payment of small debts; and threats were made which led him to believe that an attack on his office was meditated. Even Morgan did not escape, and one day in August an abusive " notice and caution " was published in a Canan- daigua newspaper called the Ontario Messenger, and was reprinted in the Batavia Spirit of the Times and the People's Press. The publicity thus given to the matter now attracted the attention of a man of some means, who believed that, rightly managed, the book would prove to be a source of great profit. He came to Batavia accordingly, took lodgings at the tavern, represented himself as a Canadian, gave his name as Daniel Johns, and soon offered to join Miller in the publication of Morgan's book. The offer was gladly accepted. Johns was admitted to the partnership, advanced forty dollars, and obtained possession of some of the manuscript. The little ho saw was enough to convince him that the book would never succeed, and a demand was at once made on Miller for a return of the money. Failing in this, Johns sued out a warrant before a magistrate of Le Roy. On the night of that same day some fifty men, under the lead of a resident of Canandaigua, met at a tavern in Stafford and marched thence to Batavia for the purpose of breaking into the printing office and destroying the manuscript and printed sheets of the book; but something deterred them, and no attack was made till the night of Sunday, September tenth, when the two buildings used by Miller as printing offices were discovered to be on fire. The flames were extinguished, and on examination it was found that an incendiary had been at work. The sides of the buildings were smeared with turpentine. A brush used for the purpose was
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vi CONTENTS.
PAOB Rise of Liberalism in Europe 89 End of revolution in Naples 40 South American republics 41 Independence recognized 42 Great Britain and the republics 43, 44 Jefferson's advice 45 Principles of the Monroe Doctrine 46 The doctrine announced 47 Government in England 48, 49 At home 60 A third term for Monroe 51 Clay on the doctrine 52, 53 Monroe Doctriue applied 54 CHAPTER XLII. ^- Split in the Republican party 55, 56 Jackson nominated 57,58 Jackson indorsed 59 South Carolina for Calhoun 60 Anti-caucus movement 61-63 A caucus called 64 New England for Adams 65, 66 Pennsylvania for Jackson 67 Other candidates 68 Crawford and Gallatin 69 Gallatin withdraws 70 The struggle in New York 71-73 The choice of electors 74, 75 Position of Clay 76, 77 Clay attacked 78 Kremer's charge 79 Printing of electoral votes 80 >• The House elects Adams 81 CHAPTER XLII I. Growth of the country 82 Now trades and occupations 83 Labor movement begins 84 Condition of the working-man 85, 86 A working-man's party 87 Robert Owen 88 The Rappites 89 Owenism 90-92 New Harmony 93-96 Frances Wright 97, 98 Working-man's party at New York 99
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1824. ENGLISH COMMENT. 49
ens to rekindle the flames of war throughout the Western Hemisphere—was looked forward to with the utmost anxiety. It is worthy of the occasion and of the people destined to occupy so large a space in the future history of the world. What a contrast between the manly plainness of this State paper and the Machiavelism and hypocrisy of the declaration of the manifestoes of the Governments of this part of the world 1 Whatever lately were the intentions of the French Ministers respecting South America, it is now asserted, from undoubted authority, that English policy has prevailed in Paris over that of Russia, and that not only will France not assist Spain in any attempt to subjugate her former American colonies, but may view, not with indifference, any support which Russia or any other nation may lend her for this purpose. This is certainly a wise resolution on the part of the French Government, for this independence of the new American States must extend their commerce, and thereby increase the prosperity of Frenchmen. Russia, blocked up nearly half the year by impenetrable ice, can never partake of Southern commerce until a port be opened for her in the Dardanelles, and hence the anxiety exhibited by her to involve France in the expensive and hopeless employment of restoring America to the yoke of the Bourbons; for, without this or some other occupation for the French armies, and the British navy, he has not the most distant chance of accomplishing the long and ardently cherished designs of his empire against ancient Greece, now in possession. This union of France and England in the great cause of American independence is another strong ground for expecting the continuation of the blessings of peace, and, consequently, an improvement in the public credit of nations. The speech of the President of the United States, so full of wisdom and just ideas, has, however, had more effect on the opinions of the leaders in the national securities than the abundance of money or the changed policy of France, for in it they see a sufficient guarantee for the maintenance of the freedom of the American Continent. There is no part, however, of this speech which can afford more genuine satisfaction to every civilized nation than the notice which it takes of the extraordinary and gallant struggle made at present by the Greeks in the cause of general independence. From tlie Liverpool Advertiser of January 3d.—By one short passage in it is •et at rest, we dare presume, whatever may have been in agitation by the Continental allies in reference to the late Spanish possessions in America. There will be no attempt made, it may be confidently affirmed, to interfere with the present condition of those countries when it is known that such interference would be viewed by the United States as a just cause of war, on her part, with any power attempting such interference. In regard of the power, prosperity, and resources of the nation herself, also, the language of the speech is very interesting; her revenue, it is affirmed, will, on the first of this year, exceed her expenditure by no less than nine million dollars. Her population is estimated at ten millions, and every branch of industry, every source of revenue, wealth, and power is flourishing. On its subjects of common interests to all nations the Government of the United States is enabled to stand forward to suggest and promote what is bene ficial, and to crush what is injurious. In the speech is developed a new idea in respect to maritime war, which, if adopted, on this suggestion, by other powers,
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183a "WORKEYISM." 107
who called themselves the Administration party; the friends of Jackson and Van Buren, who were known as the regular Republicans, and the Antimasons. The Republicans, with a show of public virtue to which they could lay small claim, sought to destroy the union of Working-men and Free Enquirers, and, in the hope of doing so, raised the cry of Infidel party, and called on the priests and ministers of every sect to stop the new movement. They expressed horror at the communistic and agrarian doctrine of the so-called Mechanics' party and its organ, the Daily Sentinel, and summoned manufacturers, business men, land-owners, farmers, " bank gentlemen," and friends of law and order to rally to the support of popular government; they held ward meetings and county conventions, and under the name of mechanics and working- men protested against the doctrines of Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen. But all in vain. From the city the movement spread to the State, where it was taken up by the leaders of every one of the innumerable knots of anti-regency, anti-Van Buren, Antimasonic and Clay Republicans. At the charter election in Albany, in the spring of 1830, the working-men united on a ticket and carried four wards out of five. In Troy the same course was pursued, and " not one regency man," it was boastfully said, was elected. For this they were ridiculed by the Republican or Jackson press as " workies," and were held up as Federalists, as " the old enemy in a new disguise," as men bent on the destruction of society. When the autumn came and the time approached for the election of State officials, a convention was called to meet at Salina and name working-men's candidates for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. Seventy delegates from thirteen counties responded, and put Erastus Root and Nathaniel Pitcher in the field, but neither would accept. To this convention New York city sent two delegations, one of which was rejected; whereupon it met and nominated a rival working-men's ticket, on which were the names Smith and Hertlett. Neither of these men were serious candidates. The strength and the weakness of the party was in New York city, where, in September, a meeting was held in the North American Hotel. All who were in favor of a republican sys-
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1826. DISCOMFORT OF TRAVEL. 151
room with nine other men. " I secured a bed to myself," said he, " the narrow dimensions of which precluded the possibility of participation, and plunged into it with all possible haste, as there was not a moment to be lost." His companions " occupied by triplets the three other beds which the room contained." * When you alight at a country tavern, says another, it is ten to one that you stand holding your horse, bawling for the hostler, while the landlord looks on. Once inside the tavern, every man, woman, and child plies you with questions. To get a dinner is the work of hours. At night you are put with a dozen others into the same room, and sleep two or three in a bed between sheets which have covered twenty wayfarers since they last saw the tub. In the morning you go out-of-doors to wash your face, and then repair to the bar-room to behold your countenance in the only looking-glass the tavern contains. f Much allowance must indeed be made for the tales of travellers. Yet the combined testimony of them all is that a night in a wayside inn was something to be dreaded, and to this the western highways afforded no exception. Saving the inns and such discomfort as came from rising at three o'clock in the morning and sitting for sixteen hours in a crowded coach, still made on the pattern of twenty years before, a ride from Baltimore to Wheeling was most enjoyable. The road-bed was hard, the horses were fine, and the scenery as the road crossed the mountains was magnificent. Beyond the mountains every year wrought wonderful changes. In the river towns and on the farms bordering the Ohio and its tributaries life had become much easier. The steamboats supplied the large settlements already claiming to be cities, while smaller craft carried goods, wares, and merchandise to every farmhouse and cluster of cabins. The Ohio was now dotted with floating shops. At the sound of a horn the inhabitants of the village or the settler and his family would come to the river to find a dry-goods boat fitted with counters, seats, and shelves piled with finery of every sort making fast • Personal Narrative of Frederick Fitzgerald Do Boos, 1826, pp. 6, 85, 86. f Miner's Journal, November 28, 1825.
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174: STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1825 TO 1829. CHAP. XLIT.
the West. Nor was it slow in doing so. Ohio, where much of the public land had been sold, was indifferent. But from Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Alabama came memorials praying for a graduated scale of prices. A distinction, said Illinois, ought to be made between land recently offered for sale and that long in the market. In the latter case, the best having been taken up by bidders at the public auctions, by non-residents who buy on speculation, and by the early settlers, what remains is either poor in quality or is subject to some local disadvantage, and the price ought to be reduced. The emigrant seeking a home will not pay for it the price asked for better soil in better situations. He is therefore driven to new and distant settlements, where few have preceded him. The tide of population is thus made to roll over immense regions, creating feeble and thinly scattered settlements, separated by vast tracts of wilderness. In such a state public institutions are not established, systems of education are not matured, moral restraints are tardily enforced, laws feebly executed, and revenue raised with difficulty and at great cost. Land unsold after being offered for five years should, Illinois proposed, be valued at fifty cents an acre.* A graduation of price, said Indiana, f will stop the wild rush westward, will make settlements compact, and will bring into the market land which otherwise will remain wilderness or be made valueless by interlopers and trespassers, whose rude and temporary settlements are a nuisance to society. Finding that no attention was paid to her memorial, Indiana, in 1826, instructed her senators and requested her representatives to do their best to secure a law graduating the prices of public lands. $ Then, for the third time, Benton introduced his bill described by his colleague as " a compound of electioneering and speculation," and defended it in a speech which the same fellow-senator called a " studied, popularity- hunting, Senate-distressing harangue." * Nevertheless, the Legislature of Alabama approved the bill, and bade her sena- * American State Papera, Public Land), vol. iv, p. 148, December 24, 1824. f Ibid., vol. IT, pp. 429, 480, January 81, 1825. t American State Papers, Public Lands, vol. IT, p. 488. « Debates in Congress, 1826-'26, vol. li, part i, pp. 720-753, May 16, 1828.
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150 STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1825 TO 1829. CHAP. xuv.
and urge an appropriation to repair the Cumberland Road.* But all to no purpose. The utmost that could be obtained was an act appropriating money for surveys, plans, and estimates for such canals and roads as the President might deem of national importance from a commercial or military point of view or necessary for the transmission of the public mails, f and in the last hours of his administration another extending the Cumberland Road from Canton to Zanesville, and providing for a survey for a further extension to the capital of Missouri.:}: The completion of the National Pike was, in its day and time, a matter of much importance. It began at Cumberland, on the banks of the Potomac, passed through Hagerstown in Maryland, and Uniontown, Brownsville, and Washington in Pennsylvania, and across Virginia to Wheeling on the Ohio. With the pike from Baltimore to Cumberland, it made a great through line of communication between the East and the West, and was already the favorite highway with travellers bound for the Ohio Valley. Such a journey was usually begun by taking boat at Philadelphia, going down the Delaware to New Castle, crossing by stage to Frenchtown on the Elk river,' a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and then boarding another steamboat for Baltimore. Twenty years had seen a marvellous betterment in the means and speed and cost of travel. Steamboats, turnpike, ferryboats, bridges, and, above all, competition, had accomplished wonders on the routes between the great seaboard cities. But no corresponding improvement had taken place in the comforts and conveniences of the inns and taverns at which the traveller was forced to stop. We lodged, said one traveller, at the City Hotel, which is the principal inn at New York. The house is immense, and was full of company; but what a wretched place! The floors were without carpets, the beds without curtains. There was neither glass, nor mug, nor cup, and a miserable little rag was dignified with the name of towel. At another inn the same traveller was shown to a * Resolution of December 18, 1822. f Approved April 8O, 1824. } March 8, 1826.
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1827. TRIAL OF THE KIDNAPPERS. 113
Canandaigua, where sworn statements were secured from the wife of the jailer, from a prisoner, from some people who re- aided near the jail, and finally from Mrs. Morgan. The publicity given to this testimony was followed by great excitement and by a series of public meetings, at one of which a committee was chosen to gather information. By its authority a short statement of the facts was written and published, with the request that every newspaper editor would give the notice a few insertions, and that anybody having information regarding Morgan's fate or present whereabouts would send it to the committee. The Governor was next appealed to, and went through the idle form of issuing a proclamation calling on the civil authorities to spare no pains to arrest the offenders and to prevent such outrages in future. As time passed and the mystery remained as impenetrable as ever, the excitement spread to other counties, and committees of investigation were soon at work in Livingston, Ontario, Monroe, and Niagara. By these the Governor was again appealed to, and late in October he offered a reward of three hundred dollars for the discovery of the offenders and one hundred dollars for the discovery of each and every one of them, and two hundred dollars for authentic information of the place where Morgan had been conveyed. Still the mystery was not solved, and when the November session of the Court of General Sessions was held at Canandaigua the grand jury could do nothing more than find two indictments against Chesebro, Lawson, Sawyer, and John Sheldon. The trial began on the first of January, 1827, in the Court of Oyer and Terminer, before Judge Throop, and aroused intense interest in all the western counties of the State. For days before the court met the taverns at Canandaigua and the nearby towns were crowded to excess by counsel, witnesses, and those drawn thither by curiosity. Seventy applicants for lodgings were turned away from one tavern during one dtty. The charges against the defendants were two in number— conspiracy to seize Morgan, and conspiracy to carry him to foreign parts and there secrete and confine him. Chesebro, Sawyer, and Lawson plead guilty, and were sentenced, Lawson to two years, Chesebro to one year, and Sawyer to one month.
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1838. A WORKING-MAN'S PAETY. 87
convention which nominated assemblymen, common council- men, and auditor.-* The tickets were defeated; but the organization continued, and ere another year went by made two demands for reform— one that the managers of the House of Refuge, who had just introduced mechanical occupations into their institution, should see to it that the mechanics and working-men of Philadelphia suffered no injury; and another that the State of Pennsylvania should establish a system of free republican schools, open to the children of the rich and of the poor without distinction. Judged by the standard of public instruction as now maintained in Pennsylvania, the demand of the working-men was reasonable and just. The constitution of the commonwealth, framed a generation before, required that the children of the poor should be educated at the public cost. The injunction was mandatory; the meaning was plain. Yet no steps were taken to carry it out till 1809, when a law was enacted requiring the assessors of taxes to make a census of the children whose parents were too poor to educate them, send the boys and girls to the nearest school, and assess the cost on the taxpayers. Even this wise provision was neglected. Some districts had no schools of any kind; in others the funds were embezzled, misapplied, perverted, or the law but partly executed, for the people refused to accept the benefit conferred lest their children should be looked on and treated as paupers. Meanwhile the cities increased in population, and the number of children growing up in absolute ignorance became so large that in 1818 a second step forward was taken, and the city and county of Philadelphia, the city and borough of Lancaster, and the city of Pittsburg were formed into three districts, with free schools in which children whose parents were too poor to educate them were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. No child whose parents could pay his schooling was admitted, and this in the eyes of the working-men was an offensive class distinction. It separated the children of the rich from those of the poor, and said to the latter, " You * United States Gazette, August 21 and October 1, 1828.
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1829. LABOR JOURNALS. 105
port charging us with being disciples of Miss Wright, and connecting religious points with our contention, as a base fabrication propagated by our enemies; we disclaim all adherence to Miss Wright's principles, and hold them foreign to our views, and appeal to the fact of the existence of the Working-men's party on the principles it now professes for nearly a year before she appeared among us." But it mattered little whether the working-men avowed or disavowed sympathy with the Free Enquirers. The fact remained that a serious reform movement was well under way, and was spreading and gaining in importance daily. All over the country journals were appearing to advocate it, and societies were forming to labor in its behalf. In New York city the Telescope was busy exposing the designs of the clergy, and holding up to public view the dangers of ecclesiastical encroachment. At Rochester the Spirit of the Age was denouncing imprisonment for debt and capital punishment, and calling loudly for a mechanics' lien law. At Canton, in Ohio, the Fanners' and Mechanics' Society of Stark County had been founded to spread the new doctrines and agitate for co-operation and reform. At St. Louis there was a Society of Free Enquirers. In Alabama " The Ladies Bill," to give women the right to hold after marriage property which belonged to them before, was warmly debated in the Legislature, and in Tuscaloosa another Spirit of the Age upheld the cause of the people as vigorously as its Rochester contemporary. The Southern Free Press, of Charleston, South Carolina, announced its principles to be " No sect, no creed, open to all," and declared that it would collect such information as was useful to mechanics and working-men, and would look to them for support. " Our great object," said the editor in his prospectus, " will be to urge you to break down the barrier which separates your children from those of lordly aristocrats by the establishment of national schools." At New Castle, in Delaware, an Association of Working People was formed with a membership open to any person twenty-one years of age who was engaged in any branch of productive labor. How is it, said the preamble to their constitution, that all classes save the laboring are heard in the Legislature? The commercial, the
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116 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP.
Masons, it asked to be discharged, and the papers went to another. The report when made closed with a statement that, having failed to devise a tribunal for the investigation of the outrage, a tribunal with jurisdiction over the whole extent of country covered by the conspiracy, with power to enforce the attendance of witnesses, with right to imprison such as refused to obey, and with authority to arrest and hold for trial, yet not infringe the chartered privileges of the humblest citizen, nothing was left but to recommend a joint committee of investigation and a reward of five thousand dollars for the discovery of Morgan if living, and a like sum for the apprehension of his murderers if he were dead. Resolutions embodying these suggestions were, however, voted down by a great majority of nearly three to one.* The refusal of the Legislature to act, the continued failure of grand juries to indict, the silence of the masonic newspapers, or, what was worse, the imperfect reports of Morgan meetings, and even positive assertions that Morgan was not dead, served but to increase the excitement. The whole population of Ontario, Monroe, Livingston, Genesee, Erie, Niagara, and Orleans Counties seemed arrayed as Masons and Antimasons. In Genesee, where the feeling was especially strong, a great meeting of citizens of the county was held at Batavia, and every voter pledged to support none but Antimasons. Three thousand people, men and women, were estimated to have been present. This was followed by a call from the " Morgan Committee " for a convention at Warsaw to nominate a candidate for the State Senate. Without the limits of New York, Antimasonry excited little or no interest. In many places it was regarded as a shrewd electioneering movement. At others it was believed that the commotion had been stirred up in order to sell a new edition of an old book, and that Morgan had been abducted by his friends. To disprove these rumors and, if possible, confirm the belief that he had been murdered, the Lewiston committee * Albany Argus, April 12, 1827. The report of the committee is in Ntles's Register, April 14, 1827, TO!, xxxli, pp. 120, HI.
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112 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. XLIII.
were always pulled down, and horses furnished by Masons living along the road were exchanged in secluded places. When Niagara County was reached, Eli Bruce, the high sheriff, took the party in charge, and went with the carriage to Lewiston. There, in the dead of night, Morgan was put into another carriage, which was driven by way of Youngstown to Fort Niagara, about a mile beyond the town. The fort had been unoccupied since the troops left it in May, 1826, but was in charge of a keeper. Save this man and his wife and a Mr. Giddins, who kept the ferry and lived directly on the bank of the river, no human beings dwelt near the fort, into the stone magazine of which Morgan is said to have been hurried near dawn on the morning of September fourteenth. At this place all trace of him disappears, and what then became of him has never been revealed to this day. When Morgan was arrested at Batavia, and in defiance of law was taken to Canandaigua, one of the witnesses to the proceedings was David C. Miller, who protested vigorously against the outrage. For this and for his connection with Morgan and the book, it was now determined to quiet Miller. On Tuesday, September twelfth, accordingly, about noon a band of some sixty men, armed with cudgels, appeared in Batavia and put up at one of the taverns, while Jesse French, a constable, went off armed with the process sworn out by Daniel Johns four days before, arrested Miller at the printing office, and brought him to the house where the mob was gathered. After some delay, he was placed in a wagon guarded by armed men and taken to Le Hoy, where, about nine at night, he succeeded in forcing his captors to bring him before the justice who issued the warrant. But as neither constable, warrant, nor plaintiff appeared, he was discharged, and made his way back to Batavia. , Burning with indignation, Miller now published a long account of his treatment by the Masons and of the abduction and probable murder of Morgan, and appealed to the public to vindicate the majesty of the law. His friends quickly responded, an investigation was begun, and an agent * sent to * Miller's account taken from his newspaper of September 18, 1826, is re printed in the second edition of Illustrations of Masonry.
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108 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. XLIII.
tern of education; all who approved of the abolition of imprisonment for debt; who believed in protection to American industries; who were against the auction system; against monopolies, regency dictation, and Tammany management; all who were ready to resist encroachments on the rights of the people, were bidden to come and frame a ticket for Congress and the Assembly. This was a serious movement, and to the ticket then and there made was given the name North American Clay Working-men's Ticket. The platform declared it to be the duty of the Government to extend the means of education as widely as the population; complained of the militia system as an unnecessary and useless oppression of the laboring man; described imprisonment for debt as a relic of barbarism, and called for its abolition; demanded the protection of American industry; * and indorsed Francis Granger, the Antimasonic candidate for Governor. In return for this the Antimasons a little later formally approved the municipal part of the North American Clay Working-men's Ticket, and the union between the two factions, denounced by the Jackson newspapers as the Paul Cliffords and Jonathan Wildes of politics and morality, was complete. From this union of petty opposition, malcontents, an^ aspiring politicians—a union of what in derision was called Clayism, antimasonry, and Workeyism—two classes of would- be workmen were carefully excluded: those who followed Fanny Wright and those who followed a leader named Skid- more, editor of the Daily Sentinel. The Fanny Wright party —the Infidel party, as they were called by their opponents; the Liberal Working-men's party, as they named themselves— held a convention at Syracuse and nominated Ezekiel Williams for Governor. The Skidmore or Agrarian Working-men, or, as they wished to be known, the Poor Man's party, chose James Burt, a farmer, and Jonas Humbert, a baker, as candidates for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and at the November election gave them one hundred and fifteen votes. Williams received two thousand. The Working-men and Antimasons polled nearly eight thousand votes. • New York American, November 2, 1880.
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A HISTORY
OF TIIR PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATE.S, FROM THE REVOLUTlON TO THE ClVlL WAR. BY JOHN BACH McMASTER, UNiVKi1HiTY OP PBSMSYLVANiA. IN SEVEN VOLUMES. VOLUME V. 1821-1830. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 73 FIFTH AVENUE. 1901.
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CONTENTS. yii
PAOl Labor reforms 100 Demands of the labor party 101 Excitement at the polls 102 Owenism disavowed 103, 104 Labor journals 105, 106 " Workeyism " 107, 108 William Morgan 109 Morgan's book 110 Morgan kidnapped Ill Treatment of Miller 112 Trial of kidnappers 118 Indignation against Masons 114 Political Antimasonry 115, 116 Morgan or Monroe t 117 Convention of seceding Masons 118 Masonry antireligious 119 Antimasonic convention 120 CHAPTER XLIV. Economic conditions in 1825 121 Growth of New York 122 Trade and commerce 123 City government 124, 125 Government of Philadelphia 126 The introduction of gas 127,128 Attempts to use anthracite 129 New Yorkers welcome new fuel 130 Up the Hudson 131 Opening the Erie Canal 132, 133 Travel on it 184 Success of the canal 135 Effect on the West 186 The rage for canals 137 The first railroad charter ; ... 138 Early railroad schemes 139-141 Interest in transportation 142 The beginning of railroads 143,144 Mechanical difficulties 145, 146 Early locomotives 147 Plans for promoting communication 148 The Cumberland road . . . 149 Discomfort of travel 150,151 Life on the frontier 152-155 The frontier judge 156-158 The circuit rider 159, 160 Wild-cat banking 161,162
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.'. : -i i. r IHK MONBOE DOCTRINE. CHAP. xu.
; i .^u tuau which no event has dispersed ... :i, auti gratitude over all the freemen of ... i*iuuu ia decisive of the subject in re- '. '..,. wd is the message of the President of the the London Times, the Morning . vl.'i \\ tvklv Messenger, the Liverpool Adver- ... ;u :!io praise of the new doctrine, and, when .. ,,,;-,^u-.uiou journal L'Etoile denounced the i\."i-,i Muuroe a dictator, it was the London .1 . I-:KU to defend him.* ,.. . 'u ' 'uurier of Dteember g.jth. — The speech of the Presi- , i t.. 'i.l -Unit. a in, in all its bearings, a document of more than ..... Tin; Utter port, which arrived so late yesterday that we ... ...1.t it tu a small part of our impression, will be found in our last . t, A.L.tiug every other topic in the speech, we direct our whole :... ,.u L J.hc moat important of all to every European power. ... ,l the independence and recognition of the South American , » Si' cuuMdoNd as at rest . Great Britain has, as we have 'i.", ., u iiu.ttltxlguU their independence de facto; and the United , i • ; Hi ,glilxti«, have not only acknowledged it, but have given a . . . 'i,. uc to Iho Continental powers that they shall treat "any ....), > MCA at oppressing or controlling them in any manner as a . .i ... nutui'uiH.v .imposition toward themselves — and as dangerons IM| ak 1,1 ', iu other words, they shall view it aa affording them . '. .. tu. i tupllolt • warning, there is not one of the Continental , .. . , ilwt will risk a war with the United States — a war in i, .i,. , M.nlJ uot oxpect to have either the aid or good wishes of .. IIM i **, tu which the good wishes of Great Britain (if she did not . i. , i i llioJunt mufour) would be all on the side of the United ,t. .,, nv mpo*» that the question may be considered to be aet at , '. i. .t . uiniv uf a Congress to settle the fate of the South Anieri- i'. ., i li^ th» Iwo nations that possess the institutions and speak . . it. in by Dreat Britain on one side and the United States on ii .. .. i. i" utUuioe l> pluotil beyond the reach of danger ; and the Con- , . ,i.i» u, hai'iu tlu'm, will do well to establish that friendly and ..... ., «Uh them which they could never have done had they . i. ,.\n uC Old Hptln. w.. ,,inti I'hrmiii-lt. — The American papers received yes- , i. . ,«iuU n( the opening of Congivsi", and the message of the \ l ..in J iH*liui. The communication of the chief office-bearer of t. in ltu. 1..'nUlatura at this critical period — when the ambition u it \\Ult tliv vaUunlty which it has occasioned in Europe, threat-
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104 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. XLUL
by Owen, and the letter signed by Owen as secretary of the association, supposed he was also the author of the plan, and appointed a committee to report as to who he was and in what his scheme consisted. The committee assured the typesetter* that Robert Dale Owen was a Scotchman, that he probably had never been naturalized, and that he had been assisted in his labors " by one Fanny Wright, also an exotic of some notoriety." It does seem unaccountably strange, said the report, that a native of that part of the world where thousands are every day groaning under oppression should leave these unfortunates, come over to the New World, and in the midst of a people enjoying the fullest liberty proclaim himself the apostle of equal rights and tender them the hand of friendship against their oppressors. Such insolence might well be treated with contempt were it not for the fact that a band of choice spirits of foreign origin have united and, taking advantage of our mild laws, are sowing the seeds of discontent and rebellion. It is true that there is some distress among laboring people. It is true that labor is not as well paid as in times past; that a man working with his hands is now unable to earn as much as he once could. But in our country, at least, the distress is caused not by anything Owen would reform, but by the introduction of labor-saving machinery during the last thirty years. lias Owen any remedy to propose? Far from it. He calls on the working-men to associate for defence of their rights when no rights are endangered. The report ended with a repudiation of his plan and a denial of all sympathy with his purposes.* The Painters' Society, on the other hand, took a different view, admitted that much Mr. Owen said was true, and was disposed to favor his plan for free education. At Philadelphia, where the working-men supported a ticket at tho October election for city and county officers, they too denied the charge of sympathy with Miss Wright as warmly as their fellow-laborers in Xew York. " We view," so ran a resolution adopted at a public meeting after the election, " the re- • New York Evening Post, December 8, 1820. Free Enquirer, December 10, 1829.
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150 STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1825 TO 1829. CHAP. xuv.
and urge an appropriation to repair the Cumberland Road.* But all to no purpose. The utmost that could be obtained was an act appropriating money for surveys, plans, and estimates for such canals and roads as the President might deem of national importance from a commercial or military point of view or necessary for the transmission of the public mails, f and in the last hours of his administration another extending the Cumberland Road from Canton to Zanesville, and providing for a survey for a further extension to the capital of Missouri.:}: The completion of the National Pike was, in its day and time, a matter of much importance. It began at Cumberland, on the banks of the Potomac, passed through Hagerstown in Maryland, and Uniontown, Brownsville, and Washington in Pennsylvania, and across Virginia to Wheeling on the Ohio. With the pike from Baltimore to Cumberland, it made a great through line of communication between the East and the West, and was already the favorite highway with travellers bound for the Ohio Valley. Such a journey was usually begun by taking boat at Philadelphia, going down the Delaware to New Castle, crossing by stage to Frenchtown on the Elk river,' a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and then boarding another steamboat for Baltimore. Twenty years had seen a marvellous betterment in the means and speed and cost of travel. Steamboats, turnpike, ferryboats, bridges, and, above all, competition, had accomplished wonders on the routes between the great seaboard cities. But no corresponding improvement had taken place in the comforts and conveniences of the inns and taverns at which the traveller was forced to stop. We lodged, said one traveller, at the City Hotel, which is the principal inn at New York. The house is immense, and was full of company; but what a wretched place! The floors were without carpets, the beds without curtains. There was neither glass, nor mug, nor cup, and a miserable little rag was dignified with the name of towel. At another inn the same traveller was shown to a * Resolution of December 18, 1822. f Approved April 8O, 1824. } March 8, 1826.
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1826. THE INDIAN LANDS IN GEORGIA. 175
tors endeavor to secure its passage,* and Indiana and Illinois each again memorialized Congress to scale down the price of land. There are in Illinois, said the memorial, some forty millions of acres, of which one million and a half have been sold. At this rate, and if the present price of a dollar and a quarter is held to, " it will be several hundred years before all the soil of the State passes to other hands." f While the Western States, or, as many in the East believed, combinations of speculators who controlled the' Legislatures, were begging Congress to reduce the price of the public domain, greed for land in the South bred a serious quarrel between Georgia, the President of the United States, and the Creek and Cherokee Indians. In 1802, when Georgia ceded the territory now part of Alabama and Mississippi, it was stipulated that the United States should extinguish the Indian title to land within the State of Georgia " as early as the same can be peaceably obtained on reasonable terms." When this agreement was made the Indian possessed in Georgia not far from twenty-six million acres, a tract larger than the State of Maine, larger than South Carolina, larger, indeed, than all New England if Maine be excluded. Of this immense area, eighteen million acres belonged to the Creeks and more than seven millions to the Cherokees. True to its pledge, the Federal Government began at once to negotiate for the purchase of the Indian rights, and in the course of twenty years concluded seven treaties, by which fourteen million acres were acquired from the Creeks and one million from the Cherokees. Yet the Georgians were far from satisfied. The deliberate course of the Government was too slow for them, and in their impatience they charged the United States with bad faith, with a violation of the agreement of 1802, and threatened to take the matter into their own hands. That they would have done so is not likely. Nevertheless, when the great rush of population into the West began after the war with Great Britain, when cotton was selling at thirty cents a pound, and * American State Papers, Public Lands, vol. iv, p. 892. f Senate Document No. 17, Nineteenth Congress, Second Session, vol. ii. The Indiana Memorial is No. 37 in the same volume.
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136 STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1825 TO 1829. CHAP. xuv.
from Madison County were seen in the basin at Albany. Orders for cherry boards and dressed lumber were received at Buffalo from Hartford and from dealers in Rhode Island. The warehouses along the canal bank at Buffalo were filled with the products of the East and the West; with wheat, grain, lumber, posts and rails, whiskey, fur and peltry bound for the markets of the Atlantic, and with salt, furniture, and merchandise bound for the West. To the people of the West the opening of the canal was productive of vast benefit. Said a Columbus newspaper: " It takes thirty days and costs five dollars a hundred pounds to transport goods from Philadelphia to this city; but the same articles may be brought in twenty days from New York by the Hudson and the canal at a cost of two dollars and a half a hundred. Supposing our merchants to import on an average five tons twice a year; this means a saving to each of five hundred and sixty dollars." It meant, indeed, far more: it meant lower prices, more buyers, a wider-spread market, increased comfort for the settlers in the new States, and, what was of equal importance, an impetus to internal improvements which should open up regions into which even the frontiersman would not go. As section after section of the Erie Canal was finished and opened to travel, and the day of its completion came nearer and nearer, a mania for internal improvements swept over the commercial States, and one by one many of the long-discussed projects began to take shape. On July fourth ground was broken in Ohio for a canal to join Lake Erie and the Ohio river. A fortnight later a goodly company from the counties of Ulster, Sullivan, and Orange in New York assembled at the summit level of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and with music, prayers, and speeches beheld the beginning of that great work.* The Delaware and Chesapeake was well under way; the Chesapeake and Ohio was about to be commenced; while plans were oh foot for canals to join New Haven and Northampton, Providence and Worcester, Boston with the Connecticut river, and Long Island Sound with Montreal by way of the * Albany Argus, July 26, 1825.
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1826. MORGAN KIDNAPPED. HI
picked up near by, and balls of cotton and whisps of straw soaked with turpentine were found under the stairways. Meantime early in the morning of this same Sunday Nicholas G. Chesebro, of Canandaigua, a hatter by trade, and one of the coroners of Ontario County, obtained from Jeffrey Chip- man, justice of the peace, a warrant for the arrest of Morgan on a charge of stealing a shirt and cravat from an innkeeper named Kingsley. Armed with this, and attended by the constable and a small posse, Chesebro repaired to Batavia, and on Monday, September eleventh, Morgan was apprehended. The prisoner had been arrested for debt in July, was at that time on the limits of the jail, and could not lawfully be taken without them. But it mattered not, and in utter defiance of law he was carried to Canandaigua, and there discharged by the justice when it was proved that the shirt and cravat were borrowed and not stolen. The next minute he was rearrested for an old debt of two dollars and sixty-five cents due an innkeeper, confessed judgment, and, stripping off his coat, asked the constable to levy on it. The request was refused, and Morgan was sent to the common jail. There he remained till about nine o'clock on the night of September twelfth, when a man named Loton Lawson appeared at the jail, paid the debt, persuaded the jailer's wife, who was in charge in her husband's absence, to liberate the prisoner, and came out of the jail with Morgan on his arm. When a few yards from the door, Morgan was seized by a number of men, and, despite his struggles and cries of murder, was hurried into a carriage. Many persons living near heard his cries, and one man, hurrying from his house to ascertain the cause, met Edward Sawyer and Nicholas G. Chesebro, who were standing by quiet spectators of the scene, and asked what was the matter. Chesebro answered, " Nothing, only a man has been let out of jail and has been taken on a warrant and is going to be tried." Thus assured, he did not interfere, and the carriage was driven to Rochester. Just beyond the town a change of carriage, horses, and driver was made, after which Morgan was taken westward along the ridge road toward Lewiston. As the journey proceeded the utmost secrecy is said to have been observed. Public houses were avoided as much as possible, the blinds of the carriage
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86 SOCIALISTIC AND LABOR REFORMS. CHAP. xun.
his employer failed, no lien law gave him a claim on the product of his lahor. In many States he was still disfranchised. I In all, he was liable under the common law of England to be punished for conspiracy if by strikes, by lockouts, or by combination with others he sought to better his condition or raise his pay. One thing he did not lack—he now had frienda ' ready and willing to help on his cause. The pleas they put forth in his behalf dwell at great length on the awful misery of drunkenness; declare that the poverty of the working-classes is the real cause of intemperance; call for legislation to "prevent the rich from swallowing up the inheritance of the poor "; hold up as a warning the " injurious consequences to the community of individuals amassing large landed property"; point out the dangers to which factory operatives are daily and hourly exposed; and ask for cleaner shops and healthier mills and t lodgings. Such pleas had small effect on the public, but much on the working-man and woman, who, after 1825, began to organize in earnest. Social unions of various crafts were formed in all the seaboard cities and -manufacturing centres north of Baltimore. In New England the women weavers and cotton operatives led the way. In New York city the ship carpenters and calkers, following the example of the machinists of Philadelphia, in their turn began to agitate for a ten-hour I day. So energetic was the labor movement that in 1828 an attempt was made in the New York Legislature to secure a mechanics' lien law, and a report strongly favoring such a measure of relief was presented. In Philadelphia the working- men, breaking old ties, entered politics on their own behalf -f- and formed a labor party. At a public meeting in August it was formally resolved to urge the working-men to support no candidate for a seat in the Legislature or in the city councils who would not pledge himself to further the interests and demands of " the working-classes," and a call was issued for organization.* The city and county were marked off into four districts, from each of which delegates were sent to a general * United States Gazette, August 14, 1828.
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1829. OWENISM DISAVOWED. 103
were told, held that everything was wrong in the present state of society, and that the whole system must be changed. Their object was represented to be to turn the State into an Owenite Community, confiscate all land and hold it for the general use of the people, strike down religion, and abolish marriage. So horrid a picture of socialism disturbed the mechanics, who now made haste to publicly disavow all connection with Owen, with Fanny Wright and the Free Enquirers, and at a ward meeting passed resolutions denying all sympathy with the " Infidel Party "; repelling with scorn the charge that they were hostile to the civil, moral, and religious institutions of the country; and declaring agrarian laws to be debasing, wicked, and dishonest. The New York Typographical Society went further yet. Some time before the election the newly formed Association for the Protection of Industry and the Promotion of National Education sent to every organized trade in the city a copy of the plan of the association, a pamphlet on National Education, by Robert Dale Owen, and a request that the society would join in the effort to secure the needed reforms. It was high time, the accompanying letter said, that the friends of equal rights made a firm stand against the unrepublican influences of the day. Labor was not only unprotected, but was oppressed, despised, and stripped of its just reward. There was no system of education affording instruction to the children of the rich and poor alike; none free from clerical and sectarian influences and class distinctions; none suited to induce in the rising generation habits of industry, plant principles of morality, or awaken feelings of brotherly love. Yet it was possible to obtain a better system of education and proper protection to industry if those most concerned would bestir themselves. Let tracts be written and scattered among the working-classes; let associations be formed all over the land, and a regular correspondence carried on between them; let the clergy be watched, and the needed legislation would soon be obtained. The Typographical Society, in common with the other trade associations, having received these documents, proceeded to consider them, and noticing that the pamphlet was written
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1827. POLITICAL ANTIMASONRY. 115
led, bound and blindfolded, to Newark, Upper Canada, only to be brought back to the fort and executed. So firm was the belief that Morgan had at one time at least been taken over the border, that the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada offered a reward of fifty pounds for information as to his whereabouts,* and Brant publicly denied that he had ever been asked to dispose of Morgan.f At the request of the Lewiston committee, Governor Clinton now issued a third proclamation, offering one thousand dollars for the discovery of Morgan if alive, and, if dead, two thousand dollars for the discovery of the murderers. t When the spring local elections came on, the excitement against the Masons took on a political form. It was now not uncommon to find five, six, even seven columns of a newspaper filled with accounts of Morgan meetings, and the assertions and counter-assertions of private citizens. The people of one town resolved not to support a Mason for any office, State, county, or town; those of a second declared that they deemed " Freemasons unfit for any office of confidence "; those of a third dismissed their minister because he belonged to the fraternity; the resolution adopted at Poultney reads: " We will not hear any person preach unless the said preacher should refuse to meet with any lodge of Freemasons, and openly declare that masonry is bad "; at Middlebury a town meeting was warned " for the purpose of taking into consideration the late masonic outrages and to make nominations to fill the different offices in this town." To such a height had the popular feeling been raised that the county committees, finding that sometimes, as in the case of Niagara County, the grand juries were packed and would not indict, and at others, as in Monroe County, the grand juries could secure no direct testimony, though much circumstantial evidence, and so failed to return a bill, appealed by petitions to the Legislature. These early in March were laid before the Assembly, and sent to the Committee on Courts of Justice. But finding that a majority of the members were * American Daily Advertiser, February 19, 1827. f York Observer, February 26, 1827. t March 19, 1827. TOL. v.—9
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1826. MORGAN KIDNAPPED. HI
picked up near by, and balls of cotton and whisps of straw soaked with turpentine were found under the stairways. Meantime early in the morning of this same Sunday Nicholas G. Chesebro, of Canandaigua, a hatter by trade, and one of the coroners of Ontario County, obtained from Jeffrey Chip- man, justice of the peace, a warrant for the arrest of Morgan on a charge of stealing a shirt and cravat from an innkeeper named Kingsley. Armed with this, and attended by the constable and a small posse, Chesebro repaired to Batavia, and on Monday, September eleventh, Morgan was apprehended. The prisoner had been arrested for debt in July, was at that time on the limits of the jail, and could not lawfully be taken without them. But it mattered not, and in utter defiance of law he was carried to Canandaigua, and there discharged by the justice when it was proved that the shirt and cravat were borrowed and not stolen. The next minute he was rearrested for an old debt of two dollars and sixty-five cents due an innkeeper, confessed judgment, and, stripping off his coat, asked the constable to levy on it. The request was refused, and Morgan was sent to the common jail. There he remained till about nine o'clock on the night of September twelfth, when a man named Loton Lawson appeared at the jail, paid the debt, persuaded the jailer's wife, who was in charge in her husband's absence, to liberate the prisoner, and came out of the jail with Morgan on his arm. When a few yards from the door, Morgan was seized by a number of men, and, despite his struggles and cries of murder, was hurried into a carriage. Many persons living near heard his cries, and one man, hurrying from his house to ascertain the cause, met Edward Sawyer and Nicholas G. Chesebro, who were standing by quiet spectators of the scene, and asked what was the matter. Chesebro answered, " Nothing, only a man has been let out of jail and has been taken on a warrant and is going to be tried." Thus assured, he did not interfere, and the carriage was driven to Rochester. Just beyond the town a change of carriage, horses, and driver was made, after which Morgan was taken westward along the ridge road toward Lewiston. As the journey proceeded the utmost secrecy is said to have been observed. Public houses were avoided as much as possible, the blinds of the carriage
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1826. MORGAN KIDNAPPED. HI
picked up near by, and balls of cotton and whisps of straw soaked with turpentine were found under the stairways. Meantime early in the morning of this same Sunday Nicholas G. Chesebro, of Canandaigua, a hatter by trade, and one of the coroners of Ontario County, obtained from Jeffrey Chip- man, justice of the peace, a warrant for the arrest of Morgan on a charge of stealing a shirt and cravat from an innkeeper named Kingsley. Armed with this, and attended by the constable and a small posse, Chesebro repaired to Batavia, and on Monday, September eleventh, Morgan was apprehended. The prisoner had been arrested for debt in July, was at that time on the limits of the jail, and could not lawfully be taken without them. But it mattered not, and in utter defiance of law he was carried to Canandaigua, and there discharged by the justice when it was proved that the shirt and cravat were borrowed and not stolen. The next minute he was rearrested for an old debt of two dollars and sixty-five cents due an innkeeper, confessed judgment, and, stripping off his coat, asked the constable to levy on it. The request was refused, and Morgan was sent to the common jail. There he remained till about nine o'clock on the night of September twelfth, when a man named Loton Lawson appeared at the jail, paid the debt, persuaded the jailer's wife, who was in charge in her husband's absence, to liberate the prisoner, and came out of the jail with Morgan on his arm. When a few yards from the door, Morgan was seized by a number of men, and, despite his struggles and cries of murder, was hurried into a carriage. Many persons living near heard his cries, and one man, hurrying from his house to ascertain the cause, met Edward Sawyer and Nicholas G. Chesebro, who were standing by quiet spectators of the scene, and asked what was the matter. Chesebro answered, " Nothing, only a man has been let out of jail and has been taken on a warrant and is going to be tried." Thus assured, he did not interfere, and the carriage was driven to Rochester. Just beyond the town a change of carriage, horses, and driver was made, after which Morgan was taken westward along the ridge road toward Lewiston. As the journey proceeded the utmost secrecy is said to have been observed. Public houses were avoided as much as possible, the blinds of the carriage